London Socialist Historians Group

18th February

Bookmarks the socialist bookshop is marking 50 years of socialist bookselling this weekend with a celebration in central London.

From its original Finsbury Park shop to the current one at 1 Bloomsbury St Bookmarks has ensured that the left and the labour movement have been well red down the years.

The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research just up the road from the bookshop, send solidarity greetings. Bookmarks is one of the best place to find books on socialist history, across a range of subjects and issues. It has an important role to play as a new wave of industrial struggle arises in Britain.

Brecht, A Worker Reads History

A Worker Reads History

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.
So many questions.