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English radicalism has been a deep-rooted but minority tradition in the political culture since at least the seventeenth century. The central aim of this book is to examine, in historical and political context, a range of key events and individuals that exemplify English radicalism in the twentieth century. This analysis is preceded by defining precisely what has constituted this tradition; and by the main outline of the development of the tradition from the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. Three of the main currents of English radicalism in the twentieth century have been the labour movement, the women’s movement and the peace movement. These are discussed in some detail, as a framework for the detailed consideration of ten key representative figures of the tradition in the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell, Sylvia Pankhurst, Ellen Wilkinson, George Orwell, E.P. Thompson, Michael Foot, Joan Maynard, Stuart Hall, Tony Benn and Nicolas Walter. The question of ‘agency’ – of how to bring about radical change in a predominantly conservative society and culture – has been a fundamental issue for English radicals. It is argued that, in the twentieth century, many of the important achievements in progressive politics have taken place in and through extra-parliamentary movements, as well as through formal political parties and organisations – the Labour Party and other socialist organisations – and on occasion, through libertarian and anarchist politics. The final chapter considers the continuing relevance of this political tradition in the early twenty-first century, and reviews its challenges and prospects.
cultural and religious differences with larger India. Still, this is not about facts, culture, or religion. It is politics. According to Savarkar: Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism. By any ‘ism’ it is generally meant a theory or a code more or less based on spiritual or religious dogma or system. But when we attempt to investigate the essential significance of Hindutva we do not primarily – and certainly not mainly – concern ourselves with any particular
whom we thought to keep calling what they called themselves: “Islamists.” Whether these were moderate or radical—and whether they rose through elections or as armed guerrilla groups. Roy, meanwhile, unshakably repeated his thesis that they belonged to the past—terminologically at least. To Roy, the rising battalions of “beardies” were an avatar of the latest in the crowded field of “post-” concepts: “post-Islamism.” They had, he felt, abandoned the hope of applying a literalist reading of their religious dogma in the political field. I in
existential unhappiness. ‘Fear’, Russell wrote in What I Believe, ‘is the basis of religious dogma, as of so much else in human life’.37 Russell’s opposition to religion thus connects to his insistence upon individual freedom and the enlightened pursuit of happiness, and knowledge, as being the fundamentals of the good life. However, it is important to recognise that Russell had in many ways a religious – and often puritanical – approach to morality. Despite his protestations to the contrary, he was tormented by the vast pointlessness of the universe. He had the ‘preacher
8 The Nordic welfare model In Sweden, social security remains an issue constantly praised and held up for public worship…. It is celebrated without end in the mass media as if it were some hallowed religious dogma that it was vital to assimilate for peace of mind. It is taught at school like a religion. Above all, it is presented as a vital possession that, ever threatened, must constantly be defended, for its loss is the worst of all possible dangers. (Huntford 1975: 190) Where there is a reputation, there are invariably detractors and, as the opening
and covertly worded declarations of revolution’. He translated ‘king’ as ‘any one of the western-appointed rulers in the Middle-East’, ‘boogie men’ as ‘oil barons’ and ‘raga’ as ‘religious dogma’. 7 Interview, Chateau Marmont, Hollywood, mid-2001. 8 See
one the Egyptian Brothers promote. In a study of transnational religious activity with specific references to Islam, Haynes (2001: 157) argues that ‘global networks of religious activists exist who communicate with each other, feed off each other’s ideas, collectively develop religious ideologies with political significance, perhaps aid each other with funds and, in effect, form trans-national groups whose main intellectual referent derives from religious dogma’. On another level, the promotion of political Islam does not seem to be an entirely autonomous phenomenon
of Muslims in this latter context tends to posit the ‘good’ Muslim as one who does question religious teaching, whilst the ‘bad’ or dangerous Muslim is the one who is seen to be too accepting of religious dogma and reluctant to embrace the critical autonomy in relation to religion required of the ‘good’ French citizen (Laborde 2012). For Chebel, the fact that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed in Arabic has a particular significance, since the fact that the message of Islam was spread through the ancient language of the Bedouins and city dwellers of the
essay on the ‘new sex morality’ pursued by anarchism. 234 At times, his pieces exuded a rather normative tone, as in his discussions of homosexuality, a desire that would be eliminated not through repression but by the bright curative lights of science, the destruction of religious dogma and the steadfast labours of those people of ‘sexualidad normal’. It was these members of a ‘phalanx’ of tenacious fighters who were ‘obligadas a aliviar la cruz de las [personas] que sustentan una sexualidad desviada’ (obliged to alleviate the cross borne by those that display