The Socialist History Society will be holding its first in-person meeting since the start of the current public health emergency.

Marx Memorial Library – 37a Clerkenwell Green, London, EC1R 0DU
Underground Farringdon station on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines.
Saturday 7th May
1pm AGM – all welcome, but only members can vote. You are welcome join on the day [or pay this year’s subscription if you have not done so]
2pm Book Launch of the Society’s latest Occasional Publication [Free to members, £5 for non-members, although if you join at the meeting, you will be able to collect your free copy immediately]

TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIALISM IN BRITAIN
By Duncan Bowie

British socialist activists should know more about the history of the movement. One of the purposes of the Socialist History Society is to provide this knowledge in an accessible form. This Occasional Publication is a contribution to this objective and comprises 50 short extracts from key socialist writings from the 20th century, each with a brief commentary. These were originally published in the Our History column in the bi-monthly socialist journal, Chartist, over the last seven years. They are drawn from a range of traditions within British socialism, from the Communist and Suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst and anarchist April Carter to Tony Blair. Some authors are well known such as Ramsay MacDonald and R H Tawney, for example; others such as Zelda Kahan and Emily Townshend less so. This OP is a successor to the Roots of the British Socialist Movement, which comprises fifty extracts from radical and socialist writings of the 19th century, also edited by Duncan Bowie, which was published by the SHS in 2014.

Duncan Bowie is co-chair of the Socialist History Society and for the last 15 years has been reviews editor and written a history column for the socialist journal Chartist, on which this pamphlet is based. He is an honorary research associate at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL.