Ian Bullock on Socialism and Democracy in Britain
'The Drums of Armageddon', online talk
This talk was part of the Working Class Movement Library's live-streamed Invisible Histories series.
RECENT REVIEWS OF IAN'S BOOKS
the anarchist library | Iain McKay
review of Romancing the Revolution
Labour / Le Travail | Roger Chapman
review of Romancing the Revolution
AVAILABLE BOOKS
SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY WITH A HYPHEN: The politics the 'Old Guard of the SDF'
Published 24 March 2022
It begins with the foundation of the Social-Democratic Federation in 1884 and trace the development of the distinctive version - or versions - of socialism into the First World War and the 1920s.
Athabasca University Press, 2017
Athabasca University Press, 2011
Cambridge University Press, 1996
This was mainly based on my 1982 University of Sussex D Phil thesis together with Logie Barrow's work on the Clarion movement on which the account of attempts at ultra-democratic 'Federation' in the trade union movement was based
Macmillan, 1992.
I edited this book with Richard Pankhurst. There were seven contributions covering many episodes of Pankhurst's life. My own contribution was 'Sylvia Pankhurst and the Russian Revolution;the making of a 'Left-Wing' Communist’
The Valley of Dry Bones. The Clarion during the First World War
This is about the Clarion during the First World War – and up to the post-war Peace Settlement - when it was very much out of tune with much of the Left. Even the 'pro-Ally' people I have written about in Social-Democracy with a Hyphen were rather more 'moderate' in their support of the war and the 'pro-Ally cause.
Current Work in Progress
Since the 1970s I have been working – whenever I have had the time (and energy) – on what to me seems a question which is both fascinating and important – the relationship between socialism and democracy in Britain. I say, in Britain, because that's what I've worked on – but, of course, my interest, and the implications of my work are not confined by national boundaries.
The Final Years of the Clarion
'I'm currently working (even more intermittenly than before!) on 'The Final Years of the Clarion' tracing what happened to the paper between 1919 and 1932 when it ceased publication
Entry on Walter Kendall in Dictionary of Labour Biography Volume XIII (2010) - with Tony Carew.
Walter’s 1969 The Revolutionary Movement in Britain is the main inspiration for my current ‘’Social-Democracy with a Hyphen’.
Review essays
Gidon Cohen, The Failure of a Dream. The Independent Labour Party from Disaffiliation to World War II
The Independent Labour Party from Disaffiliation to World War II, Taurus, 2007
Labour/Le Travail, 2009
My review essay "The Rise and Fall of New Labour? A Social Democracy for 21st Century Britain" which discusses Stephen Meredith's Labours Old and New. The Parliamentary Right of the British Labour Party 1970-79 and Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World. British Trade Unions Under New Labour appeared in Labour/Le Travail, (Journal of Canadian Labour Studies, 64 Fall/Automne 2009
Labour/Le Travail, 2013
Articles
Was Clarion socialism really 'more social and cultural than political?'
BOOTS & SPURS - THE MAGAZINE OF THE NATIONAL CLARION CYCLING CLUB
'THE ORiGINAL BRITiSH ultra-left', 1917-1924
SOCIALIST HISTORY 44
ANTI-COMMUNISM ON THE LEFT
'The British Left and the outbreak of war in 1914'
SOCIALIST HISTORY 57
BRITISH LABOUR AND INTERNATIONALISM
short CHartist articles
Chartist is a well-established journal of democratic socialism published six times a year.
Early in 2012 I was asked by Chartist to write a short article about the First World War a century previously. The original idea was that other people would supply further articles, but as far as I am aware no one did, and in the end I contributed three pieces. Anticipating that others would write on the Left wing opposition to the war, the No Conscription Fellowship, the Union of Democratic Control and other more obvious topics I decided to leave these to them and tackle less well-known aspects of the Left's experience of the war. Doing these articles is what gave me the idea for Drums of Armageddon
THE ILP AND THE LIVING WAGE
This appeared in Chartist 257, July/August 2012
CHARTISM OLD AND NEW
This appeared in Chartist 258, September/October 2012.
Socialist Struggles with the 'Great' War
This appeared in Chartist 266 in January/February 2014
This appeared in Chartist 268 in May/June 2014
The pro-war socialist patriots
This appeared in Chartist 271 in November/December 2014
DEMOCRATIC FAULTLINES IN SOVIETS
This appeared in Chartist 288 in September/October 2017
Working Class Democracy
This appeared in Chartist 292 in May/June 2018
Is the Left opposed to Politics?
This appeared in Chartist 296 in January/February 2019
CHARTIST HERITAGE
This appeared in Chartist 298 in May/June 2019
1945 Promise of a new day
This appeared in Chartist 305 in July/August 2020
Seminar and Conference papers
London Socialist Historian's Conference "The Vote - What Went Wrong?
27 February 2010
UNIVERSITY of Sussex
"History Research-in-Progress" seminars
The Myth of Soviet Democracy and the British Left
Paper given to the History Work in Progress Seminar at the University of Sussex
14 February 2002
LABOUR LEADER and the Bolsheviks
Paper given to the History Work in Progress Seminar at the University of Sussex
10 March 2005
Romancing the Revolution. The Myth of Soviet Democracy and the British Left
Paper given to the History Work in Progress Seminar at the University of Sussex 8 December 2011
Was it really "Left in the Centre?"
The significance of the interwar Independent Labour Party
Paper given to University of Sussex "Research in Progress" Seminar, 27 November 2014
Manchester University
'Writing in Opposition' conference
Conference flyer
May 2007
'Real Democracy' and the British Left in the early C20
Brighton Branch of the Historical Association
SYLVIA PANKHURST REVISITED
Brighton Branch of the Historical Association, 3 February 2004
Chartist AGM 2018
The Independent Labour Party - lessons for today?
WHAT I THINK I HAVE LEARNT FROM MY RESEARCH SINCE 1975
2019