LEW

Workers' Solidarity

The Unfinished Revolution: South Tyneside 1969-1976. Jack Grassby. TUPS Books, pp. 343, 1999.

The period around the mid-60s to mid-70s was seen by many then as a time of radical change. These were the days of "People Power", of world-wide grassroots political action involving students, trade unionists, claimant groups and all manner of single-issue fanatics. The era was typified by such events as the student protests in the France of 1968, the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movement in the USA and the UK miners' strikes of 1972 and 1974.

Vive La Revolution by Mark Steel. Scribner, 2003

Mark Steel

Before Simon Schama's recent hit TV series A History of Britain, his main claim to fame rested on a book about the French revolution. In Citizens Schama joined a long list of conservative-minded historians who regard the French revolution as a tragic mistake. Over the years this has provoked a Bolshevik-inclined response from those who derive inspiration from this type of revolution, and this book is to a large extent a reply to the conservative interpretation and Schama in particular. As Steel writes in his Preface, this history of the French revolution of 1789 is “a guide to, and an inspiration for, our own times.”