This article will feature in Issue 37: Oppression and Resistance Classical Greece has long been perceived by modern Western countries as the birthplace of democracy, and has been used to shape and justify Eurocentric concepts of identity and political thought. When asked to imagine the Ancient Greek world, images of beautifully carved white marble statues, Continue Reading
‘Ghost town’, Music and Culture in Resistance to Thatcherism, by Phoebe Myers
No British politician of the last century has provoked such a visceral response within the music community as Thatcher. Countless artists took aim at her directly, but Thatcher was more than just a figure to be name dropped. She was a common enemy, a target for the malaise of the time, and a bogeyman figure, whose presence in music was felt if not seen. Artists used music to respond to societal rupture and economic deprivation at the hands of her government.
From Rosa Parks to Roy Hackett: Tracing the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963, by Emily Hunt
On hearing the phrase ‘bus boycott’, for most people, a certain plethora of images would spring to mind. The determined Rosa Parks sitting next to a white passenger on the bus, white policemen conducting her subsequent arrest, Martin Luther King in his prime protesting on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama. All images which constitute the most significant, and successful example of resistance to oppression in modern Western history. Replace those names and faces with the likes of Paul Stephenson, Guy Bailey and Roy Hackett. It’s probable that the average person has never heard of these people; nor could they put a name to a face. And this is exactly the problem – The Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 has slipped out of mainstream modern history. It may be omnipresent in the minds of those who witnessed it upfront in Bristol, but is mostly absent from the minds of young historians and from school curriculums today, despite its position as one of the most symbolic moments in Black British history.
Reality and Perspective in The Battle of Algiers (1966), By Daniel Collins
As if composed of a lost set of newsreels, it evokes an observational truth similar in style to guerilla filmmaking – Pontecorvo calls this “the dictatorship of the truth”. He achieves this truth through meticulous reconstruction, using real life locations, such as rebuilding bombsites, and non-professional actors, including petty thieves and a former National Liberation Front (FLN) leader.
Tony Mason’s Passion of the People, Book Review by Jamie Greer
Many European football fans view South America as the ultimate embodiment of football as much more than just a game, with incredible fan culture and intimate relationships between football and politics. In Passion of the People (1994), Tony Mason seeks to study the origins of the beautiful game in the continent and examine the accuracy of this romanticised depiction.