Beyond Cable Street: Constellations of CPGB Anti-Fascism
Lawrence Parker, October 16, 2026
The British left has a set of mythologies around the 1936 Battle of Cable Street that disable rational responses to the modern authoritarianism of the state and far-right groups. Even when those mythologies take the form of a critique of the 1930s CPGB, the effect is still baleful, argues Lawrence Parker. Read Article.
Gang of One: The Fall as Anti-Group
Lawrence Parker, August 26, 2026
Hailing The Fall as a mere instance of working-class subjectivity or as a set of mangled literary intakes fails to understand the terms of Mark E Smith’s critique, writes Lawrence Parker. Read Article.
Seen This Movie Before: Dylan Comes Round Again
Lawrence Parker, March 5, 2025
Why is Bob Dylan’s ‘apostasy’ in turning his back on the liberal-left folk establishment in the mid-1960s endlessly replayed? Lawrence Parker investigates. Read Article.
What’s the Problem with Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism?
Lawrence Parker, May 10, 2024
The modern-day left continues to repeat fairy tales that Lenin’s early philosophical work is vulgar, undialectical and abandoned by its author in later years. None of these stories stack up, writes Lawrence Parker. Read Article.
More or Less Erfurt? The CPGB’s 1939 Draft Programme
Lawrence Parker, October 20, 2023
Lawrence Parker details the history of and reception to the document which, he argues, drew upon "disgraced" figures such as Kautsky and Bukharin and captured the CPGB’s Janus-faced nature at the outset of the Second World War. Read Article.