Communists necessarily proclaimed internationalism, but first and foremost they had to come to terms with the societies in which they lived and worked. Assessing their national conditions and proposing solutions to national problems were prerequisites for building a socialist movement. They faced a fundamental tension, however, between the Comintern’s declared project of applying uniform policies across all of its national sections and the specificity of their own national conditions, which necessitated the application and adaptation of Marxist ideas to very diverse environments. The introduction traces the PCA’s tentative and tardy efforts to imagine the Algerian nation – albeit a reflection of the country’s complex class, national and geopolitical circumstances – which inevitably impeded its ability to attract Algerians.

In north London, Hampstead boasted a goodly share of suffrage organizations. Some of the fiercest ‘battle for the census’ arguments were aired here. For the NUWSS, Lady Strachey and her daughter Pippa fiercely opposed the boycott. Hampstead also saw support for broader adult suffrage legislation, from the Women's Labour League and Women's Co-operative Guild. Nearby on Haverstock Hill, Henry and Margaret Nevinson lived together (though not amicably). His daily diary provides hour-by-hour testimony of census weekend. Henry strode uphill to visit the Brailsfords, attended an Actresses’ Franchise League performance, and spoke at the WFL meeting in Trafalgar Square, And he filled in his census schedule, providing information about himself, his son and two domestic servants ~ but of Margaret nothing. Yet it seems clear that she and other women were evading there overnight. Henry provides compelling eye-witness guide to the glittering city-centre entertainments ~ late night at Trafalgar Square (with suffragette Evelyn Sharp), then on to Covent Garden and to the Aldwych roller-skating rink. Here he listened to the WSPU entertainment and at 6 am skated with a suffragette actress, ‘a thing I never dreamt of’. He wrote up his experiences vividly in Votes for Women.

This chapter considers Tony Richardson's contribution to British New Wave. Richardson's first film Look Back in Anger (1959), despite its faults, was important for the development of ‘a style to the purposes of the piece’. Look Back in Anger is an interesting film for many reasons. It represents the beginning of Richardson's efforts to establish a new and separate position within the British film industry. The film also helped to generate a new series of critical debates about the development of a British cinematic style, or the lack of it. The film also became allied with other films trying to do similar things, such as Clayton's Room at the Top. It can best be characterised by the extremity of shot scale deployed to show the claustrophobic relationship between Alison and Jimmy, and the construction of The Entertainer demonstrates a willingness to move out from this extreme proximity. Richardson's four films from this period need to be seen as indicative of a talent being developed rather than the achievements of a director at the height of his creative ability.

Social Democrats in Germany (SPD) should be particularly eager to embrace the popularity of the welfare state as a way to regain some of the support they lost on their Third Way trip. German politics, from the Great Recession to the Euro crisis, has been profoundly shaped by the export-oriented growth that accompanied welfare state expansion during the post-war era. Germany's beggar-thy-neighbour policies are a key factor in explaining the transformation of the Great Recession into the Euro-crisis. The founding of The Left represents a major challenge for the SPD. Prior to the 2008 state election in Hesse, then chairman, Kurt Beck had pushed the SPD to leave the decision to collaborate with The Left to the party branches in each state. The SPD is losing parts of its core constituency, and at the same time, working-class interests lose much of their voice in the political system.

This chapter explores the evolving representation of religious belief in Coupland's work via three connected areas of discussion. The first section locates his fiction in the wider context of the apparent ‘sacred turn’ in contemporary culture. The argument then focuses on the most frequently recurring manifestation of Coupland's spiritual sensibility in his use of epiphany as a structuring motif in a number of the novels including Generation X, Life After God, Girlfriend in a Coma, Miss Wyoming (2000) and Eleanor Rigby. These visionary encounters are related to concepts of apocalypse. The final section examines the theological and cultural implications of Coupland's representation of ‘end time’ narratives.

This chapter draws on Genette's narrative theory in order to locate Marlow in the dual position of narrator and character through close readings of ‘Youth’ and Heart of Darkness, investigating the idea that Conrad's narratives are structured around the transmission of story, and questioning the possibility of sustaining the distinction between that which is transmitted and the means of transmission. With this established, it reads Marlow's role as a narrator in the oral tradition alongside Benjamin's ‘The Storyteller’ in order to introduce a connection between narrative authority and death. The chapter concludes with a reading of ‘Youth’ in which the narrative frame becomes central to a reading of Marlow's ‘central’ story.

The chapter examines how different disciplines have considered the apology, the relationship between the personal apology and the apology in politics and develops a typology of political apologies.

This summarises the nature of the book and what makes it unique, and outlines its main argument. It explains that the book serves as a critique of the cultural turn and of identity politics, and a call for a return to more materialist understandings as a basis for addressing socio-economic inequality. It looks at ideas about racialisation, and includes an explanation of the book’s use of key terms, including ‘working class’.