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Despise the notion dominant among education policy-makers that post-16 academic education can't *and shouldn't* be for working class people. Educating children into their social destiny, rather than on the basis of their individual potential or inclinations, will never be progressive. Dream bigger.

"If, then, we “full-time” intellectuals restrict our knowledge to those who have been fortunate enough to get full-time education and to work in universities, we are simply reproducing ... the unequal distribution of knowledge and education in our societies." www.bostonreview.net/articles/whe...

When We Are All Enemies of the StateA recently discovered 1974 speech by Stuart Hall on Walter Rodney—and why fascists fear ideas.www.bostonreview.net

Really proud to be in this and glad it’s out in paperback!

This comment on Ramsay MacDonald reminds me of someone: "He liked being Prime Minister… But behind lies the riddle I cannot solve. Take the most important question: in what did he, ultimately, believe? I do not know.” (From Mary Agnes Hamilton's Remembering My Good Friends)

Richly-deserved prize for an excellent early-career historian.

In fairness, I pass people in the street who remark in an oddly upbeat way about the hot weather as well. It’s loony.

Very proud of this one: Incarcerated: Contemporary Photography from the Victorian Prison It's been a delight to work with @andyaitchison.bsky.social, Dominique Moran, Yvonne Jewkes, & Jennifer Turner. Seeing Andy's wonderful work in print is quite something. insidetime.org/newsround/in...

‘Incarcerated’: Photographer Andy Aitchison launches book on Victorian prisonsAndy Aitchison has been taking photographs inside the UK’s prisons for over 20 years. His interest started in 2004, when the Big Issue asked him to photograph inside Victorian-built HMP Wandsworth.…insidetime.org

We have two new 12-month postdoctoral fellowship opportunities at the British Library! Applications open soon to co-design projects in the following areas: - Colonial Deposit and our Newspaper Collection - Local Large Language Models and Personal Born-Digital Archives www.bl.uk/services/res...

*nos 4-5, I should say.

My new short article is now out in no. 3-4, vol. 59 of @pop-jrnl.bsky.social. In the piece, I reflect on the experience of designing & delivering what was *probably* the first module on whiteness in modern British history in a UK university history department. The module is running again in 2026-27.

Working out whiteness in modern British historyLiburd’s Commentary considers the place of whiteness in the teaching and research of modern British history. It does so through a reflection on the experience of designing and delivering ‘The White...www.tandfonline.com

Another fascist at a Union debate for your records, @evansmithhist.bsky.social.

Looking at this and the revelations yesterday about the team behind the Keir Starmer arson attacks and far right pay ops around them, and it's hard not to notice the establishment would rather just not do anything systematic about the threat.

Even where they aren't actively sympathetic to the white supremacist movement (and there's clearly a strain of active sympathy), the police's institutional inability to see British fascism as a proper threat is extremely telling about the nature of the institution.

Shocking but not surprising. The police have never really seen British fascists as the *real* political or public order threat. The police still seem shocked, decades after the heyday of the NF in 70s when "protests" against asylum seekers or refugees "get out of hand".

Was at the National Library of Scotland last week looking at the Police Federation's journal from the late 60s & 70s. Their reportage and commentary on demonstrations like Red Lion Square was strikingly uninterested in the fascists and absolutely venomous towards "lefty student demonstrators".

I have a piece in today’s Irish Times about the atrocities of last week in Belfast. The ethno-nationalist machine is tried and tested. How come the authorities are apparently so powerless to stop it? www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Nearly there - unless you missed a zero off..

And yet some will still debate whether fascism is an appropriate term for what we're seeing... In fact, some mainstream elite are still hesitant to use far right which tells you everything you need to know about why we are where we are

Rioters "momentarily enjoying the arbitrary power of both the traffic warden and the border official" (as Richard Seymour wrote of similar checkpoints in Middlesborough during the 2024 riots) illustrates alignment of "street" & "state" racism; this is explicit extraparliamentary border enforcement.

I’m really pleased to see my article on “The Asian Mother and Baby Campaign” in the @jbritishstudies.bsky.social Many thanks to @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding this research. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...