Books

Why did you decide to write a novel about the Russian Revolution?

In the run up to the one hundred years anniversary I fully expected that there would be a rash of books about the revolution. As it approached however it was clear that apart from China Mieville’s Book, October, the book by Dave Sherry and a book by Neil Faulkner there was very little coming out and no fiction so I very quickly wrote the first part of this trilogy in ten days followed by the second one and all being well I’ll write the final part.

This is an autobiography of Chris Searle, who was inspired by poetry, especially by the East End (of London) poet Isaac Rosenberg. More than that, he inspired children, teenagers and working class men and women to write and recite them.

His secondary schooling didn’t start smoothly because he needed several attempts to get into grammar school. He was encouraged by his English teacher, whose choice of exciting class readers like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and plays, including Shakespeare, “opened up the heart of language within me that I had to dive into!”

This book examines the present state of Europe and its relationship with America at what the author sees as a crucial time for the world. His perception is that with the EU in possible danger of breaking up and Trump’s America retreating into “America First” isolationism threatening to tear up trade agreements and military treaties, the world is at a point where decisions will lead to either peace or calamity in the next century.

The republishing of this key work by one of the 20th century’s most important Marxist thinkers is very welcome. This is CLR James’s first book, originally published in 1937. James provided the first ever history and systematic analysis of the Communist International and a searing indictment of the crimes of Stalinism.

Read this to be inspired by stories of city-based resistance in some of the most difficult conditions possible.

The editors want to confront the idea that capitalism is triumphant everywhere and instead look at examples where “the hegemony of ruling classes is being directly challenged by mass organisations”. Their examples range from Africa to Asia to Latin America.

The editors of this collection describe reading Marx’s Capital as a political process and certainly Marx intended that his work would become a weapon in the hands of the working class. Reading ‘Capital’ Today does not obviously emerge from any political practice, but rather from readings by authors mostly better known for their academic contributions than their activism.

Alex Vitale condemns the politics of austerity for creating the circumstances in which heavy-handed policing becomes the accepted means of controlling a poor, marginalised majority in a system which exists to serve the 1%.

It surprised me how far the US police and criminal justice system have been militarised. Local forces hold extensive, state-funded, stores of military hardware and the training of officers is undertaken by private companies who routinely train foreign militia and the military.

Metal as a genre of contemporary music is still derided across the world, despite being one of the most commercially successful styles of popular music since its birth in the late 1960s.

Orlando Crowcroft details what this most demeaned style of music continues to mean to fans in six of the most war-ravaged and hostile countries: Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Palestine, and Syria.

Big Capital is a neatly packaged explication of London’s housing crisis with an emphasis on those who most suffer from it.

The main campaigns against social cleansing are examined, and the kleptocratic property industry is exposed. Along the way there are some startling revelations, like the out of work actor who got paid to pretend he was a resident in order to support a controversial development, or the treatment of single mothers and their children who were shipped out of London to Boundary House, a squalid ex-student residence in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.

Set between the period after the Second World War and the early 1960s in Britain, Billy Bragg’s history of skiffle music is clearly a labour of love, a work of dedicated musicological research and social history. The fact that it contains 430 pages gives an idea of the scope and depth of the work. It is replete with detail, illustrations and recollections of people involved at the time, whether directly or as close surviving relatives.