MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
An outstanding history of the CPB
PHIL KATZ recommends an accessible and painstakingly researched history written by an educator, agitator and organiser
A huge crowd gathered outside the British Museum, to hear Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, make a speech about Aid to Russia, 1941
[Public Domain] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
The gleam of socialism: Britain’s Communist Party 1920-2020
Robert Griffiths, Praxis Press, £25
ROBERT GRIFFITHS is the first general secretary of a Communist Party to write a party history.
The book aims to do three things: to speak to the growing number of new joiners; to deal in facts, which are sometimes uncomfortable for the party but always very uncomfortable for the ruling class; and to locate the party in a historical continuity which demonstrates that Marxism is a world outlook of the working class, that also has deep roots in British popular history.
More from this author
PHIL KATZ looks at how the Daily Worker, the Morning Star's forerunner, covered the breathless last days of World War II 80 years ago
PHIL KATZ describes the unity of the home front and the war front in a People’s War
From anti-apartheid work to uniting migrant workers, Sutton showed us how to build worker power, keeping socialism’s flame burning bright, and leaving London’s mighty May Day parade as his legacy, writes Phil Katz
