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SubscriptionsCategory: History
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‘The Higher Education Act is a Culture War Tactic Designed by Right-Wingers to Ensure Their Views are Heard’
‘It is difficult not to regard the Act as a classic piece of doublethink designed to censor freedom of expression in the guise of protecting it’
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Conservative Frontrunner Robert Jenrick Plans to ‘Win a Culture War’ with Young People
The favourite to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative party leader plans to launch an “air war” with younger voters
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The Upside Down: Jeremy Bentham – Auto-Icon for the People
In his monthly column, John Mitchinson remembers the original social justice warrior
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The Unpopular ‘Popular Conservatives’ Blame the Voters for Their Own Defeat
The ‘Popular Conservatism’ Conference exposed a party firmly stuck in conspiracy-driven denial about why it just suffered the worst electoral defeat in its history
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The Upside Down: ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’
John Mitchinson explores how a 600-year-old poem by an unknown poet can reset our moral compass
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‘We Need to Have New Conversations About the Colonial Realities of Our Rural Past’
‘Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain’ reveals fascinating connections between colonial history and British rural life – but it isn’t expected to go down well with everyone
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The Upside Down: That’s The Way to Do It!
John Mitchinson explores why are we so fascinated by the odious, uncancellable, Mr Punch
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The Upside Down: History Is More than Its Set Pieces
John Mitchinson explores how the lessons of the Crimean War still resonate today
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Music in Schools: A Plea
In the wake of Lord Melvyn Bragg’s House of Lords debate on the vital importance of the arts to the UK’s society and economy, composer Howard Goodall makes an urgent call for the Government to rethink its proposed further reduction of resources for musical education
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‘To Restore Trust, Rip Up the Astroturf’
As fake grassroots organisations continue their culture war – we need to fight back, writes Otto English
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Rishi Sunak Stumbles as he Takes the Knee to the Culture Warriors
The Prime Minister’s attempts to wage a culture war with Keir Starmer have ended up doing far more damage to himself than the Labour Leader
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The Palestinians and Israel: A Modern Day ‘Trail of Tears’
The treatment of Native Americans more than 100 years ago cannot provide an exact comparison to the situation of Palestinians today – but there are striking similarities, writes Alexandra Hall Hall
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Cultural Famine: Austerity in the UK’s Heritage Sector Cuts Deep
Museums across the country are being forced to close as the reality of austerity-struck Brexit Britain hits home
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‘A Disunited Kingdom? For Younger Minorities, Britishness is an Identity We Can Work With – A Quest for Englishness Must Confront This’
Developing a stronger sense of Englishness cannot merely be looked at through a political lens – our identities are personal and multiple, conflicting and shifting, writes Hardeep Matharu
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‘A Disunited Kingdom? Britain is Built on Forgetting Our Imperial History’
Maintaining the illusory story of what Britain was is integral to the illusion of what Britain is – and the maintenance of political and economic hegemony, writes MP Clive Lewis
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‘Those Who Enjoyed the Post-1945 Social Progress of the West Were Made Complacent By It: We Forgot Its Price is Vigilance’
AC Grayling explores the factors that have driven the rise of ‘illiberal democracy’
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A Message to White Environmentalists: Demanding a Fossil Fuel Phase Out is Not Enough
The poverty blindness of too many climate activists overlooks the huge complexities facing the world’s poorest
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The Upside Down: Saint Cuthbert – Wonder Worker
John Mitchinson reflects on why the life of Saint Cuthbert still has important things to teach us
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‘Suella Braverman’s “Hate March” Rhetoric is Another Desperate Attempt to Hold onto State Power’
The crafting of ‘ceasefire’ marches as a transgression of Remembrance Sunday looks like a throwback to a top-down colonial mindset, argues Suriyah Bi
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The British Museum Begs for Help Over 2,000 Lost Treasures – Why Did They Ignore Public Concerns in the Past?
A year ago the British Museum only reported on theft from its collection. Why has it taken so long for news of thousands of missing, stolen or damaged artefacts to emerge?
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Just Another ‘C’ Word? The Weird, Wonderful and Worrisome History of Cripple
Penny Pepper explores how she encourages disabled people to reclaim labels – to twist and refute them
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‘Half Measures Will Not Decolonise International Development’
Genuine anti-racist internationalism calls for much greater radicalism, writes Sunit Bagree
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‘From Uganda to Rwanda: The British Political Class’ Ever-Present Hostility to ‘Aliens’’
Jon Bloomfield examines the similarities between the 1905 Aliens Bill and the current Illegal Migration Bill and inflammatory rhetoric around refugees
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The Upside Down: Homo Loquens – Why We Learned to Talk
It’s not hard to see how the evolution of cooperation and the evolution of language are mutually reinforcing, writes John Mitchinson
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ECHR: The Peace Machine
Seventy-five years ago, Nuremberg prosecutor David Maxwell Fyfe – an artisan of the European Convention on Human Rights – spoke in Brussels of his fear that the high ideals of the victors would be forgotten. His grandson explores why his legacy matters now more than ever
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Labour Lessons: Preparing for Power
Former Labour MP Ian Lucas explores what Keir Starmer can learn from the three most historic Labour victories in modern British politics
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The Upside Down: Why the Tuskegee Experiment Still Resonates
John Mitchinson explores the lasting impact of a controversial American study steeped in the institutional racism which continues to permeate the country today
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Undocumented Immigration: Two Very Different Approaches
Brian Latham looks at the very different attitudes to migration in Southern Africa compared to the UK
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The Upside Down: Why Folk Songs Still Mean Something
The longer we look at this traditional music, the more we see that its very malleability is its strength and its challenge, writes John Mitchinson
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2022: Earthquakes and Volcanoes
in his editorial from the December print edition of Byline Times Peter Jukes says the tumultuous events of the last year may have been shocking, but not a complete surprise
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The White Knuckle Ride of 2022
From Partygate to Trussomics, the death of the Monarch, and the humiliation of Vladimir Putin, OttoEnglish’s review of the year takes us on a roller coaster of major fails and meteoric falls
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In Neo-Dickensian Britain Politicians Should Heed the Ghost of Marley
There’s a reason Dickens’ Christmas Carol is a perennial festive favourite, says A V Deggar – the Malthusian ideas of Scrooge are still with us
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‘Who’s Virginia Woolf Afraid Of?’
Stephen Unwin explores how the famed author’s views about disability were typical of a growing intellectual endorsement of the dangerous ideology of eugenics in the early 20th century
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Irony: The Velvet Glove of Colonialism?
Did the Greeks invent irony? Rahila Gupta makes the case for Britain’s mastery and ownership of the device
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The Identity Trap: No One Narrative Can Encompass the Different Dimensions of Diversity
As Britain welcomes its first Asian Prime Minister, Hardeep Matharu explores how our pluralistic society is reflected in the multiplicity of its migrant experience – as demonstrated by the different reactions to Rishi Sunak’s rise
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1,600 Civilians Killed by British Forces Since 1945 is ‘Tip of the Iceberg’
New data on civilian killings by British forces in colonial wars of independence, plus more recent conflicts, exposes the gaps in our knowledge of recent military history
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The Right-Wing Bid to Capture the National Trust Exposed
With days to go before the National Trust’s members choose its new council, the ‘Restore Trust’ group is campaigning in a manner that scarcely inspires trust. Brian Cathcart reports
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‘After the War, People are Still Very “Us Versus Them”’
Lindsey Kennedy and Nathan Paul Southern report from Bosnia and Herzegovina on the recent General Election and how the country’s complicated past continues to shape present realities
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Meloni’s Victory Shows Italian Fascism Never Truly Died
Angelo Boccato speaks to experts about the electoral success of Brothers of Italy
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Britannia Unchained Review: Imperial Nostalgia and the Unravelling of Social Progress
Sam Bright unpicks the Truss-Kwarteng manifesto, finding a worrying obsession with Britain’s distant economic past
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‘The Dark Heart of Trussonomics: The Mainstreaming of Libertarian Theories of Social Darwinism and Apartheid’
The legacy of the Nazi ideology of eugenics – popularised by Charles Murray’s controversial book ‘The Bell Curve’ – goes some way to explaining Trussonomics, writes Nafeez Ahmed
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‘The UK Must Help Bosnia Resist Putin’s Pressure’
Following Bosnia’s elections, Labour MP Fleur Anderson discusses the country’s prospects and what Britain can do to help
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‘There is a Connection Between their Roots in Fascism and their Embrace of these Ideas’: Italy’s Drift to the Far-Right
Adrian Goldberg spoke to David Broder – author of Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism In Contemporary Italy – for the Byline Times Podcast about the historical roots of the country’s new far-right leadership
