This second volume covers the relationship between socialist currents and the national liberation movement from the 1940s through decades of increasing repression and illegality, culminating in the transition to armed struggle in the early 1960s.

Sidney Bunting's life offers a unique perspective on the British Empire, illustrating the complex social networks and values that were carried across the world in the name of empire. Drawing on archival material, including the Bunting family papers and records of Bunting's Oxford years, this work presents his biography.

This title was first published in 2000: This book considers the fortunes of socialism in South Africa from the doctrine's arrival around 1900 to its legal suppression in 1950. Socialism's universal claims had to come to terms with South Africa's singular national experience in which a racial ideology and a racial division of the working class played a far greater role than in any other country. The left in South Africa had to deal with all the complexities of ideology and strategy that faced their counterparts in Europe and North America; but in South Africa it was further vexed by challenges of profound racial and national inequalities and a white labour movement which sought protection through racial segregation. Communism, rather than Social Democracy, prevailed; hence the reverberations of the splits in the Communist International were far more debilitating in South Africa than anywhere else. In the years after World War II African nationalism became the dominant influence on the South African left, chiefly through the relationship between the ANC and the Communist Party. Discordant Comrades draws on a wide range of primary sources from inside and outside South Africa, including the archives of the Communist International in Moscow. The result is a scholarly and challenging analysis of the South African left.

This is the first scholarly biography of Sidney Bunting. His life offers a unique perspective on the British Empire, illustrating the complex social networks and values that were carried across the world in the name of empire. The lawyer son of renowned Wesleyan social activists, Bunting was radicalised in South Africa. He was a founding member of the Communist Party and campaigned for black emancipation. Allison Drew draws on archival material which has only recently become available, including the Bunting family papers, records of Bunting's Oxford years, trial transcripts from Bunting's legal and political career, and the Comintern archives.

2005 marks the seventieth anniversary of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia - final humiliating step in Europe's colonisation of Africa; bloody symptom of the collapse of collective security in Europe; harbinger of the world war to come. In this issue of Socialist History our contributors offer provocative reassessments of this key episode, set in its broader contemporary context by the issue's editor, Allison Drew. Exploding the myth that Italian fascism was not marked by the racism of Nazism, Willie Thompson's article describes the stark brutality displayed in Abyssinia by Italian troops and the key role which the conflict played in Mussolini's domestic and international calculations. The conflict also had a significant impact upon the international left and the challenges simultaneously posed it by the rise of fascism, the reconfigurations of democracy and imperialism and the uncertainties of Soviet foreign policy. In his article, Christian Hogsbjerg explores the major impact which the Abyssinian struggle had on the Trinidadian intellectual C.L.R. James, who was then in Britain working on his masterful study of the Haitian Revolution The Black Jacobins. Britain, and the predicaments of this socialist anti-war movement are evaluated here by Andrew Flinn and Gidon Cohen. If socialists and internationalists seemed preoccupied with the issue, the same cannot be said of the wider British public. In our final feature, David Howell shows that in the 1935 general election voters were generally far less interested in Abyssinia than either politicians or political activists. Perhaps, Howell suggests, the same cannot be said so confidently of the last general election and the impact of Iraq. The issue concludes with a discussion of the contemporary Moscow arts scene by Margarita Tupitsyn and our usual reviews section.

This title was first published in 2000: This book considers the fortunes of socialism in South Africa from the doctrine's arrival around 1900 to its legal suppression in 1950. Socialism's universal claims had to come to terms with South Africa's singular national experience in which a racial ideology and a racial division of the working class played a far greater role than in any other country. The left in South Africa had to deal with all the complexities of ideology and strategy that faced their counterparts in Europe and North America; but in South Africa it was further vexed by challenges of profound racial and national inequalities and a white labour movement which sought protection through racial segregation. Communism, rather than Social Democracy, prevailed; hence the reverberations of the splits in the Communist International were far more debilitating in South Africa than anywhere else. In the years after World War II African nationalism became the dominant influence on the South African left, chiefly through the relationship between the ANC and the Communist Party. Discordant Comrades draws on a wide range of primary sources from inside and outside South Africa, including the archives of the Communist International in Moscow. The result is a scholarly and challenging analysis of the South African left.

This book recovers the lost history of colonial Algeria's communist movement. Meticulously researched - and the only English-language book on the Parti Communiste Algerien - it explores communism's complex relationship with Algerian nationalism. During international crises, such as the Popular Front and Second World War years, the PCA remained close to its French counterpart, but as the national liberation struggle intensified, the PCA's concern with political and social justice attracted growing numbers of Muslims. When the Front de Liberation Nationale launched armed struggle in November 1954, the PCA maintained its organisational autonomy - despite FLN pressure. They participated fully in the national liberation war, facing the French state's wrath. Independence saw two conflicting socialist visions, with the PCA's incorporated political pluralism and class struggle on the one hand, and the FLN demand for a one-party socialist state on the other. The PCA's pluralist vision was shattered when it was banned by the one-party state in November 1962. This book is of particular interest to students and scholars of Algerian history, French colonial history and communist history. -- .

This book recovers the lost history of colonial Algeria's communist movement. Meticulously researched - and the only English-language book on the Parti Communiste Algerien - it explores communism's complex relationship with Algerian nationalism. During international crises, such as the Popular Front and Second World War years, the PCA remained close to its French counterpart, but as the national liberation struggle intensified, the PCA's concern with political and social justice attracted growing numbers of Muslims. When the Front de Liberation Nationale launched armed struggle in November 1954, the PCA maintained its organisational autonomy - despite FLN pressure. They participated fully in the national liberation war, facing the French state's wrath. Independence saw two conflicting socialist visions, with the PCA's incorporated political pluralism and class struggle on the one hand, and the FLN demand for a one-party socialist state on the other. The PCA's pluralist vision was shattered when it was banned by the one-party state in November 1962. This book is of particular interest to students and scholars of Algerian history, French colonial history and communist history. -- .