[Reader-list] London Socialist Historians Group: Call for papers - Bringing It All Back Home

[Harsh Kapoor]

Call for papers
Bringing It All Back Home
Precursors to Seattle: A history of mass movements against capitalism.
A Conference to be held at the Institute of Historical Research, 11th May 2002

The "Teamsters and Turtles" protest against the World Trade 
Organisation in Seattle in November 1999 sparked off a huge wave of 
anti-capitalist demonstrations across the world. Yet this is not the 
first time that mass movements have rocked capitalism. The events of 
1968 and after, particularly in France and Italy, can be seen as a 
precursor to Seattle, as can the Great Unrest of 1911 in Britain.

The Seattle movement has many roots and inspirations. They include 
the theories generated by socialist, environmental and anarchist 
thinkers, the mass strikes of the early twentieth century, the 
revolutionary moments of Russia in 1917 and Barcelona in 1936, as 
well as the organisations which remembered these inspirations in 
quieter times.
Some historians have sought to trivialise the scale of these 
movements by focusing on the culture and style of the rebellion, 
rather than the challenge they represented to capital.

The aim of this conference is to give the current anti-capitalist 
movement its own history back, both from obscurity and from 
trivialisers. Papers are invited which focus on mass movements 
against capitalism, in America, Europe or the Third World, the ideas 
that inspired the movements and the activists that organised them.

Proposals for papers together with a 600 word précis should be sent 
by 1st December 2001 to

Keith Flett, 38 Mitchley Road, Tottenham, London N17 9HG
or email: conference2002 at LondonSocialistHistorians.org

Organised by the London Socialist Historians Group
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