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Showing posts with the label "Independent Labour Party"

George Orwell

Then as now I align myself with Orwell's pessimism. "To the British working class, Orwell argued, the massacre of their comrades in Vienna, Berlin, or Madrid had seemed less worthy of their consideration than 'yesterday’s football match.' Even more disappointing to him was the total lack of solidarity that the English working class had shown for “colored” workers in the colonies." Today, despite a tremendous global flow of information of what is happening elsewhere, Orwell's pessimism has an echo when one looks at the extent of the working classes passivity in the "West" before the plunder, inequality, exploitation and ‘Islamophobia’ at home and people's struggle during the Arab uprisings or barbarism in Syrian and Myanmar. " Orwell’s late collaboration with the propaganda apparatus of Western imperialism is a sad, regrettable, and inexcusable fact." I think the following is a good assessment of Orwell. Geroge Orwell and the ...
Educating Britain Suffragettes on the BBC:  Omission/filtering/sanitisation: It is scary to know that prominent Suffragettes were socialists. The BBC is celebrating 100 years since women over 30 and "who met minimum property qualifications" won the right to vote in Britain. I have gone through these three pieces and I have noticed deliberate ommision of what is an integral part of some prominent Suffragettes and the Suffragettes movement: socialism, communism, the Independent Labour Party.   Sylvia Pankhurst  is described as "a  vocal pacifist, anti-fascist and anti-colonialist activist."   In   this introduction (click "more"), and  this one ( recommended to teachers!) claims to be tracing "the history of women's movement in Britain" and "how women won the right to vote. Now, compare the above with Emily Davison   "was a  staunch feminist and passionate Christian , and considered that  socialism  was a moral an...