Reading Wars. Don Herzog. LSE Press. 2026.

Resurging censorship

Late in the 2025 autumn semester at Texas A&M University, administrators decided to clamp down on curricula outside of their defined established norms. After months of relentless attacks by President Trump against transgender identity during his 2024 presidential campaign and signing of an Executive Order in The White House on Inauguration Day (20 January 2025) to proclaim the existence of two and only two genders – male and female, the emboldened conservative leadership at Texas A&M forced Martin Peterson – a professor of philosophy and ethics – to remove The Symposium by Plato (387 BCE) from his syllabus.

Why? In The Symposium the ancient Greek philosopher (who founded The Academy, the first higher learning institute in world history for the purpose of seeking truth) not only characterised homosexuality as a constituent phenomenon of humanity. He also declared “in times past our nature was not the same as it is now, but otherwise…there were three kinds of human being and not two as nowadays, male and female. No, there was also a third kind, a combination of both genders.” Rather than allow students to consider Plato and his postulation, the university banned the text and forbade the faculty from introducing any literature unsupportive of gender binarism.

Herzog examines how elites maintain hegemony by denying rival groups education and the power to read and publish words of dissenting opinion, and illuminates the varied dynamics behind the suppression of knowledge.

In a new and engaging monograph Reading Wars (2026), Don Herzog examines how elites maintain hegemony by denying rival groups education and the power to read and publish words of dissenting opinion, and illuminates the varied dynamics behind the suppression of knowledge. Herzog, professor of law at The University of Michigan, succeeds in portraying how, despite centuries of egalitarian progress, the battle over books, articles and pamphlets remains relevant. The book complements the new, expanding scholarship on the politics of knowledge control including Dangerous Ideas by Eric Berkowitz (2021), Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden (2022) and Free Speech by Jacob Mchangama (2025).

Suppressed abolitionist literature

From the initial chapter (“Stop The Presses!”), Herzog examines the plight of institutional critics and their battle to issue written dissent. By the 1830s, African chattel slaves, whom had been stripped of their identities, culture and language, had languished on plantations in The South for more than two-hundred years (1619). After the American Revolution (1775-1783), opponents of slavery became more vocal with each passing decade. In 1832, Elijah Lovejoy launched the St. Louis Observer and published articles critical of slavery and slaveholders – a less than welcome development in the slave state of Missouri. After a mob destroyed his office and threatened his life, he relocated to Illinois (a free state) and continued his diatribes against slave power in the Alton Observer.

As the US had been founded on a compromise to permit slavery, many citizens both north and south demanded either restrictions or the complete stifling of anti-slavery publications to preserve the union. This was a case of censorship for the supposed “greater good.” The intrepid Lovejoy refused to relent, and another angry mob appeared, and he would lose his life in a murderous assault for his ideals. Thirty years before the American Civil War (1861-1865), the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution (1791), which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” had begun to buckle under political division and intolerance (9-13).

Translating the Bible for the masses

In Chapter Two “Reading Bibles, and Burning Them,” Herzog compellingly highlights the contentious row between The Vatican and its dissenters in early 16th century England over whether the Bible ought to be translated for commoners to read and study. According to The Church, the masses, who remained largely illiterate, semi-literate and/or poorly educated, would likely misinterpret scripture and thus commit sins. William Tyndale disagreed. After completing a degree at Oxford, mastering seven languages and pursuing advanced studies at Cambridge, Tyndale translated The Bible from Hebrew and Greek in 1525, and copies of the banned translation pierced the borders of England and Europe from Antwerp – his selected city of exile. For his academic rebellion, the courts of The Holy Roman Empire under Charles V found Tyndale guilty of heresy for espousing views contrary to Catholic doctrine, and the Oxford scholar lived his final months in prison prior to being burned at the stake – a precursor to the fate of Elijah Lovejoy for the same devotion to free thought three hundred years later (33-40).

From the spike of printed words critical of the status quo on both sides of the Atlantic, financial and cultural elites fiercely opposed societal liberalisation.

After two subsequent, reinforcing chapters (“Censoring Protestants” and “Keeping Black People from Reading”) exploring how Protestants and Catholics in England and Europe and pro-slavery and anti-slavery coalitions in the US sparred to attain narrative supremacy, Chapter Five (“Spreading the Word(s): Britain”) and Chapter Six (“Spreading the Word(s): America”), detail the rise of the middle classes and their thrust to expand access to literature and democratise religious and political knowledge in the emerging public sphere.

No democracy without a free press

While the 1832 Reform Act enfranchised large segments of the English working class, a multitude of other formal and informal schools reduced illiteracy and ushered in an age of mass consumption of newspapers, magazines and books (108-111). In the US, both the proliferation of public schools and libraries and the noble effort by the Freedmen’s Bureau to empower former slaves through education (1865-1872) widened the concept of “We The People.” From the spike of printed words critical of the status quo on both sides of the Atlantic, however, financial and cultural elites fiercely opposed societal liberalisation (113-114, 129-135). In the final pages of the book, Herzog briefly surveys the religious right-wing agenda to ban books in counties across the US and offers insight into the threats to freedom of thought (138-141 and 153-162).

In his essay “Freedom and the Colleges” (May 1940), Cambridge philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) wrote:

As soon as a censorship is imposed upon the opinions which teachers may avow, education ceases to serve this purpose and tends to produce, instead of a nation of men [and women], a herd of fanatical bigots.

From that standpoint, Professor Peterson resigned from Texas A&M and joined the faculty of another college due to imposed censorship and the elimination of Women’s and Gender Studies programs at the university. In academia, the dual filing of federal lawsuits (again on specious grounds) and withholding of critical funds from top American universities by the Trump administration successfully forced many colleges to alter their curriculums and settle out-of-court. For the institutions of higher learning that capitulated, it constituted a victory for intellectual tyranny and a cravenly permitted abridgement of the First Amendment. For anyone seeking to review the contested space of the written word and its political implications from the Renaissance to the present day, Reading Wars delivers a lively account on a subject at the core of fundamental human rights and free societies.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Don Herzog will launch the book at an LSE event on Tuesday 9 June. Book now.

Read an article by Don Herzog about the book published on LSE Impact.

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Drugs, Race, and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law: When Enemies Become Victims. Insa Lee Koch. Oxford University Press. 2026.

Insa Lee Koch will speak at a panel event at LSE, Who is Britain really saving in the fight against modern slavery? on Wednesday 6 May 2026. Find out more and register.

What does it mean when young people once cast as dangerous criminals – indeed, as enemies of the nation – are suddenly redefined as victims of exploitation, even as “modern slaves”? This question sits at the heart of Drugs, Race, and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law, an open-access book based on long-term ethnography. The book explores how the British state has come to “discover” victims in need of safeguarding in the figure of the exploited drugs runner It suggests why we need to remain critical of the language of slavery and exploitation against the backdrop of Britain’s history of transatlantic slavery and racial empire, and their ongoing afterlives.

Over the past decade, the UK has witnessed a profound transformation in how it understands certain forms of drug dealing, particularly those associated with so-called “county lines” networks. These networks, involving the distribution of drugs from urban centres to smaller towns and rural areas, have become the focus of intense political, legal, and media attention. Crucially, many of those involved at the lowest levels – often racialised and working-class teenage boys, and some of the most under-protected and over-criminalised populations under the government’s ”war on gangs” – are now increasingly framed not simply as offenders, but as victims of “criminal exploitation” and even as “modern slaves” under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

The rise of “modern slavery” at home

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 marked a turning point in English law. Initially designed with the figure of the trafficked migrant in mind, it provided an unprecedent piece of legislation, one that made the fight against so-called modern slavery a national priority within Britain’s own borders. Crucially, the act offers not only prosecution tools for those accused of modern slavery offences but also a defence for those who have committed certain offences as a consequence of their exploitation. Today, the largest group of “modern slaves” identified through the government’s own mechanisms are British nationals, many of them young people involved in the regional heroin and crack cocaine networks that were labelled “county lines” in 2015.

The identification of modern slaves in the figure of the drugs runner has been widely framed as a progressive shift. But how does this narrative sit with those at its receiving end, and what forms of power does it obscure?

The identification of modern slaves in the figure of the drugs runner has been widely framed as a progressive shift across the political spectrum. Rather than punishing some of the most over-criminalised and racialised groups under the “war on gangs”, the state is now seen to recognise their vulnerability and extend protection. This shift is often celebrated as moral progress – evidence, even, of a post-racial Britain moving beyond its past. But how does this narrative sit with those at its receiving end, and what forms of power does it obscure?

Ethnography as an entry point

My starting point is the families and young men themselves, living in Britain’s urban post-industrial communities shaped by decades of welfare withdrawal, austerity, and structural abandonment. These are multicultural working-class areas, often with deep ties to Britain’s colonial past through histories of migration. It was in my long-term field site – first explored in my earlier work and published open access – that, in 2016, I encountered my first so-called “slave”: a fourteen-year-old boy identified by police as exploited and trafficked.

Others followed, all displaying similar patterns. Intrigued by this shift, and driven by their mothers’ desperate pleas to protect their children, I undertook a multi-sited research project that over five years took me from homes and streets to police stations, law enforcement offices, legal chambers, and Crown Courts – where modern slavery trials are now being heard. Throughout, my primary reference point remains the families and young men themselves, particularly their experiences of being failed by the state’s promises of victimhood and care. This perspective anchors the book’s central critique.

From criminals to slaves

A central argument of the book is that the move from “enemy” to “victim” does not mark a clean break from punitive logics. Rather, it reconfigures and deepens them in the name of safeguarding. This logic of victimhood is far from new. As I argue, the language of safeguarding carries echoes of colonial logics of saviourism, which have long cast racialised populations as in need of saving – for their own good and from their own kind. Today, this logic is revived in relation to Britain’s postcolonial, racialised working-class youth, framed as part of a colour-blind and even-handed tale of protecting the most vulnerable.

The fight against ‘modern slavery’ intensifies multi-agency data sharing, surveillance, and pre-emptive policing in racialised and working-class communities

My ethnography traces how this ideology of victimhood plays out in practice. Among frontline professionals, the fight against “modern slavery” intensifies multi-agency data sharing, surveillance, and pre-emptive policing in racialised and working-class communities. Professionals become involved in the intimate details of young people’s lives, interpreting friendship, care, and intimacy through criminal categories such as “mate crime”, “cuckooing”, and “exploitation”. At the same time, anti-trafficking frameworks enable the prosecution of drug dealers not just for drug offences, but for human trafficking – as “slave masters” – recasting them as the ultimate “enemy within”.

Glodi Wabelua & the figure of the “slave master”

In spring 2019, I followed what was the first prosecution of its kind in a jury-led trial: the trial of Wabelua, Alford, and Karamera for human trafficking. The prosecution argued that the three young men, aged 21 at the time of offending, had trafficked six children and one vulnerable adult for the purposes of drug distribution. None of the alleged child victims testified. Instead, the case relied heavily on phone data. In April 2019, Glodi Wabelua became the first person convicted by a jury under modern slavery legislation in this context.

Britain’s ‘discovery’ of modern slavery can be viewed as part of a broader process of state-making at a time of profound racial and economic crisis.

But how does this official narrative of justice align with the experiences of those convicted? In the book, I centre Glodi’s own account – one that was largely absent from the trial. Having come to the UK from Congo at the age of five and grown up on a London estate, his story complicates the stark division between victim and perpetrator assumed by the law. When we met in 2023 and began working together, he described a life shaped by the same structural conditions attributed to those labelled “victims”: poverty, exclusion, and drug debt. His account is one where he was only one step removed from the victims – holding the phone line as opposed to running the drugs.

Race, empire & slavery’s afterlives

Glodi’s conviction reveals not only the difficulty of applying anti-trafficking law where the line between victim and offender is often vanishingly thin. It also exposes the fragility of the claim that Britain is now “post-racial” – a claim advanced, for instance, by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities in 2021, in the wake of the global Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the police’s murder of George Floyd in the US. Having reviewed evidence of racial disparity across different domains, the Commission argued that the UK is a model for other “white-majority countries”.

Seen in this context, Britain’s “discovery” of modern slavery can be viewed as part of a broader process of state-making at a time of profound racial and economic crisis. At the very moment the British state identifies slavery as a central problem to be tackled, it does so without reckoning with its own histories of transatlantic slavery or their enduring afterlives in the continued state racism that the young men and their families confront. Instead, slavery has been reconstructed as a contemporary wrong, projecting not only the figure of the “slave” but that of the “slave” master – the very antithesis of liberal freedom and the ultimate enemy within. It is this analytical move – and the politics of imperial denial it entails – that lies at the heart of the book.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain. Sara B. Hobolt and James Tilley. Oxford University Press. 2026.

The Britain that Brexit built

Not long after the 2016 Brexit Referendum, we were at a family gathering where I learned that a couple of my relatives had voted Leave. I didn’t tell my wife until we got home. Why? Because I knew she’d have been upset, maybe even angry. Ten years later, I’m pretty certain from one or two things they’ve said now and then that those relatives are no longer entirely convinced that they or the country made the right choice. As for my wife, I really don’t need to ask. If anything, she’s even more sure than she was back then that Brexit was a stupid idea foisted on a country by opportunistic, morally dubious politicians who took cynical advantage of peoples’ often wilful ignorance and tapped into their prejudices.

Leave and Remain as identities

Hobolt and Tilly’s largely quantitative but always approachably-written book makes it clear that an awful lot of Brits have, like my wife, stuck to their guns rather than, like my relatives, reconsidered their position. By exploiting a wide range of surveys (including panel and tracker surveys from YouGov which they tailored themselves, as well as others taken off the peg from polls conducted for, among other outfits, the British Election Study and the Centre for Social Investigation) the authors show definitively that the majority of people who voted in 2016 and are still around, have retained their Leave and Remain identities. Moreover, they make it clear that, in the ensuing years, the divide “went well beyond a disagreement over EU membership and became a lens through which people interpreted the economy, democracy, and each other’s character.”

Just as importantly, they claim (and amply demonstrate) that the 2016 referendum did not merely unleash forces that had lain dormant in the British electorate for decades, as many – including Sobolewska and Ford and Clarke et al – have suggested. Rather, the referendum and the arguments that followed it actually engendered those identities and the ingroup attachment and outgroup hostility that, sadly, accompany them. Indeed, that is part of their wider claim (again one that is supported both by the research of other scholars and by the empirical evidence upon which they draw) that issues can give rise to identities that encompass a whole host of attitudes and values – if, that is, certain conditions are met.

And in Brexit they most certainly were. Brits were always more lukewarm about the EU than many of their European counterparts, but before 2016 they really weren’t (in marked contrast to the Conservative Party, for example) particularly exercised about it. The referendum and its immediate aftermath changed all that, transforming this “indifferent scepticism” into a diluted version of the affective polarisation in the United States that Lilly Mason, among others, has written about so powerfully and presciently.

That was because the vote involved a conflict which was “clear, salient and binary, intensifying group boundaries” (which they label issue contestation). It saw people engaged in “behaviours like voting [and, later on, offline and online activism] that reinforce[d] their identity and commitment to a group” (issue expression). And Brexit was one of those issues that “cuts across traditional party lines, allowing new identities to emerge outside the existing partisan structure” (issue alignment). Yes, there was some correlation between attitudes toward the EU and the way people voted in the referendum; but, Hobolt and Tilley stress, “it was the act of voting that created Brexit identities. Remainers and Leavers were both children of the referendum”.

The referendum’s legacies

This is not all they show. Indeed, the book is full of insights that help explain the party and electoral politics of the last ten years. It is now increasingly common, for example, for political scientists to argue that, underlying the evident fragmentation of the country’s party system, there are essentially two competing blocs comprised, on the one hand, of the self-styled progressive parties (the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems) and, on the other, their right wing opponents (the Conservatives and Reform UK). Hobolt and Tilley show that, given how long-lasting and encompassing the identities triggered by Brexit have proved to be, this underlying logic has a lot to do with the sorting that took place in the aftermath of the referendum – particularly as it became clearer to voters after 2017 which side of the divide different parties were on.

Social media, incidentally, doesn’t appear to have had anywhere near as much influence on reinforcing those identities as some of us might have assumed. The “echo chambers” that really matter, Hobolt and Tilley show, are our real-life friends and family, not folk we follow on our platforms of choice. Where we live doesn’t count for much either, although personality traits do. And so strong is our very human desire to belong that, rather than adjust our views to fit the facts (for example, on the economy), we bend reality so that it accords with what we presume is our side’s take.

They also show that Remainers are significantly more likely to have retained their issue-based identity than Leavers. This they convincingly explain by pointing to the very fact of losing being more emotionally painful, Additionally, they remind us that the genius of the Leave campaign, which was to keep things as vague as possible about what would come next, also meant that by no means all the winners were satisfied with the “messy reality” of Brexit.

Accordingly, the book also throws up a counterfactual that may well haunt many readers: what might have happened had Remain won? This is something the authors, understandably, only touch on briefly. By their logic, the referendum would presumably still have given birth to the identities they talk about. But – given the fact that, had it gone the other way, it would not have triggered feverish debate about when and how to effect the UK’s withdrawal – whether it would have seen those identities harden quite as implacably as they did, who knows? Personally, I suspect not. Then again, after reading this excellent book, I’m more aware than ever that any guess on that score will, inevitably, be the product of my own Brexit bias.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Building Homes, Communities, and Neighbourhoods. Anne Power. Policy Press. 2025. 

How housing reflects social life

“Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.” – Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

This passage from Oliver Twist draws readers into the cramped interiors and precarious lives of the urban poor, making housing conditions inseparable from social injustice. It is fitting, then, that Dickens’s world serves as a touchstone for Anne Power, Professor Emerita of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. As its title signals, Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Building Homes, Communities, and Neighbourhoods shifts attention from buildings to the social life they sustain – or fail to sustain. For Power, housing is not simply infrastructure, but a complex combination of stability, dignity, and belonging. She argues that the wider role of housing involves valuing and protecting the lowest-income communities. Dickens’s London offers an early literary record of what happens when the ground beneath those communities collapses. 

The way housing is designed, developed, and managed is central to creating and sustaining communities. Housing policy, in short, shapes collective life.  

The book’s authority rests on experience as much as analysis, drawing on decades of work in housing systems, urban regeneration, and low-income neighbourhoods. This includes her leadership of LSE Housing and Communities and direct involvement in improvement initiatives including the 1966 “End Slums” campaign with Martin Luther King and the Urban Task Force (1998). Power is extraordinarily well placed to write on housing, and in this book, she expertly combines policy expertise with practical knowledge. The resulting book offers a precise mixed-methods design with apt case studies and persuasive policy arguments, and speaks to students, scholars, and practitioners alike. 

The book advances an expansive understanding of shelter as a constant across human history, from “prehistoric cave dwellings to rudimentary huts, portable tent homes, stone cottages, tenements, and terraces, to semi-detached houses and high-rise blocks” (3). This long view allows her to treat housing as a social process rather than a static object, one that includes informal and precarious dwellings alongside formal stock. This dynamic view of shelter is echoed by fellow LSE professor Claire Mercer’s The Suburban Frontier (2024), which details suburban growth and squatting in Dar es Salaam, and Carolyn Whitzman’s Home Truths (2024) that explores Canada’s housing crisis. Power’s central claim gives the book its force: “the way housing is designed, developed, and managed is central to creating and sustaining communities” (vi). Housing policy, in short, shapes collective life.  

Housing as key to social reform 

In the first section, Power identifies the influence of Robert Owen (1771-1858), founder of utopian socialism and among the first to connect fair, accessible housing to the creation of “a productive and cooperative society that took care of basic needs while protecting and advancing people’s wellbeing” (11). This framing is apt, as Owen emphasised mutual respect between workers and supervisors that extended to renters and social landlords. Likewise, social reformer Octavia Hill (1838-1912), co-founder of the National Trust (1895), demonstrated how attentive management, affordable rents, and decent conditions could improve everyday life. Her hands on approach to property management proved “if you treat tenants with respect and fairness, you could establish a two-way trust that would keep your properties in good condition and your tenants happy” (15). Together, Owen and Hill establish the foundations for a collective and sustainable approach to housing managment. 

Where the first section establishes these reform principles, the second turns to 20^th-century overcrowding and demolition. Power details the 1974 financial crisis that nearly bankrupted the UK and the austerity measures that followed. Citing examples like the Charteris Road community and Finsbury Park in North Islington, she links economic retrenchment to intensifying social problems, clearance schemes, and state-led rehousing. Immigrants and newcomers were frequently excluded from these plans and pushed into cramped, deteriorating private rentals, exacerbating existing inequalities. Legislative responses – the Race Relations Act (1968) and the Homeless Persons Act (1977) – sought to define “priority need” and address discrimination, but policy often lagged behind lived conditions. 

Place-based investment, shortcomings in housing provision 

Section three, “Targeting the Poorest Areas,” shifts to the 1997 election of the New Labour government and its stated commitment to “equality of opportunity” (95). Tony Blair’s platform – “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, “education, education, education,” and the insistence that “no-one should be disadvantaged by where they live” – folded housing into broader neighbourhood renewal strategies. Despite Blair’s success offering low-income families supplemental support through tax credits, the Housing Benefit did not have the same effect. Power notes, “to prevent the risk of arrears…Housing Benefit was paid directly to landlords” (96). As such, the connection between landlord and tenant diminished, creating a “system that lacked mechanisms for picking up problems or generating responsibility” (96). By revealing the shortcomings of impersonal property management, Power emphasises the need to protect low-income communities from further decline. 

Power successfully illustrates that housing policy is never merely technical – it determines whether communities hold together or come apart.

The fourth and final section, “Changing the Basis of Welfare,” brings the argument into the 2000s and 2010s. Returning to the principles articulated by Hill and Owen, Power argues that long-term stability depends on community-based management grounded in fair rents, decent housing conditions, and trust between tenants and landlords. Writing through the 2008 financial crisis and the premiership of Gordon Brown – credited widely for stabilising the global financial system – Power notes both meaningful reductions in child and pensioner poverty and persistent shortcomings in affordable housing provision. Even so, she concludes that the thirteen years of New Labour government produced tangible, ground-level gains for low-income communities. 

A framework for reading marginalised neighbourhoods 

Ultimately, in Beyond Bricks and Mortar, Power asks readers to see housing as more than a physical or economic commodity; it is the social foundation on which dignity, stability, and belonging rest. Advocating a community-based approach to social housing, she grounds policy in respect, stewardship, and everyday care. Each case study tests this principle in practice, showing not only what fails but what works. Power successfully illustrates that housing policy is never merely technical – it determines whether communities hold together or come apart.

For scholars like me – currently writing a doctoral dissertation on the literatures of Canadian suburbs – this argument can apply in other contexts. Power’s attention to tenant-led networks, local organising, and the daily practices that sustain belonging offers a concrete framework for reading marginalised neighbourhoods. Her model travels well as a set of principles, though its reliance on the institutional strength of Britain’s social-housing sector may be harder to reproduce in more fragmented, market-led contexts. 

I see both the promise and the limits of that transfer in the neighbourhood of Jane-Finch in Toronto, where newcomers are attracted by affordable rents and transit access and where community groups, cultural events, and religious gatherings operate as infrastructures of care. Residents share information, resources, and rituals, building systems of support that counter the area’s persistent stigma as a crime-ridden periphery. Power’s work is a crucial contribution to the work of capturing such textured social life that goes far beyond the physical shelter and policies that try to contain it. 

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Anne Power will speak about the book at a public LSE event on Tuesday 3 March, The care economy and social housing. Find details and register to attend.

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Preventing Violence: The Past, Present and Future of the Public Health Approach. Keir Irwin-Rogers, Luke Billingham, Alistair Fraser, Fern Gillon, Susan McVie, and Tim Newburn. Policy Press. 2025. 

In 2018, London briefly overtook New York in monthly homicide rates. The media storm forced a significant shift in British criminal justice policy. After years of “tough on crime” rhetoric, the Home Office abruptly changed tack, announcing that serious violence would no longer be treated solely as a police matter but as a “public health” crisis. It was a promise to move away from reactive punishment and towards prevention, treating violence more like a contagion to be cured than as a sin to be punished. But five years on, has the reality matched the rhetoric? 

In Preventing Violence: The Past, Present and Future of the Public Health Approach, a team of leading criminologists offers the first comprehensive audit of this experiment. Drawing on the massive “Public Health, Youth and Violence Reduction” (PHYVR) project, the authors convey a verdict that is both empathetic to the practitioners involved and witheringly critical of the political context in which they operate. They argue that while the language of public health has been successfully institutionalised, its implementation remains fragile, contradictory, and often hobbled by a refusal to address the deep structural inequalities that fuel this violence. 

Adapting the “Scottish Miracle” of violence prevention

The book begins by framing its analysis within the context of the 2024 UK General Election and the Labour Party’s pledge to halve serious violent crime, leading to an analysis of the historical influence of Scotland. The authors deconstruct the so-called “Scottish Miracle,” a term coined by the media to describe a period between 2006 and 2015 during which Scotland experienced a staggering 48 per cent drop in violent crime and a 38 percent decline in murders. This success story became the blueprint for leaders in England and Wales, such as Sadiq Khan and Theresa May, who formally adopted the public health approach in 2018 and 2019. 

Scottish practitioners treated violence as a symptom of a failure in well-being rather than just a criminal justice failure. In England, however, VRUs were grafted onto a landscape scarred by a decade of austerity, where the social infrastructure required to prevent violence, such as youth clubs, mental health services, and secure housing, had been systematically dismantled.

But the authors argue that the transmission of the “Glasgow model” south of the border was imperfect. While England replicated the administrative machinery by establishing 20 regional Violence Reduction Units (VRUs), it largely failed to import the underlying social philosophy. In Scotland, the work was embedded in a deep-rooted “penal-welfarist” tradition that focused on the “needs” of children rather than their “deeds.” This culture helped the Scottish practitioners to treat violence as a symptom of a failure in well-being rather than just a criminal justice failure. In England, however, VRUs were grafted onto a landscape scarred by a decade of austerity, where the social infrastructure required to prevent violence, such as youth clubs, mental health services, and secure housing, had been systematically dismantled. Using the “Four Is” framework, the book lets us in on an imbalance; while the UK government has invested in interventions and institutional coordination, it has also neglected the macro-level inequalities that fuel violence, and this narrow focus means that, instead of addressing the root causes of the crisis, policymakers are often left perpetually managing its symptoms. As the authors remark, you cannot import a policy mechanism without also repairing the social safety net that supports it. 

Feeding the data-hungry beast 

The most compelling section of the book (Part II) takes us inside the newly formed VRUs. By conducting candid interviews with directors, the authors, in fact, identify the friction between the long-term logic of public health and the short-term spasms of politics. A public health approach is indeed generational work; it involves changing norms and healing trauma. Yet, VRU directors described being trapped on a treadmill of short-term funding cycles, often pushed to show immediate success to secure next year’s budget. One director vividly described this as the need to “feed the data-hungry beast,” noting that the demand for quarterly reductions in knife crime inevitably pushes units away from “upstream” prevention (tackling root causes) and back towards reactive, “downstream” interventions. 

This short-termism has led to what the authors call “interventionitis.” This is the tendency of policymakers to believe that deep-seated social problems can be solved by commissioning a patchwork of specific, time-limited “interventions,” a mentoring scheme here, a sports club there, rather than addressing the structural conditions of young people’s lives. 

The cycle of punitive prevention

The book’s most damning critique is its identification of “punitive prevention.” The authors focus on a schizophrenic policy landscape where the government extends a helping hand with one arm while tightening the handcuffs with the other. And at the exact moment the government was advocating for a trauma-informed public health approach, it was, at the same time, expanding coercive police powers, such as stop-and-search, and introducing restrictive measures like Knife Crime Prevention Orders (KCPOs). The authors argue convincingly that this duality undermines the trust necessary for public health work. How can a youth worker effectively engage a young person in a “supportive” intervention if that same person was aggressively stopped and searched on their way to the meeting?  

The “Four ‘I’s” plan for preventing violence 

Ideally, a critique should offer a solution, and Preventing Violence does that with its “Four ‘I’s” framework, where the authors argue that a genuine public health strategy must operate across four levels. First, inequalities. Addressing the macro-level disparities in wealth and opportunity. The authors are unapologetic that violence is a symptom of poverty, noting that destitution in the UK doubled between 2017 and 2022. Second is institutions. They call for rebuilding the crumbling services, schools, social care, and housing that should be supporting young people rather than excluding them. Third, interventions. The authors stress the importance of delivering high-quality, proper evidence-based programs, with the understanding they are only one part of the puzzle. Fourth is interactions. Focusing on the quality of relationships and by drawing on the concept of “mattering,” the authors argue that violence often stems from a sense of humiliation and insignificance. Prevention, therefore, requires creating interactions that make young people feel they have value and agency. 

Preventing Violence is an essential corrective to the glossy government reports that often dominate this field.

Preventing Violence is an essential corrective to the glossy government reports that often dominate this field. It is written with a clarity and exigency that makes it accessible to anyone generally concerned about the safety of our streets. If the book has a flaw, it is perhaps that its tight focus on “youth violence” (a term the authors themselves find problematic) leaves less room to explore how this framework applies to domestic or sexual violence. Nevertheless, given the political context of the “knife crime crisis” that spurred these policies, the focus is quite justified. 

In the end, Irwin-Rogers and his colleagues warn that while the public health approach has become the official orthodoxy, its institutional foundations are still fragile. It risks becoming a hollow brand, a way of dressing up old policing tactics in new, medicalised language. Yet, the book also offers a glimpse of what is possible. They remind us that the best way to stop a hand from being raised in violence is not to intercept it, but to ensure the person behind it has a life that they feel is worth living.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: SeventyFour on Shutterstock.

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Chloe Michelle Howarth will speak at a Q&A with LSE’s LGBTQ+ staff network, Spectrum on Wednesday 19 November from 12 to 1pm. It will take place in person and on Zoom. Find details and register to attend online.

Heap Earth Upon It. Chloe Michelle Howarth. Verve Books. 2025.

Places the counterculture didn’t reach 

The 1960s is a decade synonymous with radical change and rebellion again the status quo. It’s an era associated with civil rights movements: Black power, struggles for gay rights and women’s liberation. It also conjures a burgeoning counterculture, the overturning of traditional values, the embrace of psychedelia, hippie culture and free love. But at the same time as social and political change took hold around the world, many remained outside of it. Take, for instance, a village in rural Ireland, still without full electrification, caught in the grasp of the Catholic Church. 

I had to find a way to write about something that was not allowed to exist; to research something that had been erased from public life; to create a queer character who does not know what queerness is. 

Although elements of the “Swinging Sixties” found their way into the Irish zeitgeist, the reality of life in 1960s rural Ireland was rather removed from what was happening in other countries, especially when it comes to gay liberation. Isolated from the scarce gay-friendly pubs in Dublin, this quiet part of the world is where I chose to set my novel, Heap Earth Upon It (2025), a story of love, obsession, and repression. As in my previous work, I knew that I would be writing this novel from a sapphic lens. Setting the novel in this era made for an interesting challenge when creating queer characters. I had to find a way to write about something that was not allowed to exist; to research something that had been erased from public life; to create a queer character who does not know what queerness is. 

The entanglement of church and state 

Long before –  and long after – the 1960s, Ireland had great difficulty with the separation of church and state. Even after the official removal of the Catholic church from its “special position” in the mid-1970s, the values and influence of the church remained very much in place, dictating the lives of Irish people. The culture of Catholicism ran deep, and was difficult to untangle its conservative, traditional values from daily life. Women were forced to adhere to the marriage bar, and leave employment when they got married. Mixed race children were considered to be shameful and faced severe stigma and discrimination. Unmarried mothers were often taken to “laundries” run by the church, forced to work without pay through their pregnancies, and most often had their children taken from them by force, adopted into new families. This was an intolerant society that meted out severe consequences on those who failed to fall in line with its restrictions. 

Many queer Irish people were left with two options: either emigrate and leave Ireland behind, or choose a life of secrecy.

So, what of the queer Irish of the 1960s? Many queer Irish people were left with two options: either emigrate and leave Ireland behind, or choose a life of secrecy. Those who left made new lives for themselves in America, the UK, and beyond. Finding themselves in more progressive places, and using the anonymity of a new city, they were afforded opportunities that were not available to them at home. The Irish abroad were able to find community in queer Irish groups, such as the Irish Lesbian Network of the 1980s. The forthcoming, proud nature of membership of these groups is quite amazing considering the conservative, heteronormative background that these people came from. 

The invisibility of queerness 

For those who remained in Ireland, there were far fewer options, especially outside of Dublin. The Irish Gay Rights Movement was formed in the 1970s, with many members working behind the scenes, for fear of being publicly outed or losing their jobs. In the 1960s, such groups were not an option, and there seemed no alternative to a life of repression–  is it any wonder there was a phenomenon of bachelor farmers in Ireland?This invisibility and impossibility surrounding queerness removed a great deal of language from my vocabulary when writing about a queer character in this setting. Exploring the emotions and desires of a person falling in love or understanding their sexuality is very difficult without the proper language. Through writing this book, I came to realise that when society silences and makes queerness invisible, queer people can become invisible even to themselves. 

Queer rights in the 21^st century 

It is amazing to see that Ireland is no longer in this position. This year, Ireland celebrated ten years of marriage equality, after becoming the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote in 2015. It is a long way to have come, considering homosexuality was only decriminalised in Ireland in 1993. The country has turned around in regards to LGBTQ+ rights, with openly gay Leo Varadkar serving as Taoiseach (the country’s prime minister) for five years, and 100,000 people in attendance at Dublin Pride in 2025.  

As Ireland moves away from its homophobic past, the countries that the queer Irish once fled to are becoming increasingly unsafe for queer people

Ironically, as Ireland moves away from its homophobic past, the countries that the queer Irish once fled to are becoming increasingly unsafe for queer people. It is startling to see the current erasure of queerness in the US and the UK. With trans rights being debated and fears for the future of equal marriage, prominent queer figures – such as Rosie O’Donnell – have taken the decision to leave their home countries to seek a less conservative life in Ireland. It would have been impossible to imagine such a reversal in 1960s Ireland. But this mainstreaming of intolerance elsewhere, and the fact that homosexuality is still illegal in 64 countries worldwide, means that invisible queerness is by no means behind us. It has followed us all into the present.  

Note: This essay gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland on Flickr.

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Combining Efforts: 200 Years of Trade Union History is showing at LSE Library from 15 September 2025 to 31 January 2026.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the passing of the 1825 Combination Act. The Act legalised the formation of trade unions in the UK, but the recognition of workers’ voices and campaigns remained contested. This exhibition traces some of the history of the development of trade unions through years of struggle, triumph, defeat and resilience. 

Alongside historical campaigns, it also shines a spotlight on underrepresented voices within the movement, including those to promote LGBTQ+ rights and the vital contributions of Black trade unionists today.  The exhibition was jointly curated by Indy Bhullar, Chelsea Collison and Jeff Howarth, and features materials from the Trade Union Congress Library, which was founded in 1922 and is housed as part of the Special Collections at London Metropolitan University.

Co-curating this archival exhibition, I was struck by how much feels relevant today. Police violence reported in a student newspaper, a trade union leader’s speech about propaganda and war, or a campaigner demanding representation in union meetings, these seven items may come from the past, but their echoes are hard to miss.

1. Jackie Lewis’s delegate lanyard, NALGO conference, 1983

Ephemera is defined as “minor transient documents of everyday life”, and this delegate name badge (with personal flair) that Jackie Lewis wore at the National and Local Government Officers Association (NALGO) conference in 1983 is the perfect example. Lewis saved this badge  at the time, and it is now preserved for perpetuity in the TUC Library at London Metropolitan University. This is why I love archives: even the smallest object can hold a story, carefully stored until it meets someone curious enough to bring it out.

Lewis was vital in pushing NALGO to set up a national Lesbian and Gay Committee and has campaigned on and helped create policy to address discrimination against and the rights for LGBT+ people in the workplace.

2. Speech by Sir Walter Citrine at Albert Hall Meeting, 3 December 1936

Sir Walter Citrine’s speech calls out the control of information, suppression of dissent and glorification of war. Sound familiar? I’ve chosen this item because his warning still resonates today. Citrine became the leader of the Trades Union Congress during the 1926 General Strike and spent the next twenty years at the forefront of the organised labour movement. As you might guess, he was also heavily involved in Britain’s Anti-Nazi movement. He gave this speech at a meeting to advocate for democracy and to inform the British public of the grave danger the Nazi regime in Germany, Fascists in Italy, Civil War in Spain and Communism posed to international peace and freedom.

3. Article on Grunwick violence in The Beaver, 1977

LSE Students’ Union founded The Beaver in 1949, and it has since reflected both student life and broader political, cultural, and social issues. It’s no surprise to see the violent clash between police and protesting workers at Grunwick make the headlines in this 8 November 1977 issue, but I always find it exciting to see a major event reported by a small local press. I appreciate the reporters’ authenticity and honesty when they state:

“The events were so confusing that it took about fifteen people to compile this story-we think we have produced a fairly accurate picture of what actually happened. We don’t, however, excuse our obvious bias. If you and you had been there, whatever political group you whatever political group you belong to, you too would have been as horrified and incensed by the actions of the police as we were.”

This is followed by a play-by-play of the police violence that took place at the Grunwick protest ending with the question “Is it practical to place one part of society above the rest and expect it to be infallible? If it is not, we would be far better off without a police force.” Thank you, Beaver, for asking the big questions!

4. Matchworkers’ Strike Register, 1888

The significance of this item is in the details. Look closely and you’ll see the name of Sarah Chapman, a member of the Matchgirls’ Strike Committee who was elected as President of their new union, the Union of Women Matchmakers. Her name is, alongside those of 263 workers from the Centre and Top Centre workshops, 186 workers at the Victoria factory and 263 workers at the Wax and Box Stores and Patents. Names of each worker are accompanied by their address, marital status, occupation, last week’s wages and whether they live at home or independently. 

After the strike, the volume was also used as a scrapbook or guardbook with press cuttings, letters and other documents either pasted onto the pages or filed loosely between them. The register was given to the Trades Union Congress in 1977, transferred to the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University) in 1998 and underwent conservation at the University of Dundee in 2000. (Information from TUC History Online.)

5. Black Trade Union Oral History Project, 2022-2023

Not so much an item, but a collection of voices, the recordings of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists speaking to London Met students enable us to hear from trade union activists of 2022-2023. When I first listened to details of their campaigns and first-person passion for justice, I got goosebumps that the physical archive just can’t produce. Here is a stand-out quote from an interview with Michelle Codrington-Rogers: “I would be in all these meetings saying this needs to be a room for us. Where’s the Black voices? Where are the Black representatives? What is going on with this union?”

6. Newspaper clipping and handwritten notes on artificial flower making, c.1900

There is always so much more to say than the exhibition has space for. This newspaper clipping and handwritten note both come from the archive of Gertrude Tuckwell, a prominent British social reformer, trade unionist, and campaigner for women’s rights. The 40 boxes in the collection (housed in the TUC Library archive) include correspondence, a substantial press cutting collection, pamphlets and reports. Tuckwell herself systematically assembled the items to illuminate key issues and events in women’s struggle for equality and representation. How she found the time to curate her own collection amazes me!  

The newspaper clipping reports on the terrible working conditions of artificial flower makers who earned a “starvation wage” for work about which “it is impossible to exaggerate the tediousness”. At the time, artificial flowers were widely used in millinery (hat-making), home decoration, and fashion accessories. The description of the work lends a new meaning to the phrase “suffer for fashion”.

The anonymous handwritten note describes the conditions of one such flower-making location, a workshop at the address of “Mrs Jones, 9A. Cromer Street”.  The worker describes the workroom as “a completely underground cellar”, notes the hours of work as “hours of work 6am to 18pm or much earlier if there is daylight’ and reports, “eyesight much affected by colours; and close sitting to work”.

7. R.H. Tawney’s diary, 3 May 1926

R. H. Tawney’s diary entry is dated 3 May 1926, the day the TUC called a General Strike, which lasted nine days and is Britain’s only to date. Tawney was a British economic historian, social critic, and influential thinker on labour, education, and social justice. The entry documents how coal miners were being forced into accepting a drasticwage reduction before talks could be held ahead of the strike. One of the core elements of trade unionism is to protect, as well as improve, their members’ pay and conditions, which Tawney’s words bring to life.

Note: This article gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credits: LSE Library from the exhibition Combining Efforts: 200 Years of Trade Union History running from 15 September 2025 to 31 January 2026.

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Making Sense of the Great War: Crisis, Englishness, and Morale on the Western Front. Alex Mayhew. Cambridge University Press. 2024.

Soldiers’ resilience on the front lines 

The First World War recedes further into the past, but its horror remains vivid and shocking. To be an infantryman stationed on the Western Front was to be confronted by an all-encompassing sensory assault. Never mind the combat itself. As Private Ernest Marler recorded in his diary in October 1916: “Cold, wet and windy. The same routine… how wretched I feel… the life out here is hell no comfort of cleanliness, fire, food, or anything else, one simply exists.” Men were invariably cold, damp, muddy, lacking sleep, and subject to terrifying sounds and the “vile sickly smell of rottenness”. And when battle did come, they were blown to bits, their bodies rendered unidentifiable. 

Mayhew draws on the private collections of letters, diaries, and other personal items of 250 soldiers from six different regiments in order to reconstruct the experience and interior worlds of English infantrymen

These physical conditions and the expense of much blood for little territorial gain informs the view that the Great War was an essentially futile struggle resulting in a senseless and unnecessary loss of life. Yet, as Alex Mayhew reminds us in his Making Sense of the Great War, the men doing the actual fighting rarely saw their contributions in those terms. Mayhew draws on the private collections of letters, diaries, and other personal items of 250 soldiers from six different regiments in order to reconstruct the experience and interior worlds of English infantrymen. In this highly readable account, he explores how these men made sense of the war, the coping mechanisms they employed to be able to continue fighting, and the actions they took when the suffering became unbearable. In so doing, he builds admirably on a wide body of existing scholarship that examines morale in the First World War, particularly Alexander Watson’s Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British armies (2008). 

Of course, some men did not cope. Having got the “wind-up”, a contemporary slang term describing a general state of fear, anxiety or depression, some self-inflicted injuries in order to escape the front lines; others suffered shell shock (or post-traumatic stress disorder); and some shot themselves. But what is especially striking is that these were the exceptions: most men did find ways to cope. They did so because they developed a range of narratives and strategies which helped them find meaning and purpose. 

Morale, faith and reminders of home 

Taking a thematic to questions of morale and endurance, Mayhew examines the influence of the soldiers’ immediate physical environment, social groups, and personal psychology. He employs a helpful distinction between “chronic” and “acute” crisis. Chronic crises were the long-term conditions that soldiers faced every day, such as being away from home, the weather, or the poor sleeping conditions. With no power to alter them, these conditions had to be endured. By contrast “acute” crises were the short-term extra stresses, such as an enemy bombardment or “going over the top”. These acute crises required a more immediate response. 

Mayhew’s analysis paints a rich picture of the various ways in which men made sense of the war. To ease their dislocation from home, for example, men would imprint familiar place names on their immediate surroundings in Belgium and France. Famously, Ypres was re-christened “Wipers”, but smaller subsections of the British Expeditionary Force would sometimes rename particular trenches after local places and street names, as a battalion of soldiers from Birmingham did at Foncquevillers. For others, spirituality and religion were sources of hope and consolation. Some carried fragments of religious text on their person, and the optional Sunday church service (for Anglicans, Catholics, and non-conformists) became an anchor for some in the battalion’s weekly schedule. For nearly all, visions of home – “a wonderful place” – helped men persist, with their thoughts often turning to the family, friends and local communities that they had left behind. Underpinning all this was soldiers’ hope in peace, best achieved through military success on the battlefield. It was when military victory no longer seemed to offer a viable and secure route to peace that morale began to falter.  

British soldiers’ political passivity 

Mayhew’s work explores these and many other means of sense-making, drawing from his chosen primary sources to bring men’s voices to the fore. For example, Mayhew stresses the fact that the British Expeditionary Force did not face a collapse in morale on the same scale as that suffered by the French and German armies – there was only one major episode of unrest, at Étaples in September 1917. Mayhew suggests that one of the major reasons for this was the lack of political awareness amongst Tommies and their differing relationship with their home state. For German and French troops the relationship between citizenship and military service was stronger, and they were more alive to contemporary political debates in their home nations. By contrast, England’s soldiers were not citizens but subjects, whose allegiance was to their king.  

Making Sense of the Great War offers points of reflection not just for the historian, but also for scholars of psychology, sociology, and military processes.

As the war went on, the modal age of men serving decreased (by 1916, the largest demographic groups were 21 and under), meaning that many would not have been old enough to vote in national elections. As a result, their patriotism was more parochial and focused on local ties: to their family, friends and local communities, rather than to Britain and its empire. With a less developed sense of citizenship and greater “political passivity”, English troops were therefore less likely to criticise openly the direction of the war as conducted by politicians (though they did satirise their military commanders, with humour providing yet another powerful coping mechanism). In Mayhew’s words: “once in khaki, citizenship, sovereignty, and suffrage mattered less than home, survival, and respectability”. This and much else besides from this “vast universe” of soldiers’ mentalities could be studied further to develop the threads that Mayhew has begun to trace. 

Making Sense of the Great War offers points of reflection not just for the historian, but also for scholars of psychology, sociology, and military processes. This book is testament to how, even in the bleakest of circumstances, the human spirit perseveres.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main Image: Soldiers of the Lancashire Fusiliers in a front line trench opposite Messines, near Ploegsteert Wood, January 1917. Credit: The Imperial War Museum, courtesy of the IWM Non-Commercial Licence.

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Desi Queers: LGBTQ+ South Asians and Cultural Belonging in Britain. Churnjeet Mahn, Rohit K. Dasgupta and DJ Ritu. Hurst & Company, London. 2025.

“Here I am, Asian, gay, no longer alone, no longer isolated. What power I feel.” (75)

South Asian migration to Britain has been read through multiple lenses, including colonialism, race relations, and issues of diasporic nationalism. However, the study of South Asian queer lives and their participation in the larger struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in Britain remains understudied, leaving a significant gap in the scholarship. Desi Queers: LGBTQ+ South Asians and Cultural Belonging in Britain by Churnjeet Mahn, Rohit K. Dasgupta and DJ Ritu addresses this gap, making a critical intervention in the queer historiography in Britain. Omar Kasmani, Maya Bhardwaj, and Kareem Khubchandani’s work along with Mahn and Dasgupta’s previous scholarship sets the foundation for a coherent study in this new book.

Mahn, Dasgupta and Ritu’s research not only contributes to diaspora studies and queer historiography, but it also reclaims the marginalised narratives of the desi queer community (“desi” describes people and cultures of South Asia and their diaspora).

Mahn, Dasgupta and Ritu’s research not only contributes to diaspora studies and queer historiography, but it also reclaims the marginalised narratives of the desi queer community (“desi” describes people and cultures of South Asia and their diaspora). It does so by focusing on themes of community making, black and brown racial allyship, resistance against Western feminists, and a complex web of anti-immigration and racial state policies.

The book – structured into five chapters – illuminates the conditions of marginalisation, oppression, resistance and celebration of South Asian queers. This study intends to achieve three interlinked objectives against “heterowashing of migrant history and the whitewashing of the queer history” (4). The first is to challenge the narratives of queer South Asian absence from the larger LGBTQ+ rights struggle in the UK. The second is to address the lack of proper preservation of documents of queer South Asian resistance, depicted by the shabby condition of their archives. And the third is to celebrate the work and preserve the legacy of LGBTQ+ networks, organisations and individuals who carved out a community space against a racialised heteronormative state.

Along with the archival data, the book relies on personal reflections from interviews with Queer activists, writers, filmmakers, DJs, drag performers, and artists.

Non-white activists in the struggle for civil rights

In the introductory chapter, the book addresses the absence of non-white people from narratives of resistance. Against the homophobic policies of the state, such as against Section 28, key fights such as legal recognition of marriage for same-sex couples, the queer collectives of black people and people of colour have been monumental in organising queer and anti-racist movements.

Against this white-led narrative of queer resistance, the book takes a social history approach, granting a central space to local organisations and small suburban collectives (chapter one). Set against the background of Thatcherite England – a period marked by racist, neoliberal, anti-immigration homophobic rhetoric and policy – Desi Queer documents the struggles of immigrant queers of colour (2). Groups such as the Gay Black Group (founded in 1981) practised inclusivity to all immigrants and people of colour.

Works of diasporic queer art and aesthetics disrupt norms like the lack of non-white representation in queer cinema, and make South Asian queer hope and struggle visible.

The book approaches the subject material with an intersectional lens, depicting the marginalisation of women from queer spaces (125), the ease of male marriages of convenience (138), and issues of sexual harassment of women in queer spaces. It documents how in a racialised society,  networks such as the Haringey Black Action, Southall Black Sisters and Sisters against Disablement, emerge as black and brown female solidarity groups, which often received generous financial support from the labour-run Greater London Council (1).

Building diasporic queer community on dancefloors

Practices of community making are central in studying marginalised communities. For desi queers, dancefloors with a fusion of Bhangra, Bollywood and Hip-Hop-produced distinct aesthetics of liberation and belonging. The second chapter on Shakti Disco and Club Kali, dance clubs for LGBTQ+ South Asians, features interviews with performers, such as DJs and organisational members. DJ Ritu’s evocative telling of her experience as the first resident DJ at Shakti Disco highlights the importance of sharing and connection, along with the fears and vulnerability of their communal being (93). The disco was a space of refuge, freedom and belonging for queer South Asians, who were marginalised both in public, for their race, and in private spaces for their sexual expressions.

Queer South Asian experience from print to screen

In the chapter on Shakti Khabar, a transnational magazine, intended to connect diasporic queers with Indian queers, the authors explore print networks as medium of belonging and solidarity. Shakti Khabar, along with other  magazines such as Trikone and Khush Khayal also created transatlantic queer diaspora networks. The letters, the networking section, personal ads and editorials connected diasporic readers and gave space to the sexual desires of its readers. But the challenge to confront issues of class difference between the South Asian queer readership and the diasporic ones, to comment on issues of homosexuals opting for heterosexual marriages of convenience, remained contentious and sparked debate.

Desi Queers makes an important contribution to the study of queer movement in Britain and diasporic struggles

Chapter four explores queerness through art, expressed through songs and poetry, slogans and banners. These works of diasporic queer art and aesthetics disrupt norms like the lack of non-white representation in queer cinema, and make South Asian queer hope and struggle visible. The chapter features the work of filmmakers Pratibha Parmar, Sunil Gupta, and Ian Iqbal Rashid. Parmar, a queer South Asian – represents resistance to free the desi queer bodies from homophobia and the white male gaze. In her movie Khush, Parmar explored the roots of homophobia within the South Asian diaspora. Parmar’s work also reckoned with the fetishisation of the female body, while critiquing heteronormativity through cinema and racism.

Activism and the queer South Asian imagination today

In Chapter five, the authors shift to the analysis of contemporary queer activism. Artists like Raisa Kabir, Shiva Raichandani, Asifa Lahore, and Charan Singh depict anti-racism and anti-caste sentiment in their work, while celebrating the queer aesthetics in the South Asian diaspora by bridging the distance from South Asia. Raisa Kabir confronts the invisibility of her identity under structures of class, religion and ethnicity. Shiva Raichandani, through his movies like Queer Parivar (2022) and Peach Paradise (2022), pushes to empower celebratory imaginations for the queer South Asians.

Desi Queers makes an important contribution to the study of queer movement in Britain and diasporic struggles. It challenges dominant narratives and nudges the reader to see desi queer history embedded within broader racial and queer struggles in Britain and globally. The book does have some shortcomings, such as a tone that assumes prior knowledge, addressing a readership that is already familiar with the movement. However, its importance lies in its ambition to describe and preserve South Asian experiences as a part of a broader movement to reclaim and re-tell historical narratives of queer struggle.

The post Untold stories of Britain’s queer South Asians first appeared on LSE Review of Books.

Empire Without End: A New History of Britain and the Caribbean. Imaobong Umoren. Fern Press. 2025.

What motivated you to write a new history of Britain’s colonial relationship to the Caribbean?

The main reason was my desire to intervene in ongoing public debates about British Imperialism and its legacies. I, like many people, get frustrated with the simplistic, selective understandings of empire, often rooted in the Victorian era, that celebrate it as an empire of trade or of spreading British values across the globe.

In the work that I do as a historian on the Caribbean, the legacies of British colonialism look very different, especially when you stretch back to the 1400s and the initial contact between Europeans and indigenous people. When we take this longer historical trajectory, we can see how empire operated differently in different times and places, and we can see much more clearly the devastating legacies of empire today.

I also wanted to write a reparatory history. I hope that it helps to contribute to a real groundswell of energy, hope and optimism, that the legacies of the British Empire in the Caribbean, which are rooted in the construction of race and in the spread of structural racism, aren’t features that are going to be around forever. Through the history of repair that I’m writing, that lots of people are involved in, we can challenge those racial and class hierarchies that stem from colonialism, and even consider a future where they no longer exist.

You argue that “the roots of contemporary racial and linked class divisions in Britain and the Anglophone Caribbean today lie in the racial-caste hierarchy created in the early days of the Caribbean.” What was the racial-caste hierarchy and how did it operate?

It’s a term that lots of historians and scholars  (like Gordon K Lewis and Charles W. Mills) use to describe a society that emerged during the period of slavery in the Caribbean. The racial-caste hierarchy was a loosely triangular structure with white elites at the top, mixed-race people in the middle who had a variety of different roles within the larger plantation structure of slavery during that period, and enslaved Africans, the biggest group who were labouring on sugar or coffee plantations across the Caribbean, at the bottom.

The story of abolition is often told from a British perspective as a celebratory history. The role of white abolitionists was important, but there were many different people who helped to end slavery.

The hierarchy was based on the construction of race which emerged because of the development of slavery. But it was not static: it shifted over time and place, and it looked different in different places in the Caribbean. There was some movement within it, in particular within the middle and the top section. It was inflected by class status, legal status, gender. The hierarchy shifted over time and place, but its power and longevity lay in its being founded on violence. It also shaped the discourses of racism in Britain.

I find the concept of the racial-caste hierarchy a useful tool to challenge simplistic understandings of the Caribbean as being a history of black versus white, and to instead enable understanding of linked forms of inequality. It reveals how different groups in society, during the period of slavery and afterwards, interacted with each other, how racism was linked to class inequality, to gender inequality, and how this changed over time.

You claim that the intention of white liberals involved in Britain’s abolition, first of the slave trade (1807) then of slavery (1833, then Emancipation came in 1838) was not to upend the system of white supremacy, and that the racial-caste hierarchy survived abolition. 

That’s a really important part of thinking about the longer legacies of the racial-caste hierarchy. The story of abolition is often told from a British perspective as a celebratory history. The role of white abolitionists was important, but there were many different people who helped to end slavery. Enslaved people themselves, the protests, the revolts that they led also helped to shift the opinion and momentum towards abolition.

The arguments for ending abolition were manifold: missionaries claimed it was part of spreading the gospel and that you didn’t need slavery to convert Africans to Christianity. There were economic arguments around how free trade wasn’t compatible with the structures of slavery. But abolition did not end white supremacy, and many white abolitionists, who we often hail as heroes, harboured deeply racist views of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. What you see in the post-emancipation period is actually an increase in white supremacy, in the idea that enslaved Africans are inherently inferior to white Europeans. Many writings of influential figures such as Thomas Carlyle in Britain held explicitly racist views after 1838, in particular, linked to the economic decline of the Caribbean. Certain white Liberals blamed this decline on formerly enslaved Africans, claiming that they were not working hard enough, or they were lazy.

It’s crucial to examine how this occurred to understand why abolition didn’t mean an end to white supremacy. The book explores numerous examples of the continuation of racism in the 19th century, and also the 20th century – when we think about the First and Second World Wars, for instance.

What opportunities did the world wars present for African-Caribbeans to reckon with and challenge racial hierarchies and discrimination within the British Empire?

Many African-Caribbean people viewed the First World War as an opportunity to challenge racism. They saw themselves as part of this larger imperial family, and when the war started, they wanted to fight to defend king and empire. Many of them were not allowed to because of racism – the belief that African-Caribbean people are not fit or intelligent enough to be on the battlefield alongside white Europeans. This came as a shock to many people in the Caribbean who thought of empire as a grouping where skin colour didn’t matter, because they all felt connected to this larger colonial family. When the opportunity to enlist wasn’t extended to those in the Caribbean, there was a lot of resentment and questioning of how they were meant to fit into this empire if they were not being treated the same as white Europeans. African-Caribbean men who did have the chance to serve – mainly in labour battalions rather than fighting – seized the opportunity to contribute to empire and to challenge racist myths, even though they themselves often faced racist treatment from other groups.

The legacies of the past become glaring when looking at centuries of history leading up to today. Take the Windrush scandal, for example, and how that continues to unfold, or the rhetoric about immigrants that influenced the Brexit referendum.

In the book I discuss the mutiny that took place in a camp in Italy and the experiences of figures like Norman Manley, a Jamaican lawyer who was a student in Oxford during the First World War and went on to serve as Premier of Jamaica. In exploring these events in the 20^th century, I highlight the tension that emerged in the racial-caste hierarchy between those trying to uphold it and those trying to undermine it. African-Caribbean people challenged it by using this language of inclusion: they want to be included in this larger Imperial family, but they faced resistance to that by multiple groups – the British Government, the Colonial Office, the War Office. But they continued to challenge and chip away at white supremacy, and I chart the ebbs and flows of how this operated as the century went on.

You discuss how, after the Second World War, there was an influx of migrants to Britain from the Caribbean, accompanied by increased discrimination and anti-immigrant sentiment from the State and the public, and the different forms of discrimination people faced in areas from employment and housing to education. Looking at the 21^st century, in what ways do you think the legacies of Britain’s exploitation in the Caribbean live on today? 

Writing this book, what I kept seeing again and again were different iterations of the past in the present; something in the 19^th century that recalled something that happened in the 18^th century, and so on. This history is a living history. It’s infusing our present moment so much because in Britain, we haven’t – as a society, as a country – fully reckoned with the legacies of slavery. Although the structural edifice of empire has gone away, the residual, cultural and economic tenets of empire are still very much present in the neocolonialism of today. The policies we see in Britain and the Caribbean in the 21^st century, whether that’s to do with immigration or economics, demonstrate a lack of real willingness to face the past.

The legacies of the past become glaring when you take a longue durée perspective, as I have in the book, looking at centuries of history leading up to today. Take the Windrush scandal, for example, and how that continues to unfold, or the rhetoric about immigrants that influenced the Brexit referendum. The legacies of the past are also shaping the current movement towards reparations. I don’t know how reparations will look, exactly, but I think it’s becoming ever more necessary to have that debate, and not only to have it but to act on it. Politicians, activists and community figures in the Caribbean are pushing for reparations as part of an attempt to repair the past in the present, given the strangled economic situation that prevails in the Caribbean, its dependency on the West, and in particular on Britain and the United States.

Debates about reparations are going to be crucial in thinking about how we redress the legacies of slavery and empire today. For so long it has been something politicians have tried to overlook or sidestep, because it’s such a violent history. But that violence still exists and is ongoing today; it might look different, but it still impacts our present.

Note: This interview gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Imaobong Umoren will be speaking in a panel event, Reckoning with the past: truth-telling and the British Empire at 3.30pm on Saturday 21 June as part of LSE Festival 2025.

Watch a YouTube video with Imaobong Umoren, The entangled histories of Britain and the Caribbean.

Image: The Bussa Emancipation Statue by Karl Broodhagen (1985) in Barbados, east of Bridgetown. Credit: Barbara Ash on Shutterstock.

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The post A new history of Britain and the Caribbean – Interview with Imaobong Umoren first appeared on LSE Review of Books.