Bøger udgivet af Lawrence & Wishart

This collection of biographical essays brings to life a diverse and colourful cavalcade of British revolutionaries from the first part of the twentieth century. The cast includes pioneering women Communists, doughty trade union leaders and ruthless apparatchiks, together with lawyers, poets, critics and the odd sexual outlaw.

Truth, Christopher Norris reminds us, is very much out of fashion at the moment - whether at the hands of politicians, media pundits, or purveyors of postmodern wisdom in cultural and literary studies. Across a range of disciplines the idea has taken hold that truth-talk is either redundant or the product of epistemic might. Questions of truth and falsehood are always internal to some specific language-game; history is just another kind of fiction; philosophy is only a kind of writing; law is a wholly rhetorical practice. In Reclaiming Truth, Norris critiques these fashionable trends of thought and mounts a specific challenge to cultural relativist doctrines in epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, and political theory. Norris presents his case in a series of closely argued chapters that take issue with the relativist position. He attempts to rehabilitate the value of truth in philosophy of science by restoring a lost distinction between concept and metaphor and argues that theoretical discourse, far from being an inconsequential activity, has very real consequences, particularly in ethics and politics. This debate has become skewed, he suggests, through the widespread and typically postmodern idea that truth-claims must always go along with a presumptive or authoritarian bid to silence opposing views. On the contrary, there is nothing as dogmatic - or as silencing - as a relativism that acknowledges no shared truth conditions for valid or responsible discourse. Norris also offers a timely reassessment of several thinkers - Althusser and Derrida among them - whose reception-history has been distorted by the vagaries of short-term intellectual fashion.

Our Flag Stays Red is a unique account of communist and anti-fascist activity in London's East End in the 1930s and 1940s. Its author was Communist MP for Stepney from 1945 to 1950, and played a leading role in the events described in the book - which are an important part of twentieth-century working-class history.

This is the first book in a three-volume series which looks at the relationship between different sections of the British left and Bolshevism in the first half of the twentieth century. The main focus of this first book is on funding and political resources Morgan goes far beyond the question of Russian gold, to dig beneath a host of myths and misconceptions. He shows that Labour's parliamentary advance was itself inconceivable solely on the basis of the workers' and trade union 'pennies' with which it is usually identified. In addition to the virtual market that developed in Labour's parliamentary nominations, there was almost always a need to cultivate private benefactors - not excluding Russian ones. Thus, as Morgan shows, George Lansbury drew on a wide variety of financial sponsors to create the space both for his own political career and for Labour's daily newspaper, the Daily Herald. As for the communist party itself, Russian subsidies often gave rise to fierce internal conflict and controversy: it was certainly regarded as mixed blessing by many. Kevin Morgan has uncovered some fascinating new material on this period of left history, and through his insightful analysis a much more complex picture than hitherto emerges, both of Labour-communist relations and those between the CPGB and the Comintern. Labour Legends and Russian Gold is the Part 1in a three-volume series, Bolshevism and the British Left, which examines attitudes to Soviet Russia as a way of opening up broader questions about the character of the British left between the 1890s and the 1940s. Part 2 is The Webbs and Soviet Communism, Part 3 is due to be published in 2012

This thorough account chronicles the creation and use - from the 1840s to today - of Trafalgar Square, one of London's most famous landmarks. Drawing on detailed archival research, this historical analysis describes how the square was initially designed as a military memorial and details why this proved to be such a controversial plan. The square's use as a setting for public demonstration is examined, from the mid-19th-century Chartists to the Vietnam War protestors of the mid-20th century, as well as its role in both disturbing events such as Bloody Sunday and celebrations that include Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Photographs reveal how the square has changed over the years, and this revised edition includes information on its recent transformation into a thriving cultural center complete with outdoor operas and films.

Robert Tressell described his famous book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists as 'the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned'. This biography of Tressell, first published in 1973, tells the story of a man about whom virtually nothing - not even his real name - was known before Fred Ball began his research. Ball describes the family, educational and social background of Robert Tressell; his move from his early upbringing in Ireland to become a house-painter in Hastings (the Mugsborough of his novel); his becoming a socialist; his travels abroad; his other writings, and his creative work as a specialist sign-writer. Not least, it tells the story of the writing and the publication of his classic book, and of Ball's own role in ensuring the publication of the original unabridged version of the book in 1953. Ball was a researcher of skill and enthusiasm, and his book describes clues and leads, and the way the story fell into place, until he was finally able to do full justice to a man who had hitherto been a somewhat shadowy figure. F.C. Ball was the author of several novels, and of an earlier book on Robert Tressell, Tressell of Mugsborough (1951). He was born and worked throughout most of his life in Hastings.

This second in the six volume series covers the years of the General Strike, and includes a detailed examination of the policies, successes and failings of Communists and the militant left generally.

After decades of feminism and deconstruction, romance remains firmly in place as a central preoccupation in the lives of most women. Romance is still the most compelling discourse by which any one of us is inscribed. In this newly commisioned critical collection, romance is revisited across the discipllines, not just in fiction and film but in a whole range of cultural phenomena. Essays range over such issues as the royal marriage, Valentine's Day, 'interracial' relationships and the romance of the scientific quest. All kinds of relationships are brought under the lens of feminist cultural theory - from sex and the single nun to Yukio Mishima, from snuglet puglet to safe sex.