By Michael Faulkner - 02.09.14

The government’s promised launch of a four-year long commemoration of World War One kicked off with a salvo from Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove. He set the tone of what we may expect by shooting down the popular TV satirical/historical spoof of the 1980s, “Black Adder”, which parodied several hundred years of British history, culminating in in a final episode with the whole cast “going over the top” to collective annihilation on the western front. He then had a go at Joan Littlewood’s popular musical of the 1960s “Oh What a Lovely War”, which charted the course of the conflict and its impact on the participants through the changing...

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By Michael Faulkner – 01.12.14

The falsification of history is nothing new. “Falsification” means more than an interpretation of history that may be biased in one direction or another. Indeed, it is inevitable that proponents of, for example, the Whig view of history will differ fundamentally about the selection and interpretation of facts and events from those committed to a Marxist perspective. Falsifying history means deliberately suppressing facts, twisting or distorting the historical record so as to present a systematically untruthful account intended to mislead. It is to concoct a body of lies intended to serve the interests of those...

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By Michael Faulkner - 12.08.13

On the 27th of November, London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, gave the annual Margaret Thatcher lecture to an appreciative audience of the former prime minister’s devotees, organized by the right-wing think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies. It is no secret that...

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By Michael Faulkner - 11.17.13

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”               V.I. Lenin. The State and Revolution.

“The Politics of the Unpolitical” was the title of a collection of essays written in the 1940s by the English anarchist poet and art critic, Sir Herbert Read. He was the only anarchist to receive a...

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By Michael Faulkner – 11.03.13

It is tempting to extend the pun by describing the close cooperation between the United States’ NSA and the United Kingdom’s GCHQ in snooping on their own people and the rest of the world, as the USSR – the United Spies Special Relationship. In the past, Letter from the UK has been very skeptical about the “special relationship” that is claimed...

 

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By Michael Faulkner - 10.20.13

The Daily Mail has long held pride of place amongst British newspapers as the self-styled champion of the middle classes. Unlike the more vulgar tabloids, it likes to be regarded as respectable and serious. With its weekend sister paper, The Mail on Sunday, it seeks to project itself as representative of “the best of British”...

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