Author Archives

Presenter and contributor on TV history and science documentaries, award shortlisted author, blogger, YouTuber, former BBC News producer. Topics of interest: Knights Templar, royal scandals, LGBT history, true crime, news and current affairs.

• The Falkands War: the Left’s messy response

  By Tony McMahon on December 20, 2020 • ( 0 )

  

  The Falklands War presented a dilemma for the political Left in the UK in 1982 including those on the Marxist left

• Fascism in Chile in 1973 – could it happen again?

  By Tony McMahon on December 17, 2020 • ( 0 )

  

  In 1973, 46 years of democracy ended in Chile with a coup d’etat and a military dictatorship installed under General Pinochet

• Why did Portugal have a revolution in 1974?

  By Tony McMahon on November 30, 2020 • ( 2 )

  

  The 1974 Portuguese Revolution saw 80% of the economy nationalised but the role of the Community Party ensured the reversal of that policy

• Shocking betrayal of Polish Solidarity in 1982

  By Tony McMahon on November 28, 2020 • ( 0 )

  

  In 1980 at the Lenin shipyard in the Polish city of Gdansk – workers formed a new independent trade union movement they called Solidarity – Solidarność in Polish. But not everybody on the British Left welcomed this development with open arms.

• 1979 Iran revolution – a Marxist perspective

  By Tony McMahon on November 27, 2020 • ( 1 )

  

  The Iran revolution in 1979 was taken over by Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs which most on the Left saw as a reactionary development

• The Iranian revolution – a Marxist perspective

  By Tony McMahon on November 27, 2020 • ( 0 )

  

  1979 saw the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the coming to power of Ayatollah Khomeini – an event that split the Left inside the country

• Trotsky and the horror of the Holocaust

  By Tony McMahon on November 27, 2020 • ( 0 )

  

  Leon Trotsky could not have anticipated the horror of the Holocaust as he corresponded with Jewish socialists before WWII

• Liberals versus Militant in Liverpool – 1980s

  By Tony McMahon on November 26, 2020 • ( 0 )

  

  1980s Liverpool saw a huge political battle between the Militant dominated Labour Party and the Liberals in the city

• Rejecting the sectarian politics of Northern Ireland

  By Tony McMahon on November 25, 2020 • ( 0 )

  

  Unlike the sectarian politics of Republicanism and Loyalism, the Marxist analysis of the Troubles in Northern Ireland emphasised the class division over religion

• Karl Marx – the Euro philosopher!

  By Tony McMahon on April 28, 2019 • ( 0 )

  

  The ideas of Karl Marx were a mix of German philosophy, English economics and French politics so very Euro in its ideological composition