James Hilton - Goodbye, Mr. Chips

This is rather an unashamedly sentimental novel. Set in the last decades of the 19th century and progressing into the early quarter of the 20th, Goodbye, Mr. Chips appears to be about the changing world. The end of the Victorian era that represented stability for many, to the uncertainties of the modern world.

Chips is a schoolmaster at a public school called Brookfield. Brookfield isn't one of the top flight places like Eton or Harrow. It is a bit of a quiet backwater and the school itself doesn't, at least in the beginning have a particularly brilliant reputation. Chips teaches generations of children classics. Some of his more modernising colleagues plainly disapprove of his style and methods, but Chips hangs onto the past like a limpet. For him modernity is something that exists only to disturb the school. Change is bad, unless it is the gradual changing of the school years, the next generation of children entering the gates for the first time.

His kindness and fairness win the hearts and minds of generations of children. Chips serves at the school until he is no longer capable, and then is allowed to hang around in his retirement, inviting boys over for tea and watching them play sports. Such behaviour was clearly viewed with less suspicion in the 1920s.

But there are contradictions. Chips falls for a modern young lady. She's so modern, she reads Bernard Shaw and William Morris, rides a bicycle and speaks up against the punishment of the kids. It brings contradiction to the school, but Chips is won over by her. Unfortunately her presence would ruin the sentiment of the story line, so Hilton has her killed off early on. This allows more sentimentality to develop.

The book has proved amazingly popular. Almost certainly because of the way it deals with war - as a brutal disruption to normal life. Though the lives of the majority of the non-privileged only occasionally make it into the pages. Once during the General Strike and once earlier, with the brief visit of some token poor people from Poplar in East London. To give Hilton his due, Chips' extreme fairness is used in both cases to give the upper-classes something to think about. Though in the case of the General Strike, Chips muses that it has been sorted out in a most English way, to the satisfaction of everyone concerned. In the world outside the rarefied air of a public school, the General Strike was of course merely sorted out to the satisfaction of the establishment, but what does Chips really care about that?

Readable and amusing though the story is, it is fantasy. At one point Chips reflects that there is no bullying at Brookfield any more. Seems odd, given he's allowed to cane the children. If you like uncritical sentimentalist fantasy you'll probably like this. I'm told that R.F. Delderfield's To Serve Them All My Days, is a similar story, but has much more politics, social observation and reality in it. I'd suggest you go there for your public  school stories first.

Matt Perry - Marxism and History

This is a useful and readable introduction to the Marxist understanding of history - or Historical Materialism as it is better know. Beginning with a brief explanation of how Marx and Engels understood history and then looking at how they engaged with this in their writing, Matt Perry shows that historical materialism is in no way as complex or difficult as some would argue.

However to put these ideas across, Perry has to take up some of the wider arguments around history and Marxist history in particular. Is history a science is a question that has perplexed many who would call themselves Marxists. Marx and Engels argued it was. But those who perceive science as something that happens in laboratories find this difficult to agree with. Even some of the best historians on the left (such as E P Thompson) disagreed with the founders of scientific socialism on this point. Perry shows how Marxist history as an approach does embody the essence of scientific research within the processes of research, the testing of hypothesises and the evaluation by peers.

I mention E P Thompson, because one of the central aspects to this book is the approach of various historians from the Marxist left and the wider left. Thompson, Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill get detailed analysis, mostly because of their links to the wider left grouping around the Communist Party Historian's Group (1946-1956). This is particularly interesting because this was a really flowering of work and ideas, between members of the CP and much wider layers of writers and researchers. Perry notes that because of their links to the CP, some areas of historical study remained out of bounds (particularly Russian history) and the group collapsed in 1956 as disillusionment following the invasion by Russian forces of Hungary led to some of its mainstays leaving the CP. However the works of many writers that came from the group, laid the foundation for important approaches to history, perhaps best epitomised by Thompson's Making of the English Working Class. The historian's group had a wide impact around the world, but it is perhaps noted most here for its pioneering work around the English Revolution.

Perry also looks at other historians. He starts with the explicitly historic writings of Marx and Engels, including chapters of Capital which are detailed historical accounts, even though there is a perception of it being a dry work of economics. The section on Engels' history of the German Peasant Wars is fascinating - Perry shows how his approach of linking ideological and political ideas as part of a social superstructure influenced, created and also impacting back on an economic base is Marxist history at its best. Perry also looks at what he considers a "historical masterpiece" - Leon Trotsky's monumental History of the Russian Revolution.

I only have time to briefly note the mention here of "base and superstructure". This notion is a critical part of the debates around Marxism and history, and Perry shows how this metaphor of Marx's has been used and abused - or dismissed by many on the left. However he argues that it was a central plank of Marx and Engels' historical approach and puts across one of the most straightforward explanations for the ideas. For those interested in this discussion I recommend these chapters in Perry's book, as well as Chris Harman's essay on the subject.

Finally Perry takes on the question of Postmodernism. Again his summary demolishes these attempts to argue that history has no meaning, or has stopped. Perry puts Postmodernism very much in the context of the post-World War II world. A point when capitalism, seemed to some as triumphant, and discussions about the "end of history" were about an ideological assault that would give the free-market free rein. Perry puts the case that idealistic approaches to history - that ideas are somehow independent of human society are not new, and that Marx himself critiqued this approach.

Perry's defence of the Marxist approach to history is clear and useful, rooting it very much in the real world. Humans must interact with the world around them to provide the necessities of life, as well as constructing and creating a society based on particular economic constructions. However I liked particular a point he develops from the historian John Saville, he argues that many left-historians are linked themselves to attempts to shape the future and change the world through the political organisations, campaigns or trade unions that they are part of. This in itself he argues "allows insights into the historical process with which they themselves were wrestling". I liked this point as it helps demonstrate why some arguments or writings from the postmodernists seems so completely incomprehensible to the rest of us - they are cut off and removed from the real historical processes around them.

Matt Perry's book deserves a wide readership, by students of history and writers of the subject. Its glossary is particularly useful, particularly if you have little or no experience of some of the more unusual academic phrases. I would have liked to read more by Perry on other historians - there are only passing references to Tony Cliff and I would have enjoyed Perry's thoughts on his historical work. But that's a minor criticism, I recommend this book to you.

Related Reviews

Harman - Marxism and History
Hughes - Ecology and Historical Materialism

Francis Pryor - The Making of the British Landscape

The British landscape is far from natural. Almost nothing that we see as our cars and trains cross the countryside is natural in a truely historic sense. Trees and hedges have been planted, farms and fields laid out. Roads planned and forests cleared. By arguing that the landscape around the islands of cities on the British Isles is not natural, Francis Pryor is following the lead of Oliver Rackham's interesting book The History of the Countryside, which I reviewed here.

However, Francis Pryor takes this much further. While Rackham acknowledges the human actions that have created the countryside, Pryor puts human activity at the centre of the story. No mere list of plants, animals and types of forest or waterway for Pryor. Instead his archaeologist approach is to try and understand why and how our ancestors changed the natural world. Pryor doesn't deny the importance of other environmental changes, but argues that these are secondary to the influence of human beings.

At the heart of much of Pryor's other books is a sense of continuity. This continuity between ancient life and more modern times occassionaly seems a bit laboured. But in the case of the countryside, Pryor shows how the world outside our windows is in many cases, truely ancient. We all learnt at school that modern roads often follow the routes of Roman Roads. But those Roman routes often took the same paths as far more ancient pathways. Trading routes of Bronze and Iron Age peoples. Similarly with the edges of agricultural areas, boundaries often stretch back far in time.

The major transformation of the British Landscape took place thousands of years ago - with the clearance of the forests that spread following the last iceage. These were cleared as long ago as 3000 BCE. The ancients transformed the landscape. Even today the bumps and ditches can hide significant ancient activites.

Pryor's story takes us through the changes of Roman times, though here again he is keen to stress that life for the majority of people on these Islands changed little, before and after the invasion. Continuity, particularly in rural life was the reality. Though the Roman's brought with them much, particularly tools and implements that had significant impacts of ancient life. Then we move onto the changes in Medieval times, in a particularly fascinating chapter Pryor takes us through the detailed agricultural evidence that demonstrates the planning that went into the creation of open field or stripping farming schemes in parts of Britain.

Pryor is keen to argue against the notion of revolution. He doesn't appear to like the term, and clearly thinks that when it is applied to agriculture and industry it is particularly inappropriate. But I think he's mistaken. Revolutions are not the short, brief affairs beloved of some historians. They are long drawn out events that bring fundamental change, but aren't always obvious at the time. Take events in Egypt at the moment. The fall of Mubarak was merely the first stage in a much larger revolutionary story.

It would be wrong to characterise agricultural revolutions as sudden events. Though changes could be sudden - imagine the impact of a new type of plough when it arrives in a village for the first time. But the introduction of open field systems or their enclosure later on, led to fundamental changes, not just in agriculture, but in terms of property relations, life in the cities and so on. These are revolutions in the truest sense of the word.

That criticism aside, there is lots here of those whose interest are the changes that took place in Britain over the centuries. Because Pryor doesn't pretend that the landscape is only trees, fields and forests, he discusses such interesting topics as the impact of landscape gardening in country houses, the arrival of tourism in the Lake District or the planning of new towns in post World War II Britain.

Once again Francis Pryor has written a fascinating work of history, that will inspire and excite everyone with an interest in social history, it deserves a wide readership.

Related Reviews

Pryor - Britain AD
Pryor - Britain in the Middle Ages
Pryor - Britain BC

William Cronon - Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England

The basis to William Cronon's study of the impact of the arrival of colonists to New England is that the "replacement of Indians by predominately European populations in New England was as much an ecological as a cultural revolution". This is not to say that he downplays the other impacts. He is clearly aware that the destruction of the Native Americans and their way of life was a profound social transformation, but he locates the changes as having very much an ecological base, which is liked in very concrete ways to the political and social makeup of the European societies that the colonists arrived from.

Cronon explains that contrary to the perception of the colonists and many writers since, the landscape of New England was in no way a pristine wilderness. The patchwork of woodland and open spaces was the consequence of centuries of human interaction with the natural world of New England. The particular hunting and farming combination that the nomadic people of this part of the world used to produce food and other resources throughout the year had created ecosystems that seemed to the new arrivals to overrun with valuable flora and fauna.

I use the word valuable here by choice. It is very noticeable in the extensive quotes that Cronon uses, that the colonists viewed the natural world around them in terms of commodities. In fact this is a central theme for Cronon. The clash between this concept of nature as a commodity ripe for exploitation and something that is utilised for short terms needs of the humans around. The changes that the colonists made, particularly in terms of deforesting the woodland for fuel, sale to the European nations and for agriculture, rapidly undermined the basis for the huge variety of game etc.

The Native Americans of New England (similarly to other areas of the pre-Colombian Americas). had a very different concept of ownership. People owned what they made with their hands, but there was no sense, or even need for the accumulation of further material goods. Land was considered to be owned by one tribe or the other, though perhaps under the influence is a better way of explaining this. But when the tribe moved on elsewhere, the land did not remain theirs by right. This contrasted with the Europeans who saw the ownership of land and its improvement through agricultural practices as a God given duty. There are some almost comic moments in the book when Cronon explains how male Native Americans were considered lazy, because they merely hunted whereas women, who mostly played the role of farmers were considered to be the hard workers. The tragedy of this, is because the colonists didn't see the use of the land that the Native Americans as real use in their terms, they didn't recognise any right to the land. So they took it.

Cronon documents the absolute destruction of the native population of New England through diseases brought from Europe. The population fell from 70,000 to 12,000 in the first 75 years of the 17th century. Destruction on this level meant that the native usage of the land could not survive, in anything like the previous scale. Leaving even more opportunity for the seizing of land.

Later in the book Cronon shows how the creation of the concept of trade, lead directly to the reorganisation of the economic life of the Native Americans. By introducing commodities that could be exchanged for materials like wampum or metal tools that the natives wanted, the whole basis of their economy changed. Suddenly leaders arrived, as did a dependence on the Europeans. Prestige could be obtained by owning particular items in a way that never made sense prior to the arrival of the colonists.

The Europeans created a completely new forest ecology. In part they destroyed an older one, replacing it with one on their idealised model. Grasses and crops were introduced from Europe, mono-cultures and weeds destroyed the diverse ecology. They saw this as progress, but for the people who had lived there for hundreds of years, it was complete destruction. There was of course resistance, but against the heavily armed European arrivals, backed up by powerful economies abroad, their was no long hope. The tragedy of New England's people, replicated in countless communities across the Americas, is one that we can learn from. Not because we can return to the world that has vanished, but because we can learn that the modern ways of using the natural world have more to do with exploitation than sustainability, and that we need to think about moving away from an economy based on the commodification of everything, to one based on the needs of people and planet.

Related Review

Cronon - Nature's Metropolis
Burke Leacock - Myths of Male Dominance
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties

Oliver Rackham - The History of the Countryside

Oliver Rackham's history of the countryside is a remarkable book. It is also an unusual and slightly odd book. It's oddity stems not from its content, but its style. In essence it boils down to a very detailed and systematic exploration of every feature of the British landscape - from the woodlands, ancient and modern, to the roads, fields and waterways we see around us. It is odd because what we end up with is really a very complicated and detailed list. Don't let this criticism mean you ignore this. Rackham's book is a great scholarly work, it is by turns fascinating, amusing and enlightening and should instruct the keenest historian of the interaction between humans and the natural world.

What we learn, is that very little of the British landscape is natural. At the end of the last ice age, most of the British Isles were rapidly covered with wild wood - trees that spread from what was then the continent. With the arrival of humans, this was almost immediately under attack as our ancestors reduced the trees for agriculture or cultural reasons. The other changes they made - consciously or unconsciously on the flora and fauna are faithfully recorded - the disappearance of larger mammals like the auroch, the wild boar and so on. The introduction of species from outside, in both ancient and modern times have changed the world we look at from our train windows, and the place would be unrecognisable to an ancient Briton, transported in time to the 21st Century.

In particular, Rackham shows how agriculture and industry have changed the countryside - the fields, with ancient walls and hedges, to the strip fields of the medieval age, and then the heavily enclosed farms of modern times. The hedges are fascinating. They're sometimes natural, sometimes not, they can grow spontaneously along a human-made ditch or line and they can help spread plant species.

Even some of the most impressive areas of the landscape we might take for granted - the Norfolk Broads, or some of the large woodlands are very rarely natural. The Broads are the remains of systematic medieval peat extraction. Many age old forests are the remnants of parks and gardens made a few centuries ago.

The style of the book is lovely. Oliver Rackham comes across as a slightly eccentric expert, passionate about his subject, prepared to delve deep into ancient forestry records and dusty books to prove that a local feature is actually only a few years old. "Much as been written on the history of Irish woodland, but in a vague and general way; except in Killarney there is not one wood whose history over the last 400 years is known" he complains at one point.

My disappointment peaked at the end of the book, which finished abruptly with a brief mention of a fish weir on the River Calder. I had hoped for some interesting concluding remarks on perhaps the conservation of "nature" and what that meant. Nevertheless, there is much here to learn from. Rackham's book is often mentioned and referenced. I've followed it up with a reading of Francis Pryor's latest book on "The Making of the British Landscape". Pryor has referenced Rackham's work in the past and I'll be interested to compare the two. Watch this space, as they say.

John Newsinger - The Dredd Phenomenon: Comics and Contemporary Society

There is a large part of me that never really got into comics. Partly this was due to a slightly snobbish, middle class attitude that my have existed during my early youth. They were not proper books, so they can't have been anything more than simplistic entertainment. Radio 1 to literature's Radio 3.

Later on, I discovered 2000AD. It's cynical social commentary made it clear that there was something more to comics and graphic novels than those who assumed it was all the Beano might think.

John Newsinger's brief survey of comics is locates them in the the periods when they are being penned. Written in the immediate aftermath of Tony Blair's election in 1997, he firmly roots the popularity of Judge Dredd and 2000AD in the writers' ability to extrapolate from the authoritarian social policies of Thatcher, Major and then Blair.

You can see this most obviously, and perhaps slightly crudely, with the B.L.A.I.R.1 strip which I found immensely enjoyable in 1998. Here Blair is a robotic monster, driving through his plans and wrecking people's lives to make Britain safe for big business. It is only with tongue slightly in cheek that the writers introduced Judge Straw into the mix.

Newsinger argues that the popularity of comics like 2000AD is their ability to hold a lens up to the world. Whether this provokes the readers into further confrontation with the priorities of the politicians and policies that are so elegantly subverted in the stories is another question. Certainly their popularity can only be because most readers spot a little part of the world around them in the panels. I'd forgotten how detailed some of the stories are. In one, Newsinger points out, the Judges, lawmakers, enforcers, judge, jury and executioners, recognise they need to liberalise their policies or risk loosing complete control. They decide to remove the prescription on keeping Goldfish from the list of crimes that can be committed. Though breeding Goldfish still requires a permit, least it gets out of the control of the state.

So the contradiction - that one of Britain's most popular comics has as a hero a semi-fascistic policeman is squared because it is clearly about tackling the excesses of other aspects of 20th and 21st Century capitalism. Other stories, writers and comics mentioned here-in The Preacher, The Invisibles, From Hell and the ABC Warriors also take up other contemporary issues - crime, drugs, religion and violence. They are part, Newsinger argues, of a reaction to those comics that are pure escapism.

Newsinger has a convincing case. Hopefully this book, which has not dated at all since the heady days of 1997, will continue to encourage a critical reading of comics and more of a enjoyment of a wider range of slightly less mainstream graphic novels than your parents might expect.

Related Reviews

Newsinger - The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire
Newsinger - Fighting Back: The American Working Class in the 1930s
Newsinger - Them and Us: Fighting the Class War 1910-1939

Leon Trotsky - Lessons of October

This short volume by Leon Trotsky is an undisguised polemic. Written in 1924, in the aftermath of a series of failed revolutions across Europe, it was clear that the revolutionary movement that had developed following the First World War was at a turning point. Trotsky's volume is in itself a hard restatement of the need for revolutionary organisation to successfully lead a working class revolution.

Trotsky understood that there was a danger that having led a successful revolution in Russia in 1917, the Bolsheviks Party was seen as having a sort of God like status. The idea that revolutionaries elsewhere needed to simply emulate the actions and organisations of the Lenin and the Bolsheviks and that would be enough to seize power. So in part he wrote a "warts and all" history of the Bolsheviks. He documents the way in which following the first revolution of 1917, in February, when the Tsar was deposed, the position of the Bolsheviks was to their right of the position that they took in October. From afar Lenin wrote, begged and urged them to turn further towards the idea of proletarian revolution, instead many, like Stalin tailed the right-wing of the socialist movement.

"Russia is too backward for the workers to take power" they argued, yet a few months later they did just that. At the end of the book, Trotsky explores the idea of insurrection as art. Taking power is not a science. There are a myriad of factors that must be taken into consideration before a successful seizure of power can be made. He documents and explores what happened in Russia - but argues that this shouldn't form a blueprint for anywhere else. He looks at those organs of democratic power in Russia - the Soviets - but explains that there is a danger that other revolutionaries fetishise these as instruments of revolution, rather than noticing other social structures - workers councils, factory committees or even the Trade Unions that might take on this role. I should add though, that I think Trotsky's understanding of the role of the unions here is flawed and based on a peculiarly Russian naivety towards these bodies, as explored in this excellent book here.

Finally Trotsky is launching a weapon in a developing argument in Russia at the time. As the effect of international isolation, civil war and Russian backwardness took their toil on the revolution, Trotsky was fighting against marginalisation from the new bureaucratic cliques developing around Stalin. The Lessons of October are then also a polemical fight in this battle.

The edition I have read comes with very useful notes and an introductory essay by Duncan Hallas. This frames the book very helpfully and can be read online here. I'd recommend it, before dipping into the Trotsky.

Related Reviews

Hallas - Trotsky's Marxism
Choonara - A Rebel's Guide to Trotsky
Trotsky - An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe

J.G. Farrell - Troubles

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Farrell's book The Siege of Krishnapur and this earlier book of his does not disappoint either. Apparently this is really the first in a trilogy of which Krishnapur is the second, but there are limited links between the stories, so the order doesn't matter.

Together with the third in the series, the theme is the end of Empire. Krishnapur appeared to deal with the highpoint of British rule in India, but was centred on the mutiny that marked the beginning of the end. Troubles is set in Ireland, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War and the Easter Uprising of 1916.

Arriving in Ireland, Major Archer thinks he is going to be married to his fiancee. A young woman with whom he has engaged in a love-affair by letter, following a short meeting. That doesn't happen and instead he gets drawn in to the daily life of the Majestic Hotel that is owned by her family. The Hotel was once a splendid and famous resort. Now, it is a shade of its former glory. Decay permeates every corner - the masonry is crumbling, the gardens getting overrun. This decay is also infecting the people there. The servants don't care - The Major is not met on his arrival, and the first comic chapters of the novel are when he tries to adjust to the idea that no-one will make his bed and no one will run his bath.

The decay of the hotel is a metaphor for the decay of British rule in Ireland, or indeed the beginning of the end of Empire. As the Civil War gathers pace, the guests at the hotel remain blissfully above it all. Sure that the Empire will continue, and unbelieving of the growing tidal wave of change they face. As in Krishnapur the natives are distinct, indistinct figures. Starving on the periphery of the story. This is how they must have appeared to the British, enclosed in their ivory towers.

As events hot up, the Major becomes unable or unwilling to leave. He falls in love again, and his heart is broken once more. Here, in addition to the dark gloom of the crumbling hotel, Farrell adds the  claustrophobic life of a Englishman unable to cope with his sexuality, desperate for relief as he sweats at night thinking of the woman he loves. But there is a counter-point. Two young girls who mature into woman as the novel progresses, taunt, flirt and tease the visiting British soldiers and the Major himself. They surely represent a more confident sexuality of the coming twenties.

The end of the novel, is, like the end of Empire, brutal. There is little happiness here, and I was left feeling that there should have been something more. But this is the end of Empire from the occupiers point of view - they deserved no happy ending. It is up to those who freed themselves to write the next chapter of the story.


Related Reviews
 
J.G. Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur

Rosemary Hill - Stonehenge

It is rare that I express disappointment with a book. Usually I am aware enough of the contents to feel that I know what I am about to read, so it is unusual to find myself criticising one.

However, it may be that my own criticisms of this book are misplaced. The Wonders of the World series has been extremely enjoyable and I would encourage others to read these short books. There are links to previous reviews below.

Rosemary Hill's book though suffers from not really being about it's subject matter. Now this is true of all the series to a lesser extent. You can't really discuss the Temple of Jerusalem or the Colosseum without mentioning their impact on society and cultures that have come along after they were built, or destroyed.

But this book on Stonehenge suffers from seeming to barely mention any detail about Stonehenge at all. Apart from the very first chapter, and some of the later chapters which deal with modern archaeology. We learn very little about the monument itself. Hill is correct of course to point out that there are many unknowns about Stonehenge. Any book about the place could and indeed should point to the controversies that still exist. Instead we're treated to large chunks about the influence of Stonehenge on various different cultural stages of British history - the Antiquarians, The Romantics and so on. Stonehenge as an idea, has had a big impact - its influence extended to the architects who put together major bits of Bath and Covent Garden for instance.

Hill tells this story particularly well, but I for one found myself not really caring much. The various different suggestions about the origins of the monument that have been put forward by various scientists, amateurs and crackpots over the years are also interesting, but they reflect more of contemporary history, than illuminate the past.

However, I do think Hill does her story of Stonehenge well. I can't fault that, and I did enjoy her account of the more recent history of the monument - the changing social attitudes to conservation of ancient places, access rights and so on. Her final chapter has plenty of ammunition that can be used against recent governments (including I think the Coalition that is in place while I write this) for their attitudes to places like Stonehenge.

But I did feel disappointed. There should have been more about Stonehenge itself and the people who built it, as well as the epic monumental landscape that it is a central part of. Readers who might like more of that, are encouraged to search out Francis Pryor's excellent book Britain BC, which delves into some of this.

Related Reviews in the Wonders of the World series


Watkin - The Roman Forum
Fenlon - Piazza San Marco
Tillotson – Taj Mahal
Goldhill - The Temple of Jerusalem
Gere - The Tomb of Agamemnon
Ray - The Rosetta Stone
Hopkins & Beard - The Colosseum

E.P. Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class

E. P. Thompson's monumental work of history of the development and shaping of the English working class almost defies review. After all, in almost 1000 pages he covers so much ground, in such great detail, that it feels inappropriate to even attempt to mention an section for fear of glossing over something equally important elsewhere. Hundreds of words could also be written about Thompson's methodology. His approach is more than history from below, it is about analysing cause and effect in history, imposition and resistance, the dialectical interaction between social forces that shapes the present and the future.

Thompson wrote as an avowed Marxist. Marx wrote that "being shapes consciousness" and this little quote perhaps explains the core idea of Thompson's work. The making of the English working class, is not a conscious activity by any one group, least of all the working classes themselves. Rather Thompson describes a world changing as new interests and forces come to the fore - in this case the growth and expansion of industrial capitalism. This changing circumstances changed the interests of the ruling class (indeed, to a great extent it changed the very personnel of the ruling classes as aristocrat was replaced by industrialist) as they needed to increasingly exploit workers to extract profits.

But this process didn't automatically create a working class, other than in the simplest of senses that it produced workers in factories, workplaces and elsewhere. What Thompson is trying to understand is the growth of workers and their self-conscious identity as such, compared to the other classes and interests in society. To do this Thompson documents the struggles of people to resist changes to their lives. To pick a random example, Thompson looks extensively at the Luddite movement.

The Luddites are often picked as representing some group of anti-technological, backward looking rebels. They'd rather wreck-machines than be part of a forward moving society. Yet the Luddities held the sympathies of the majority of people in the villages and towns that they came from - the organisation, Thompson tells us, was in "Nottingham and Yorkshire... so opaque that it resisted all penetration". The Luddities, rather than looking backward were resisting the imposition of machinery that would  destroy their lives. In many cases they were happy to accept new technology, so long as those who lost out were compensated and looked after, rather than being left to starve.

Thompson says "Luddism must be seen as arising at the crisis-point in the abrogation of paternalist legislation, and in the imposition of the political economy of laissez faire upon, and against the will and conscience of, the working people."

It is this sense of the imposition of new forms of capitalist organisation upon a people that dominates the book. What also repeatadly comes through is the resistance. In particular the methods of organisation used over decades by those at the bottom of society to try and fight for their own interests, or retain existing rights. Thompson shows how the ruling class was in fear of insurrection and terrified of working class organisation. Whether its the Corresponding societies or debating clubs, or nascent trade unions, the establishment tried to penetrate, destroy, murder and lock-up those who organised. Some of the most interesting parts of the book are those were Thompson describes the extent to which the government introduced spies to seek out insurrection and how those spies helped create an atmosphere of imminent revolution in order to justify their own existence.

The brutality of repression is here too. The massacre at Peterloo, the hanging of those who organised, the transportation of those who dared to speak out, or sell radical literature, or called for the vote. But a system that uses violence in this way cannot continue forever and reform did come eventually, but in a way that helped inspire further revolt.

Thompson finishes the book on the eve of great industrial revolts. By the 1830s the working class had, through the struggles, defeats, betrayals and victories become a class "for itself", increasingly understanding it's position in society and that of its rulers and beginning to grasp towards an alternative way of organising. This is the time of the Utopian socialists, men like Robert Owen  who had not yet come to a full understanding of the need to replace capitalism, but who had created the basis for a set of ideas that could do so.

The Making of the English Working Class will continue to be debated by historians. Even for those who disagree, it's scholarship and clarity should be a marker for other history writing. But with this work, perhaps more than any other in British social-history, Thompson laid the basis for an understanding of were those who struggle for freedom and justice today come from.

The men and women in these pages, from Colonel Despard and Tom Paine, to the unnamed pamphleteers and bill-posters, to those who drilled with pretend pikes high on the moors, believing that their day was coming, should never be forgotten. Their dream of a better world, is also ours.

Related Reviews

Thompson - Customs in Common

Richard Overy - 1939 Countdown to War

The processes that led to the start of the Second World War are ones that have been examined and debated enormously. The battle lines in this debate were set out even before the war ended - Richard Overy points out that the historian Sir Llewellyn Woodward was asked to write an "official survey of British foreign policy before the outbreak of war" later on in the conflict. Woodward seems to have been keen that the British version of events won through.

But what exactly was the British version of events was has been open to question. The Prime Minister of the time, Neville Chamberlain has gone down in recent interpretation as a weak willed politician. Desperate to avoid peace and unwilling to confront Hitler.

In this short, accessible work, Richard Overy argues that Chamberlain and a wider layer of people around him had a much clearer and more subtle analysis of the situation. Chamberlain he argues may have wanted to avoid war, but was in the end committed to a position that meant that Germany's attack on Poland would inevitably trigger war. Chamberlain didn't enter this situation blindfold, but he and those around him clearly thought Hitler would avoid conflict in the face of Britain and France's determined support for Poland.

In turn, Hitler clearly did not believe that Britain and France would honour their commitment. Overy quotes Hitler's chief press officer noting that it was "plain to see how stunned he [Hitler] was". He supports the view that Hitler really had no idea of the scale of what was being unleashed. Certainly elements of the German high-command were surprised by the declaration of war. But they also clearly thought that it meant practically nothing, and that full scale war would be avoided after a short period.

So what was the motivating force for Hitler's decision to attack Poland. This was no whim. Plans were laid in detail and a strategy involving the destruction of the Polish leadership, it's Jewish population and those forces opposed to Fascism were organised well in advance. The basis for the Race War in Eastern Europe was begun with the first shots. Overy argues that Hitler wanted a short "local" war, that would cement his position as a military leader, and "open the way for the eventual confrontation with Stalin's Soviet Union".

Overy argues against those who portray Hitler as always having a desire for world domination. His position is more plausible. It stems from some of the central ideological tenets of Nazism - the need to eradicate the "sub-human" peoples of the East, to challenge "Bolshevism" and to create "living-space" for the German people. War with the western countries would not have been on Hitler's mind. His surprise is understandable.

But this book lacks some of this analysis. In fact Overy almost has a mechanical explanation of events. So in the opening chapter he writes;

"Above all it was Poland's intransigent refusal to make any concessions to its powerful German neighbour that made war almost certain".

What concessions could Poland have realistically made that would have contained or prevented the basis for Hitler's rise to power? Events in Czechoslovakia had already shown that giving into small demands from the Nazis had only resulted in greater ones. And would it be right for Poland to given into the Imperialistic ambitions of their more "powerful German neighbour", couched in the language of racism as they were?

The author himself argues this later when he explains that Hitler's planned war "would destroy the Polish state" and had "an agenda drawn not from diplomacy or military strategy, but from the racial priorities of the regime". Giving into this sort of bully would hardly lead to peace.

Despite the major irritation I feel at the blame being laid for war and the feet of Poland, this is a useful and interesting book that clarifies a fast moving and complicated moment of history. Neville Chamberlain comes across as having a more rounded and complex analysis of events than he is usually portrayed with, and this in itself is more useful to understanding the beginnings of the war.

Related Reviews

Overy - Russia's War

Iain M. Banks - Surface Detail

Iain M Banks' latest culture novels is somewhat of a return to form, though it still suffers somewhat from the bloated feel of his more recent SF novels.

At the heart of this novel is the concept of virtual hells. Sufficiently advanced civilisations, Banks postulates, could create virtual environments for minds to be introduced to. If you wanted to, you could introduce them to a horrific environment, that would, for the person subjected to the horrors of hell, be indistinguishable from reality. Whether or not this is an acceptable activity for civilisations to do is something that divides the galaxy. The Culture, Banks' is enormous, anarcho-communist civilisation is opposed to such hells, and is fighting a simulated war. The outcome of this war will determine whether or not virtual hells can continue.

Now Banks adds into this mix his usual complitcated (and slightly bloated) list of characters. Some of them are inside hell. Some of them are fighting wars to stop or keep hells. Some of them are bloated industrialists living from the fat of their exploitation of people, and the existing system.

There is much here for Banks to play with, and he does so well. One character escapes from a virtual hell and then uses his knowledge to identify and expose what is going on, quite literarily under the surface of society. He is hailed a hero by some but encounters bribery (and worse) from those politicians who owe a certain amount of their political and financial security to the existence of torture and suffering.

The virtual battle against Hell threatens to break out into reality and this combines with powerful interests amongst some of those civilisations who have not yet become part of the Culture, but want a piece of the economic action.

This is not the easiest book to start the culture series from - it has many references and potential links to earlier novels. While it is also long and complicated, it is much slicker than some of Banks' more recent Science Fiction. If you have enjoyed all or part of the earlier Culture novels, than this is worth reading, particularly if you like the spaceship Minds.

Donny Gluckstein - The Tragedy of Bukharin

I first developed an interest in the Russian revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin after I read an account of his show trial by Fitzroy Maclean in his autobiography Eastern Approaches. There, Maclean describes how Bukharin runs rings around his prosecutors, who have tried to portray him as an enemy of the revolution, who plotted to assassinate Lenin and Stalin.

These accusations were based on nothing. Bukharin was a loyal revolutionary. Someone who had spent time in the prisons of Europe as he attempted to build the organisations that could overthrow capitalism. Lenin thought Bukharin "Bolshevism's biggest theoretician". He was a leading figure, popular for his speeches and ideas. Some of Bukharin's early writings were particularly important. His work on Imperialism for instance, is still of great use today, and was recently republished.

But following the isolation and defeat of the revolution, the growth of the internal bureaucracy meant that the Soviet Union travelled increasingly further from the workers state that Lenin, Bukharin and the other Bolshevik's fought for.

Donny Gluckstein's political biography then looks at Bukharin's life in the context of this changing role. In particular he examines key debates in the years following 1917, and how Bukharin's ideas and arguments shaped those debates. Bukharin comes across very much as someone who is constantly fighting for the revolution and for a socialist society. However he often seems to lack the ability to know when to retreat or step back, or to put it more crudely, he sometimes "can't see the wood for the trees".

For example the disappearance of money is something that would happen, it was argued, as socialism developed. But that doesn't mean that when money goes, socialism has been created. Economic collapse, the hoarding of wealth, the lack of availability of things to buy can also cause this. Bukharin was too busy arguing that this was a good thing, to be able to provide a coherent way out of the mess.

The problem was, that the isolation of the revolution had created an almost impossible situation. At best, what could be hoped for was survival for a time when revolutions elsewhere would rescue Russia. This had been a real hope in the years immediately after World War One, when revolutions swept Europe. By the mid-1920s this was no longer on the cards. With the death of Lenin and the degeneration of the revolution, Bukharin lost the best influences upon him. All revolutionaries make mistakes, but their collective organisation helps correct and challenge this. Left to his own devices, Bukharin increasingly comes to represent the growing influence of other forces in society - in particular the rising bureaucracy and the richer peasants.

In the great battle between Trotsky and Stalin, Bukharin becomes the best weapon Stalin has. His ability to articulate an argument, and his position as an old-bureaucracy, makes him a formidable weapon. Gluckstein traces the contradictions of Bukharin's position and shows how, as his use as the "hammer of Trotskyism" disappears, then he is next in the firing line.

This is not an easy book. It assumes a good deal of knowledge of the inner dynamics of the Russian Revolution as well as the debates and discussions. Some sections of it are very dated. Bukharin is no longer lauded by many as the "third way" between Stalin and Trotsky, because of his perceived pro-market ideas. This was, it seems the case as an aging Soviet Union's internal contradictions started to come out.

But Gluckstein does argue that Bukharin wasn't the enemy of the revolution that Stalin was. Bukharin's lack of theoretical clarity and, as Lenin argued, his lack of dialectical thinking meant that his mistakes could appear accurate but did not stand up to the test of events. But for all this, Gluckstein rescues Bukharin the revolutionary - a flawed revolutionary, but a man committed to fighting for a better world.

Marcel Mazoyer & Laurence Roudart - A History of World Agriculture from the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis

Depsite how we in the modern world might view agriculture, it is

more than simply another branch of industry. For those of us living in the developed world, the vast majority of us have little or nothing to do with the production of food, or indeed other crops. Today, those doing the farming work that feeds us all, comprise, in the developed world at least, somewhere around 5% of the populations.

However, for the vast majority of human history and indeed for most of the undeveloped world, this is not the case. Most people were involved in the production of food, and in most historical societies, almost all of the work that took place within a community was related to food production.

Mazoyer and Roudart's work is an examination of the history of agriculture - from the earliest hunter-gatherers who would have nurtured and protected plants, to the slash and burn cultivation that replaced them, through the various permanent "post-forest agrarian" cultures that saw the growth and strengthen of class society, to feudal and eventually capitalist agriculture. It is a monumental book, both readable and interesting as well as in depth and well researched.

There is a temptation to see agricultural history as a linear path. Indeed my summary of the book in the previous paragraph makes that very mistake. But development of agriculture wasn't linear, though it did develop along definite paths and through particular stages. The reasons for moving from one form to a more developed form are complex and varied. Sometimes people didn't move on - which is why today there are still hunter-gatherer communities or people practising slash and burn cultivation. More developed agriculture is not necessarily easier work - though it will invariably provide a greater surplus. Nor is there necessarily a straight dividing line. Hunter-gatherers will have planted and harvested grains. Slash and Burn cultivators would have gathered nuts and hunted game.

Often though, population pressures and growth were a key factor - in particular with the switch from slash and burn to more permanent agriculture. The authors document these processes, along with all the other factors to show just why the world of farming changed when it did. There is a wealth of technical detail - some of it obscure to those of us who've never seen a field of corn harvested. But what is fascinating is the way there is often repetition of tools and practises across many different continents. What is also amazing is the way some primitive methods still dominate - the simple scratch plough (the ard) still being used by hundreds of thousands today, even though it was replaced hundreds of years ago elsewhere.

But this book is also part polemic. The authors are trying to explain why it is, despite technical innovation and cheaper materials, the "difference in productivity between the least efficient agriculture in the world, practiced exclusively with manual implements ... and the best-equipped and most efficient agriculture has increased dramatically. The gap has widened from 1 to 10 in the interwar period to 1 to 2000 at the end of the twentieth century".

They continue by pointing out that "One third of the world's peasants, or more than 400 million of the working population, work not only with strictly manual tools but without fertilizer, feed for livestock, pesticides, and specially selected varieties of plants and breeds of animals". One billion people get their food from peasants farming like this.

The root of this is of course wealth. The poorest farmers simply cannot afford to lift themselves out of the situation they are in, to obtain the most advanced equipment, fertilizers and seeds. They cannot compete against the cheaper priced crops from the developed world, and face sinking back into poverty and starvation.

So the last chapters of the book look at alternate economic strategies to solve this problem. This is, I would argue the weakest section. The authors aren't naive enough to believe that simple controls on the import of cheap foodstuffs are enough to raise prices in the home market. But they have no other option. The problem is, that they aren't discussing agriculture in the context of capitalism - and the inherent power that the richest nations have over the poorest. Whatever rules may be created by a United Nations body, the rules of colonialism and imperialism will make the poorest pay.

But these are minor criticisms of a tremendously important book. This solid investigation into the basis for human societies throughout the last 20,000 years is ammunition for those of us who believe a genuine materialist history of humans is possible. By examining in such detail different cultures and societies, we can put together an understanding of human development, and failure which will help us understand the enormous challenges for the future.

Siegfried Sassoon - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Part two of Sassoon's fictionalised autobiographical account of his early life reads much more lifelike than his earlier account of hunting and riding in the English countryside. At the end of his fox hunting memoirs, we left him in the early years of trench warfare on the Western Front. Several of his friends and acquaintances had already died.

Volume two begins slightly after the end of the first book. We find the author in the Army School, learning or relearning the art of open warfare that the military top brass keep expecting will appear soon, after the infantry in the trenches have broken through the German lines and more conventional war returns. Time and again we find this theme returns, as the soldiers prepare for a "big push" we learn how the cavalry is in reserve, ready to exploit the gaps that never open up.

Most of the book though, is the tale of Sassoon's gradual awakening to the "wrongness" of the war and his growing desire to "do something about it". Sassoon is an officer, from a relatively privileged background. He believes, perhaps rightly, that if he speaks out, it'll count for more than the complaints of the ordinary infantry. What's fascinating though, is the way Sassoon is motivated by the apparent lack of understanding from ordinary citizens back home. Like many accounts of soldiers returning from home on leave, he finds himself unable to describe his experiences, or find comprehension amongst even military veterans.

On the other hand, he cannot bring himself to talk about the reality of war. Even amongst other veterans or wounded in the hospital, there seems to be little discussion about the grim realities of the conflict, just long lists of the dead and wounded.

Sassoon describes how he gradually decides to speak out. In part he can do this because, as an officer, when wounded his convalescence is far superior to that of ordinary soldiers. Staying in good hospitals and then country houses, he has time to read an think. He certainly feels little pressure to return, and when he overstays his sick-leave he is simply asked by telegram where he is.

His eventual letter, speaking out against the war, is written by someone convinced he is speaking on "behalf of soldiers" everywhere. If this had been from an ordinary infantryman, I suspect that court martial would rapidly follow. Instead, with his rank and class background, Sassoon is argued with by friendly senior officers to withdraw, then he is offered a trip to a medical enquiry to check he is of sound mind. Eventually he agrees to this, as he finds that no one really wants to risk the embarrassment of a court martial.

Sassoon's rebellion is influenced in a minor way by some anti-war activists and thinkers. But what really convinces him is the reality of conflict and the tremendous waste of the pointless conflict. It is clear that he is the tip of a much larger iceberg - around him it is common to complain about those sitting out the war, or profiteering from it, or enjoying it from afar.

In other countries, notably Russia and Germany, these sentiments combined with growing lack of food and supplies to create a situation of mass rebellion and revolution. This didn't happen in Britain, though there were some major struggles. But its clear from Sassoon's account that the feelings of those at the bottom of the army were not differing greatly from those of the troops in the trenches a few yeards away.

Related Reviews

Sassoon - Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man

Greg Bear - Eon

Eon - Classic SF "Big Dumb Object"

Greg Bear's classic science fiction novel Eon, is seen as one of the all time great novels of that genre. Part of its reputation must rest on the imaginative idea at the heart of the story. Just before the book begins, a large asteroid (which turns out to be an exact copy of Juno which is still orbiting around the sun) appears and enters orbit around Earth. Travels to the planet discover it has been artificially hollowed out and inside there are various enormous chambers, filled with relics of a civilisation. The beings who inhabited this civilisation turn out to be human and one of the chambers turns out to be infinite in size.

So we have the setting for science fiction of the grandest order. Perhaps what also helped turn Eon into one of the great novels was the political backdrop to the tale. Written in the mid 1980s, Earth is still very much separated into two camps - East and West. The US dominated side gets to the asteroid first and gives the Warsaw Pact limited access. As time progresses, we learn that the planetoid comes from an alternate universe, or rather an alternate future, and it is in part the coming war between East and West that has led to its arrival in our own universe.

This allows Greg Bear to play around with some interesting concepts - for instance how does knowing what you might do in the future impact upon what you actually do. Forearmed with this knowledge, can you change the timeline you are in.

Its these sort of ideas that make the novel very readable. Sadly the characterisations of the people within the novel let it down - particular as Bear has some quite clunky dialogue between humans in places. As with so many of his fellow science fiction authors, Bear seems better at describing spaceships docking with each other than two humans making love.

Eon is also limited by the time it is set. The Warsaw Pact countries didn't last much beyond a few years after the book was first published and this makes some of his future history particularly unbelievable. Sadly, once again, being a scientific visionary doesn't necessarily mean you can see even a few years into the real future. Oddly enough some science fiction written many years ago, dates less than some novels set during specific periods of human history. The cold war seems to date novels (and not just SF) far more than other events.

But Eon is an interesting book. I particularly liked that Bear didn't simply go for a happy ending. It would be too tempting, when your key characters know the future, to allow humanity to escape their fate. I did notice, what I thought was one large plot hole, but that's probably because I spend too much time worrying about alternate universes. Having said that, a look at the plot descriptions for the various sequels doesn't inspire me. Perhaps some of my readers might want to suggest whether the follow-up novels are worth the effort.

Siegfried Sassoon - Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man

This is a book that really shouldn't work for me. My only experience of horse-riding was one of abject terror followed by a vow to never to get in close proximity to a mule again. I despise the very notion of fox-hunting, mostly because it is a classic case of the ruling class in society thinking they should be allowed to ride rough-shod (literarily in the case) over everyone else and kill out of pleasure.

So Siegfried Sassoon's fictionalised biography of his early life in the countryside should not really have much in it for me. Its a detailed account of his time learning to ride, to enjoy the company of other riders and ultimately to take part in long fox hunts and country races. But I found myself enjoying every page, even the ones with the complex discussions about horses.
Sassoon's brilliant writing is the first pleasure. He's not above the odd joke at his own expense, but his descriptions and his passion shine through. He manages to capture a society on the wane - rural communities that were remote enough to be effectively independent from the rest of the world. The rich of course make the occasional trips to the capital or other places (mostly to take part in hunts) but most people never leave their place of birth. You get a sense of this when Sassoon talks about the distances travelled during some hunts - 15 miles was considered a long long way.

But of course the reader in one sense, knows what happens. For Sassoon the coming war is barely noticeable. He lives a life of leisure - his income of £600 a year is enough for a gentleman's life, though he needs more to full enjoy his hobbies. Few of his friends seem to work. Certainly there doesn't seem to be much debate and discussion about the war clouds that gather. Then Sassoon simply joins up, apparently on a whim, but you get a sense of his boredom and desire for excitement. Eventually he's at the Western Front, though his fox-hunting career and his prowess with a horse ensure that he's welcomed by the right people all along the way.

You start to get a sense at the end of this volume of the coming horror. He loses friends early in the war and the growing clash of the classes behind the lines is very apparent. Sassoon is on the wrong side of this (who on earth brings smoked salmon back from home leave), though to his credit, he seems to know it. Volume two of this book deals with later stages of the war, but the scene is set for a major crisis in Sassoon's thoughts. In a very real way, he reflects the major shocks that the entire political and social system would start to feel as the war went on.

Related Reviews

Sassoon - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Rabab El-Mahdi & Philip Marfleet - Egypt: The Moment of Change

Revolutions these days seem two a penny. Mass strikes and protests did for Tunisia's dictator Ben Ali in what seemed like a few days. Egypt's Mubarak held on for longer, but as the mass of people in Cairo's Tahrir Square refused to give up in the face of the state's repressive force and strikes broke out across the country, even he couldn't remain in power. As I write this, Libya's Colonel Gadaffi appears to only have the most brutal of methods left to secure his position.

The authors of this collection of essay's published in 2009 are all political activists, if not revolutionary socialists. But they cannot have foreseen the events that have shaken the Middle East. The book though, is not dated by recent events. If anything it is even more relevant and I would argue, it is a crucial read for all those trying to understand the Egypt Revolution. Revolution is a process - and what happens is dependent on what has gone before. Egypt: the Moment of Change is about what has gone before.

Each chapter of the book looks at a particular aspect of Egypt's history and political/economic situation. All of them come together to give a unique picture of why the revolution broke out and who the major forces are. Egypt as a society is dominated by one key economic factor - the continued attempts to open up the economy to the free market. Pushed, over the past two decades by a variety of "economic advisers", who mostly hailed from Washington, the Egyptian state has been quick to sell off assets - state companies, land and so on, to outside investors. Such profiteers have helped drive up the cost of living for ordinary people, making the very richer even richer, and the majority of the people poorer.

Here is the contradiction that is so visible to the visitor - high security compounds and shopping malls - which allow in the rich, but deny access to the poor. It's why Egypt has experienced a variety of strikes and protests over the years. The corruption, the rising price of food, lack of access to jobs and drinking water combine to create a society bubbling over with indignation.

Various forces have sought to push this process forward and hold it back. The Trade Union movement up until 2011 was very much one of state unions. These existed to close down workers action, prevent strikes and form deals with the bosses. Union officials were little more than hired functionaries of the state, and many did very well out of this relationship. Various democracy organisations have exploded onto the streets over the years. The  Kifaya movement (meaning Enough) in 2004 did a lot to prove the state was not all powerful. Many brave men and women suffered indignation, brutality, torture and sexual assault because they dared to call for change. The chapter on these movements by Rabab El-Mahdi is particularly interesting because it shows how much the global movement against the Iraq War and in support of the Palestinian people helped to encourage things.

But economic factors aren't the only reason for this uprising. This repressive state, with its allegiance to the US and it's failure to stand up against oppression in the wider Middle East, in particular the question of the Palestinians and the US War on Terror, has been part of generating wider discontent and radical ideas.

The repression that Mubarak's state forces imposed on those prepared to stand up for something different is horrific. But it certainly wasn't the result of a few rotten apples. Aida Seif El-Dawla's chapter on state repression puts torture as an endemic and central part of the repressive process - on that exists and is supported at every level. Combined with the huge amounts of corruption amongst state functionaries and this leads to enormous brutality, often with little or no evidence.

But this state force effectively melted away in Tahrir Square. The police proved ineffectual at stopping a real mass movement. The army, itself a bloated and influential body, swollen on US "aid" dollars, were also unable to make a difference. But this must in part be due to the close links between a mass conscript army and the ordinary people of Egypt.

The struggles for land, against repressive taxation and corrupt landlords, the mass strikes that have shaken Egypt over the last five years have a common root. Those who argue today that Mubarak's fall was simply to do with the use of twitter or facebook, misunderstand the social processes that developed over years, involving many different actors, which culminated in the overthrow of the dictator. Mubarak's downfall is not the end of the story. The Egyptian Revolution has a longer road to travel. The struggle for justice and democracy, or access to water and decent food, for proper wages and the right to organise at work, will not be won by dispensation from a benevolent army council - it will have to be fought for. The Egyptian people have shown over the years that they are up to this task. We can wish them well and be inspired for our own struggles for justice.

This short book is an invaluable resource for all those wanting to get to the bottom of the process. It comes highly recommended and should be required reading. I hope they write a follow-up which details the revolutionary year of 2011.

Further Reading

A more detailed review from Socialist Review is here.

Socialist Worker (UK) continues to have unrivalled coverage and analysis from Egypt and the wider Middle Eastern struggles. Editor Judith Orr's eyewitness accounts were inspirational. Further analysis pieces will no doubt follow, though this article by Alex Callinicos on whether the revolution was a coup or not, is particularly useful.

For more on the mass strike movement prior to 2011 this article from the IS Journal by one of the contributors to Egypt: The Moment of Change, is very useful. An interview with an Egyptian socialist one the strike movement from 2007 is also interesting, in particular because it looks briefly at the relationship between socialists and the Muslim Brotherhood in various struggles.

Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals

Capitalism is very adept at taking old traditions, remoulding and repackaging (and occasionally reinventing) them in its own interests. These interests are usual those of short term profit, but they can also be in the interest of propaganda, or the creation of ideas of nation or racial superiority. One of the things that has been adapted and distorted by modern society are the games that communities have played. From traditional games played in working class communities or on village greens, multi-billion pound international sports have been created.

This is perhaps most obvious with football and in his latest Discworld novel, Terry Pratchett satirises the process extremely well, adding in his usual comic mix of magic and chaos. Pratchett has the eye for a good opportunity for satire. In my opinion football is worthy of this, not least because of the way that it is already fairly funny. It's million pound players, who seem to have little of worth to say, the entourage of glamorous wives who follow these players around and gather such bizarre press attention. The strange customs of the fans and the odd little traditions. All of these are stretched and distorted by Pratchett.

In the novel, football is a mass participatory sport, enjoyed mostly for the opportunities for fighting between the groups of fans. Huge crowds swell the streets, there are limited rules to the actual game and the state (via the medium of Ankh-Morpork's Watchmen) have little or no control on match-days. Games are the occasion for much anarchy and revelry. Much like the original football "matches" here in Britain.

Such anarchy needs to be brought under control and the city's leader Lord Vetinari does what rulers have done through the ages. He brings the game under his wing, offers it reward and respectability and fashions order from chaos. No matter that the games has lost its real roots, it is now a method of control and profit.

Pratchett does all this well. By setting up the comic figures of the city's Wizards as a new football team the story has some roots. This unlikely idea is designed to attract those readers who already have pictured the new players as over-weight, lazy academics. But this need to be in the know may well confuse newer readers.

Here again is a criticism I've previously made of Pratchett's more recent novels - because they come across as formulaic, they aren't as amusing as they used to be. There are fewer laugh out loud moments in Unseen Academicals. The characters all have their predetermined parts to play, and us regular readers will come to expect them to have their walk on parts sooner or later. There are a host of new individuals, but they seem to flit onto the stage and leave without leaving us with much.

Pratchett is a brilliant writer. We'll all continue to read his books even though they are now weaker than they were, not simply out of loyalty but also out of genuine love. But there does seem to be something increasingly missing from them.

Related Reviews

Pratchett - Wintersmith
Pratchett - Thud
Pratchett - Going Postal
Pratchett - Colour Of Magic

Antony Beevor - D-Day; The Battle For Normandy

Antony Beevor's latest book is an excellent addition to his earlier works, particular those on the battles for Stalingrad and Berlin. In some ways for this reader, coming from Britain, it's a book that is closer to home. After all this was a battle fought by Allied soldiers who were either British or invading the continent from Britain.

The battles themselves are described in gruesome detail, as is the nature with Beevor's writing. He doesn't shirk from the horrors of battle, nor does he fall into the trap of describing a generic "bad" enemy and "good" allies. So we hear about the killing of POWs by the Germans and by the British, Canadian, American and other allied forces. Of course, Beevor is quick to point out that there was a particular brutal response from some of the German forces - the massacres of entire villages in response to resistance fighters for instance - by the SS in particular.

At the top of the story is the relationships between the various allied leaders. Here the differing styles and emphasises has the most impact. It's clear that there were real personal clashes between say the Americans and British had a lasting impact. The British General Montgomery comes across as a real barrier to the further development of the front in the crucial weeks after the invasion. Beevor does point out that Montgomery took on the hardest and most entrenched enemy forces, and the contribution of the British certainly helped the Americans elsewhere. But there is no doubt that there is a lasting anti-Montgomery prejudice from the official American military histories.

The liberation of Paris and the particular role of the insurrectionary resistance fighters in the capital forms the end of the chapter. The story of the particular factions involved in this is fascinating, as is the clear fear from the allied leaders of a Communist inspired revolutionary take over. Here Beevor is astute enough to also argue that this was a fear for Stalin, who had now moved so far from the politics of international revolution that he had no interest in such an outcome on the Western Front.

Beevor's conclusion is the invasion of Normandy was a crucial point in World War Two. Not particularly because it changed the outcome of the conflict - that had already been decided outside Stalingrad, but because it allowed the United States in particular, and to a much lesser extent Britain and France a voice in the post-war carve up of Europe. This is an important argument, challenging the more common idea that it was the West that won the war. It is because he makes such realistic appraisals, despite their likely unpopularity amongst sections of his readership, which makes Antony Beevor such an excellent military historian.