MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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The common cause
RICHARD MURGATROYD welcomes the modern relevance of a history of the expropriation of common lands for private profit
LANDMARK PROTEST: 80th anniversary of of the 1932 Mass Trespass in the Peak District: Singer and broadcaster Mike Harding (centre), flanked by (from left to right) Kate Ashbrook, President of the Ramblers; Dame Fiona Reynolds Director General of the National Trust; Broadcaster Stuart Maconie and Harry Rothman, son of trespass leader Benny Rothman
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
The War Against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism
By Ian Angus
Monthly Review Press, New York, £18.99
A GOOD history book makes you think about the present.
On the day I finished Ian Angus’s The War Against the Commons I visited my local station ticket office. The queue was long and I had time to look around and reflect. Once all this great building, this marvel of engineering, this vital service, had been publicly owned, part of the modern “commons.” Even now in its privatised state there remained some good elements – like the expert and helpful staff in the ticket office which the train-lords and rentier bankers were planning to evict!
So, Angus’s book is timely indeed.
More from this author
RICHARD MURGATROYD is disappointed by an ambitious survey that fails to get to grips with the relationship between human consciousness and nature
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