I think that everyone, from whatever political perspective, will agree that the events of Saturday night in Clapham were regrettable. The image broadcast to the world was of a large gathering of women protesting male violence and mourning the death of a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. For this vigil... Continue Reading →
We love our freedom and that includes our freedom to not do as our ‘masters’ tell us
So, last Thursday the department for education (DfE) ordered schools in England 'not to use resources from organisations which have expressed a desire to end capitalism'. This has prompted quite a strong reaction from many on the left (and not on the left) on the (quite reasonable) grounds that it appears to prevent teaching the... Continue Reading →
We all love a good conspiracy theory, even it if it might kill us
At the weekend ‘thousands of people took to the streets of central London and held a rally in Trafalgar Square. The numbers involved are disputed: ‘about a 1,000’ said most news reports, but I’ve seen posts on social media saying that there were 35,000 protesting in Nelson’s shadow. They were there to protest about the... Continue Reading →
There are bigger battles to fight so please just wear a mask folks
Even a cursory engagement with British history would be enough to remind us that we are a fairly rebellious people when we are told what we should or shouldn’t do. There is a proud tradition of standing up for our ‘rights’ even if, for the most part, those rights are nowhere defined in a written... Continue Reading →
‘It has been really reassuring for me seeing how the history department has handled the move to online learning’. A History student reflects on studying in a pandemic
Today we have another post from one of our History students at Northampton. Charlotte has just completed year two and reflects on studying History in a pandemic. We have all been impacted by Covid-19 for months now and I just wanted to give people a bit of an insight about my experience of how the... Continue Reading →
‘I still do not understand why so many people are so intolerant and angry about the destruction of shops but not by the murder of people’. Black Lives Matter – a series of posts from History at Northampton
This week we sharing a series of personal blog posts from staff and students reacting to the killing of George Floyd and the protests here and around the world. Today's is from Charlotte, who has just completed her second year of study for a degree in History at the University of Northampton. Here are some of... Continue Reading →
‘Keep cool and you command everybody’*: reflections on history and why we are focusing on the wrong freedoms.
‘We live in societies where the positive freedom to act as we wish is perhaps our central concern. Whatever the professed fears f global warning, or the expressed sympathies with the poor and downtrodden, the willingness actively to change our way of living is the province of only a small minority. For most, the everyday... Continue Reading →
Have we learned anything from the past?Or are we as superstitious as our early modern ancestors?
History is supposed to give us a sense of perspective, some way of understanding current events by looking backwards, at those in the past. I’ve seen some very good articles, comments and blogs on the 1919 ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic (which wasn’t Spanish at all of course), and some reflections on how our ancestors coped with... Continue Reading →
HISTORY AT NORTHAMPTON 