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<\/p>\nAT THE launch of this timely graphic \u201chistory of Britain shaped by the people\u201d in the parliamentary annexe Portcullis House, Jeremy Corbyn made the point \u2014 and he should know\u2014 that change has never originated from within the walls of the Palace of Westminster.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\nIt has always come, he said, as a result of struggles by ordinary people outside Parliament across the length and breadth of the country and, in his foreword to the book, Corbyn says he believes it will stimulate debate and learning from the struggles it depicts which, in turn, will empower as much as they\u2019ll inform.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s put his money where his mouth is \u2014 under his arm were four copies he had just bought for \u201cthe instruction of the younger members\u201d of his own family.<\/p>\n
Sean Michael Wilson and Robert Brown\u2019s 10 historical episodes have been narrated and drawn under the observant eye of the GFTU\u2019s general secretary Doug Nicholls and the union federation deserves much credit for getting the project off the ground.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\nThe Many Not the Few consists of separate, compact \u2014 and occasionally light-hearted \u2014 conversations between veteran trade unionist Joe and his granddaughter Arushi as they discuss the most significant instances of popular rebellion in British history from the Peasants\u2019 Revolt of 1381 on.<\/p>\n
The New Model Army, the Levellers and the Chartists all come under scrutiny, along with post-WWII Britain, the golden years of trade unionism in the 1960s, Thatcherism, the 1984-85 miners\u2019 strike, the slow decline of unions in the following decade and their renaissance in the last few years, particularly since Corbyn\u2019s election as Labour Party leader. Even the McDonald’s strikers get a thumbs-up from Joe.<\/p>\n
The book begins with a visionary quote from peasants\u2019 leader John Ball \u2014 uttered nearly five centuries before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto \u2014 that is particularly apposite now: \u201cThings cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all goods are held in common and until there will be neither serfs nor gentlemen and we shall be equal.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\nThe ensuing hugely eloquent narratives are embellished by Brown\u2019s animated drawing style, which supports the storytelling through the dynamic composition of frames and brilliant characterisations.<\/p>\n
Protagonists include figures such as Oliver Cromwell, John Bunyan, Chartist Feargus O\u2019Connor, Marx, Lenin, Engels, \u201cRed\u201d Ellen Wilkinson and Michael Foot and they\u2019re well served by Wilson\u2019s succinct and elegant text.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout a knowledge of the past, there is no future,\u201d the truism has it and that certainly sums up the significance of this excellent volume.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, it will be made widely available to young people through local or school libraries and digital publishing platforms like Issuu or Yumpu online.<\/p>\n
Their future rests entirely on their understanding of the past and the time for that is now.<\/p>\n
This review was first published in the Morning Star.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n