Big Flame: Building Movements, New Politics

Speakers: Max Farrar & Kevin McDonnell, authors of the recent book on Big Flame published by Merlin Press

This book addresses the ideas and experiences of a small British revolutionary socialist and feminist organisation in the 1970s and 1980s.

Written by two ex-members, it sets out the organisation’s eclectic influences: Italian Marxism, libertarianism, feminism, James-ianism and personal politics.

Read on ...

Christopher Hill: the life of a radical historian

Speaker: Michael Braddick
A Socialist History Society on-line meeting on 7 October 2025

Christopher Hill was one of the leading historians of his generation. His work across more than fifteen books and dozens of articles fundamentally rewrote the way we understand the English Revolution and the development of the modern British state. Read on ...

Aimé Césaire and Martinique

Socialist History online public meeting on 19 May 2025
Speaker Kevin Morgan

In October 1956 Aimé Césaire announced his resignation from the French communist party in an open letter to the PCF’s leader Maurice Thorez. Better known as a writer and co-architect of the concept of negritude, Césaire was a communist of eleven years’ standing and one of two PCF deputies representing Martinique in the French national assembly. Read on ...

Writing about my life – Sheila Rowbotham

12 February 2025


Speaker: Sheila Rowbotham

I have done three memoirs of the 1960s. 70s and 80s – ‘Promise of a Dream’, ‘ Daring to Hope’ and ‘Reasons to Rebel’. I wrote these because I wanted to record and bring into view the radical people and movements and ideas which have influenced me in the hope that younger people miight find them interesting and begin to look at the recent past in more detail. Read on ...