Radical History Blog

Left-wingers sometimes ask, resentfully, 'Why is there no socialism in the USA?' The point isn't 100% true, but you can't deny that socialism has had a far less successful past century in the United States than it has everywhere else in the world.

On this day in 1976, the schools of Soweto were empty. It wasn't a weekend or a bank holiday. The black students of the township in southern Johannesburg were on .

Hammersmith in West London was a bit of a melting pot for artsy types around the turn of the twentieth century. The revolutionary English socialist,, made his home there.

– 'The Greatest' – died today in 2016. He suffered septic shock while hospitalised in Scottsdale, Arizona. But he could have died 49 years earlier somewhere in Vietnam.

It was 1965 in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. had been set up there for a few years working as a journalist. It was a long way from her birthplace in St Louis (Missouri), but she enjoyed life in Africa.

"To the Memory of Private Biggs and Private Piggen. Executed like their Leveller Colleagues at Burford by Forces Loyal to Cromwell." - Plaque at Gloucester Green, Oxford I spent three years of my life studying in Oxford.

You can say what you want about the French, but when it comes to civil insurrection they are without equal. , , , and – 50 years ago – 1968.

After months of shoehorning dubiously relevant references into every email I can, I get to write you one about the man himself – today is his 200th Birthday, after all!

When you think of demonstrations, you probably imagine . Perhaps an accurate image historically - but the scene was a little different in 1971 Washington DC.

102 years ago today, while the Great War was burning the world down, a few hundred Irish men and women struck out for independence after 800 years of English rule.