Twelve Books of Christmas
21.12.24
Mark Perryman provides our gloriously eclectic annual seasonal reading selection
OK twelve books in twelve days competing for attention with the holly and the ivy if not peace and goodwill, and all before Hogmanay descends upon on us might too much for even the most avid bibliophile. So more of a guide for what to look forward to snapping up by way of the means of post-seasonal intellectual recovery ready for what 2025 has in store for us.
1. Going into Labour
' A Marxist analysis of childbirth and birth care' just the ticket for a day marking the most famous incident of giving birth in human history. A manger, three Kings, assorted shepherds with sheep, all lit by a star, and God knows (well if anyone knows he/she should) what up above, but not a gynaecologist in sight. Anna Fielder provides a unique insight into the everyday experience of what for many others, not just Mary and Joseph, will be the most momentous event of their lives. Yet framed by capitalism, colonialism, misogyny not for all the pleasure it should be.
From Pluto books here
2. Verso Radical Diary and Planner 2025
Christmas Day out of the way, leftovers to mop up, never-ending pile of mince pies to tuck into, Christmas wrapping-paper sorted for recycling. Only one task remaining for Boxing Day, for those with a life not entirely taken over by their smartphone to organise every sentient minute of the day, order a 2025 diary. And only one choice for any self-styled organic intellectual, Verso's. Combining the stylishness Verso is rightly renowned for with a daily and monthly digest of history and insights to provide a 365-day guide to the radical and revolutionary. One missing mind, 13 October 2025, the centenary of Margaret Thatcher's birth. And yes there will be a Philosophy Football Centenary mug specially designed for us by Steve Bell. All together now, ' Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. Out! Out! Out!
From Verso books here
3. John Horner and the Communist Party: Uncomfortable Encounters with Truth
The 2024 General Election was marked by Jeremy Corbyn elected as an independent left MP despite everything the Labour Party threw at Islington North to stop him. And they did the same in Brighton Pavilion, throwing everything at it to take the seat back from The Green Party, and failing there too. Add in the four Muslim independent MPs plus three more Green MPs and this is quite a bloc. Rosalind Eyben's superb book tells the story of an earlier era of left-of-Labour hope. The Communist Party of the 1930s, the Popular Front, fighting an anti-fascist war at home, solidarity with the Red Army on the Eastern Front away. Willie Gallagher and Phil Piratin elected Communist Party MPs as part of Labour's 1945 landslide. Hopes dashed not much more than a decade later by Stalin's 1956 invasion of Hungary. All told via the life of John Horner, Communist, creator of the modern Fire Brigades Union when it was needed more than ever before, the Blitz, and Rosalind's father. The maxim ' the personal is political' could have been written for this most special book.
From Routledge here
4. You Can't Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024
2024, follows 1945, 1964 and 1997 as a year of a Labour landslide. Yet a decent chunk of the Left while happy to bid a none too fond farewell to 14 years of Tory (with a little help from Nick Clegg) 'progress' aren't exactly dancing in the streets, marching morelike. Tariq Ali has been a towering figure of this outside left for the best part of 60 years. His memoir of the 1960s Street Fighting Years has recently been reissued to accompany Tariq's new post 1968 memoir, You Can't Please All. A spellbinding testimony of the revolutionary expectations that framed a generation via Vietnam, Black Power, the Prague Spring. And how they helped some stay the course through what the ensuing almost half century threw at his Generation Left. A vital read for all who seek to stay the course, but especially today's Generation Left formed by the 2010 University Tuition Fees protest movement, 2015-19 Corbynism and 2023- Gaza, as they pass through their thirtysomethings.
From Verso books here
5. Big Flame: Building Movements, New Politics
There is widespread expectation that the New Year will be marked by Jeremy Corbyn launching an as yet without a name new party of the Left. Wags may suggest we've had one of those before, Tariq Ali's own International Marxist Group just one of the 57 varieties of, before in time-honoured fashion splitting to create even more varieties. Jeremy will be hoping against hope to avoid the pitfalls of previous efforts, but one deserves some closer study than an otherwise record of unmitigated failure. Max Farrar and Kevin McDonnell retell the story of 'Big Flame' this most creative effort to combine the personal, the local and the political in a formation that was part party and part movement. If Jeremy's outfit can achieve that combination it might, just, be on to something.
From Merlin Press here
6. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
A lifetime ago I was a student at Hull University. This was 1978-81 at the height of opposition to the renewal of Britain's nuclear deterrent (sic) with Trident submarines and the basing of US Cruise missiles at Greenham and Molesworth. Martin Shaw was a lecturer at Hull and inspired so many of us with his vision of, and arguments for, a nuclear weapon-free Europe. Despite CND's decline he remains one of the best thinkers for what a broad, imaginative and effective movement looks like. Making his history an essential read at this time of precious little peace and not much goodwiil.
From Agenda Publishing here
7. Anti-Racism in Britain: Traditions, Histories and Trajectories, 1980 - present
Edited by Saffron East, Grace Redhead and Theo Williams their book is a most timely historical survey of anti-racism in Britain. Combining a richly imaginative thematic approach with the historic Anti-Racism in Britain ranges over the colonial legacy of Empire via the politics of emergent diasporas to the contestation around 'multiculturalism'. An essential read with the current across-the-political-spectrum stirring of anti-immigration sentiment. Just one request to the publisher tho', this title deserves a cheaper paperback edition, pronto.
From Manchester University Press here
8. Multitudes
Vietnam, Nuclear Disarmament, Iraq, anti-racism, and currently Gaza, all, and more, have each sparked huge protest movements. Dan Hancox's hugely original Multitudes places the simple and timeless exercise of marching for or against come what may in a quite different context, the making of a crowd. The convivial and the political are too often alien to one another but for good, or bad, when they coalesce the crowd becomes a movement. A book that lands somewhere infinitely richer than Planet Placard. Hurrah!
From Verso books here
9. Belfast Punk and The Troubles: An Oral History
To brighten the seasonal political mood, the sight of the lead singer of 1970s Northern Irish Punk Band The Undertones, best known hit a heartfelt tribute to adolescent boys' masturbation Teenage Kicks, emerging as the effective leader of the movement against inland and coastal waters pollution. Who would have thought when we were pogoing away to Feargal Sharkey belting out 'Get teenage kicks right through the night, all right' he'd end up being the eloquent spokesperson for the unanswerable case to renationalise the water boards. Poster boy of the counterghemony? Feargal fits the bill, perfectly. And to understand how, and why, Fearghus Roulston unravels the culture of late 1970s, in the words of another band of the period and place, Stiff Little Fingers, Alternative UIster. Sus-Sus-Suspect Device.
From Manchester University Press here
10. I Saw Democracy Murdered: The Memoir of Sam Russell, Journalist
The inspiration for Philosophy Football's Dissenter range of T-shirts in large part came from the 1930s Popular Front against fascism, and in particular the International Brigades who fought to defend the Spanish Republic. It was Sam Russell who advised us on our designs and would speak at our events to honour and celebrate the Brigaders. It is almost unimaginable the idea that civilians with no military training woud travel to Spain defying border controls and arrest to take up arms. George Orwell the most famous who did so. The biggest sijngle contingent of the International Brigades British Battalion? Welsh miners. Sam's memoir, co-written with Colin Chambers, tells his own fascinating story of the impact being an International Brigader had on his politics, his journalism for the Daily Worker and Morning Star, the shaping of his anti-stalinist communism.
From Routledge here
11. The Battle for Britain: Crises, Conflicts and the Conjuncture
The beginning of the idea that burst into becoming Philosophy Football in October 1994 came in the late 1980s from the magazine I was working for back then Marxism Today and our wannabe hegemonic project that combined ideas with, yes T-shirts. 'Central Committee Outfitters', a name almost as good as ours! And my co-founder, Hugh Tisdale, followed a not entirely different trajectory. When I first met Hugh he was the designer of Democratic Left's (the post-1989 short lived successor to The Communist Party) fortnightly newspaper New Times. So what a wonderful surprise package of ideas to read in John Clarke's new book, applying the conceptual analysis John first pioneered with the much-missed Stuart Hall to the present, or as John and Stuart would teach us the 'conjuncture'. An incredible intellectual treat to start the year.
From Bristol University Press here
12. If... Stands Up
Our Five Star pick for a read to start 2025 is Steve Bell's If... Stands Up. Part collection of Steve's final (lets hope not) five years of his If... cartoon strip and part diarisation of his appalling treatment by the Guardian for whom he'd provided both If.. and comment page cartoons for 42 years. The cartoon he was got rid of for was about Gaza, the Guardian editor deemed it anti-semitic, a charge Steve refutes in the most effective way imaginable: "As to the truth of whether my fatal cartoon was actually antisemitic or not. When the Israeli cartoonists' association asked that very question, and took a vote on it, that vote was unanimous: it was not. And I will take that opinion over that of a gaggle of Guardian editors any day of the week." And in their ill-gotten cause those same editors have replaced Steve's artistic sharpness on the comment pages with the effortlessly bland while If... hasn't been replaced at all, these hapless editors discovering, too late, it's irreplaceable. Never mind, on p181 we were delighted to read " My friends at Philosophy Football have helped keep me sane, as well as active, by suggesting more and more daft merchandising ideas". To which we can only add, happy to oblige Steve!
From Verso books here
Philosophy Football's daft Steve Bell merchandising ideas from here
Note Almost all book links in this review offer special discounts. None of these links are to Amazon, if you can avoid giving money to a tax-dodging company that seeks to prevent their employees from joining a trade union please do so.
Mark Perryman is the co-founder of the self-styled 'sporting outfitters of distinction' aka Philosophy Football