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This book reassesses a defining historical, political and ideological moment in contemporary history: the 1989 revolutions in central and eastern Europe. It considers the origins, processes and outcomes of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. The book argues that communism was not simply an 'unnatural Yoke' around the necks of East Europeans, but was a powerful, and not entirely negative, historical force capable of modernizing societies, cultures and economies. It focuses on the interplay between internal and external developments as opposed to an emphasis on Cold War geopolitical power struggles and the triumphalist rhetoric of how the 'freedom-loving' USA 'defeated' the 'totalitarian' Soviet Union. The book also approaches the East European revolutions from a variety of angles, emphasizing generational conflicts, socio-economic and domestic aspects, international features, the 'Gorbachev factor', and the role of peace movements or discourses on revolution. It analyses the peace movements in both parts of Germany during the 1980s from a perspective that transcends the ideological and geopolitical divides of the Cold War. The history of the East German peace movement has mostly been written from the perspective of German unification in 1989-1990. Many historians have read the history of the civil rights movement of 1989-1990 backwards in order to show its importance, or ignored it altogether to highlight the totalitarian character of the German Democratic Republic.
7 Creating security from below: peace movements in East and West Germany in the 1980s Holger Nehring The East European revolutions Peace movements in East and West Germany This chapter analyses the peace movements in both parts of Germany during the 1980s from a perspective that transcends the ideological and geopolitical divides of the Cold War. In particular, it seeks to explore what the debates on the peace movements might tell us about the security relationships within NATO and the Warsaw Pact. In so doing I want to get us to think about the ways in which
Cremer, and was a member of the Women’s Liberal Federation.6 During the 1890s she was a key figure in encouraging the passing of pacifist resolutions by WLA branches.7 She also strengthened the peace movement’s connections with the British Women’s Temperance Association and the Labour Church. After a heart attack in 1907, Robinson found it necessary to restrict her work and turned for the remainder of her life to local politics, standing unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for Liverpool City Council in 1907 and being elected in 1908 onto the West Derby, Liverpool
-globalisation movements. Look at the peace movements. They recruit tens and hundreds of thousands of participants, all over the world. Just think of the worldwide protest in the spring of 2003, just before the United States, Britain and other states illegally – that is, without a UN sanction – invaded Iraq. And that is only one example. There is potential, there is hope, argues Vinthagen. 9780719079740_C05.qxd 104 22/2/10 15:10 Page 104 Beyond the prison I think he is right. To be sure, the repressive forces are formidable. The forces – the calls for more police, more prisons
liberalism, socialism, Evangelicalism, feminism and internationalism, a blend that made it central to both the British and European peace movements. The IAPA acknowledged European definitions of ‘just wars’ and refused to be swept along in the tide of jingoistic imperialism that gripped Britain at the turn of the century. Although it was officially secular in its arguments for peace, it had many members who upheld religious and Evangelical ideas. The IAPA’s arguments for equality drew in women from various strands of the feminist movement, giving rise to a range of ways of
The book analyzes capitalism’s growing destructiveness and the cost–benefit contradiction it generates. Its new conception of the surplus, which recognizes not just capitalist businesses but also households and the public sector as sites of surplus production, links capitalism’s destructiveness to that system’s use of the surplus. Capital’s use of the surplus turns scientific knowledge and technique into forces of destruction, and the book illustrates this dynamic by making reference to the growth of a consumerist culture, to massive military spending, and to other technologies that fuel a deepening ecological crisis. This crisis, along with economic and public health crises as well as a crisis of political democracy, are also analyzed as being intimately linked to capitalism’s use of the surplus. It is capitalism’s undemocratic control of the surplus by capitalist elites, moreover, that ultimately leads to the cost–benefit contradiction of contemporary societies: the futility of our consumerist culture no longer translates productive development into correspondingly growing human well-being, while the simultaneous growth of capitalism’s forces of destruction increasingly endangers human beings and the planet. Thus, this contradiction creates the potential for an opposition to capitalism and its exploitative and destructive nature by a wide range of social movements, both “old” (such as the labor and socialist movements) and “new” (for example, the feminist, anti-racist, ecological, and peace movements). To address capitalism’s contradiction, a democratic classless society is required, but the book also analyzes how capitalism’s operation obstructs the formation of an anti-capitalist coalition fighting for such an alternative.
Benn was the most prominent figure on the Labour Left from the early 1980s until his death in 2014. He came from a highly political, Labour, household and was immersed in Labour politics from childhood. Although as a young MP he was a supporter of Gaitskell (and an early enthusiast for new technology), he moved steadily to the left and by the late 1970s had become the de facto leader of the Left in the PLP, advocating workers’ control of industry and a radical, redistributive economic and political programme. He advocated combining parliamentary campaigning for socialism with extra-parliamentary activism-in trade unions and peace movements, for example. Benn was an able administrator, conscientious and efficient in his numerous ministerial roles, and above all an effective, articulate and witty communicator. However, he was unpopular with his colleagues and regarded by many as untrustworthy. He was a regular contributor to political discussion programmes on radio and television; and he did much to popularise, and make accessible, radical ideas in the second half of the twentieth century.
. 254; Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, pp. 126–7. 2 Liddington, Long Road to Greenham, chs 1–4. 3 Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism; Sandi E. Cooper, ‘The work of women in nineteenth century Continental European peace movements’, Peace and Change, 9:4 (1984) pp. 11–28; Sandi E. Cooper, ‘Women’s participation in European peace movements: the struggle to prevent World War One’, in Ruth Roach Pierson (ed.) Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 51–75. 4 Cooper, ‘Women’s participation in European peace
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.
Identity is often regarded as something that is possessed by individuals, states, and other agents. In this edited collection, identity is explored across a range of approaches and under-explored case studies with a view to making visible its fractured, contingent, and dynamic features. The book brings together themes of belonging and exclusion, identity formation and fragmentation. It also examines how identity functions in discourse, and the effects it produces, both materially and in ideational terms. Taking in case studies from Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, the various chapters interrogate identity through formal governing mechanisms, popular culture and place. These studies demonstrate the complex and fluid nature of identity and identity practices, as well as implications for theorising identity.