The coming of the Soviet war scare in 1927 obliged all communist parties to spring to the defence of the world's first socialist state. Kick-started by Britain's severance of diplomatic relations in May, clear emphasis was placed from the very beginning on the role the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) would play in combating a supposed British-led invasion of Soviet Russia. This article argues that the CPGB exhibited a distinctly sluggish approach to the war scare. Focus on the Russian war threat throughout 1927 was mitigated by the attention paid towards ongoing British intervention in China. Furthermore, though expected to welcome an 'imperialist' conflict as an opportunity to subvert the armed forces, thus creating a revolutionary situation, many British communists gained the Comintern's ire in refusing to adopt such a strategy. The war scare, waging in ever greater force after 1927, came to be subsumed into the wider tenets of 'class against class'. As such, this article argues that the tensions that engulfed the CPGB in the years between 1928 and 1929 over this new political doctrine included an anti-militarist dimension, with internal dissension over the war scare a key feature in the Comintern's decision to remove much of the CPGB's leadership by the end of 1929.
This article examines the survival strategies employed by the widows of railway workers in Argentina during the early twentieth century. Rather than portraying these women as passive recipients of assistance from trade unions or railway companies, this study highlights their active agency in securing financial support. Through petitions, legal claims, and persistent negotiations, widows sought compensation, pensions, or employment opportunities to sustain their households after the loss of their husbands, many of whom had died in work-related accidents. While railway companies often resisted granting compensation, widows strategically navigated bureaucratic and legal structures, sometimes leveraging union support or mobilizing collective solidarity. Their actions challenge conventional narratives of working-class women's dependence, revealing instead a landscape of struggle, resilience, and negotiation. Ultimately, this study contributes to broader discussions on gender, labour, and social protection in industrializing Latin America. It sheds new light on how widows intervened and participated in the construction of union senses and practices of solidarity advocating for their rights in a male-dominated sphere.
This essay introduces the key themes of the special issue Anti-Imperialism and the Global Left: New Appraisals, edited by Lorenzo Costaguta, Justine Cousin, Camille Fauroux, and Thomas van Gaalen. The authors review existing scholarship on left-wing anti-imperialism and detail the interventions of the five articles published in the issue. Arguing that left-wing anti-imperialism is a fruitful lens to pursue the decolonization of the history of the left, they conclude by suggesting avenues for further research.
This article examines how Corsican nationalism reshaped trade union practice through the Sindicatu di i Travagliadori Corsi (Corsican Workers' Union, STC), founded in 1984 after local activists broke with mainstream French confederations. Drawing on archival sources and oral histories, it traces the STC's evolving stance toward immigration and non-Corsican workers during the turbulent 1980s. The union initially pursued an openly ethnic agenda - 'Corsicanization of jobs' - that framed mainland French migration as settler colonialism and sought to reserve employment for native islanders. By the decade's end, however, the STC had reframed this demand as a call for equal opportunity for all workers living in Corsica, formally abandoning ethnic membership rules and admitting to its ranks workers from mainland France and North Africa. Despite this rhetorical shift, North African migrants remained marginal: they joined in small numbers and never reached leadership positions, highlighting persistent racial segmentation in Corsica's labour market. The case of the STC illustrates a form of 'conditional universalism', in which formal inclusion depends on alignment with nationalist goals, offering new insight into the coexistence of class solidarity and minority-nationalist politics on Europe's periphery.
