The Spanish Civil War began as a revolution and became the most important small war of the twentieth century. Land and Freedom, Ken Loach's film about the Spanish Civil War, explained the complex politics of this war for a new generation when it was released in 1995. Land and Freedom attempts to validate the Trotskyist point of view by means of a narrative in which political processes and a love story are skilfully related. A vigorous anti-Stalinism is inseparable from Trotskyism, but Loach's screenwriter, Jim Allen's remarks on Stalin and Spain in the production notes to Land and Freedom go beyond what is plausible. The Spanish revolution was betrayed by Stalin and by the social democrats because 'they preferred Franco to the possibility of a workers' state'. It is possible to discern differing attitudes towards gender and gender issues among the parties of the Spanish left.

In many ways, popular science fit in quite well with the revolutionary spirit. Beginning in the 1730s and lasting well into the 1780s and 1790s, science formed a mainstay of French popular culture. The invention of ballooning in 1783 reinforced the belief that science could produce nearly miraculous discoveries. In addition to the controversy over divining rods, numerous other scientific debates filled the popular press and the cultural imagination of the French at this time. The revolutionary period saw an emphasis on the potential of science to serve the new, rational state; science education became a significant focus of political attention, as did the ability of savants to provide useful services to the nation. Many people appropriated science through public lecture courses and expressed considerable interest in scientific work through their membership in clubs and their participation in the funding of balloons and the debate over divining rods.

This chapter presents a case study of the photographic archive available on the official website of the Ejército Zapatista Liberación Nacional (EZLN). It discusses the role of photography in contributing to the visibility of the Zapatista struggle and in promoting the struggle to the rest of the world. The internet allowed the Zapatistas and their supporters, activists around the globe, to organise themselves, to form 'cyber-communities' and coordinate 'action in dispersed, non-hierarchical networks'. The most predominant feature of the images available online is the omnipresence of masked Zapatistas. Although the Zapatistas may not wear their balaclavas in their everyday life, they consider them necessary in the presence of the camera. The distance that Zapatistas keep from the model of the foco guerrilla movement is the same distance that exists between the EZLN and Che Guevara's thought and revolutionary praxis.

The argument for a pre-war Liberal decline, propounded by historians such as George Dangerfield, Ross McKibbin and Pelling, is contradicted by the evidence from this study. For most of the war, the Labour Party was more severely split over policy than the Liberals and it was not actively trying to recruit Liberal defectors. The Labour Party played a relatively passive role in the Liberals' decline, although perhaps its role could be characterised as malevolently passive. It was the recipient of many Liberal defectors, but it was, in fact, more split than the Liberal Party at the crucial times, especially during the Great War and the 1931 crisis. The outward defections were not a result of the failure of Liberalism, but of a breakdown of the Liberal Party organism. The role of the Liberal leadership, and especially that of the whips, contributed to the disintegration of the party.

After the Second World War, Manchester council's housing reformers were determined to force the pace of change. Councillor Ottiwell Lodge, Chairman of the Town Planning and Buildings Committee, claimed in the 1945 Redevelopment Plan that the biggest problem of all would be moving 120,000 people to a new town or to existing towns outside the city. Developing new towns and extensive overspill estates were absolutely vital. In the early developments at Wythenshawe and Belle Vue, tenants had made a number of complaints that had parallels with the later estates. Tenants in the overspill estates expressed very similar complaints, suggesting that the council failed to act on earlier experiences. The story of overspill is important in what it tells us about the Labour council, its relations and attitude to neighbouring local authorities and how it regarded/disregarded its own tenants. Manchester's battles with neighbouring councils had serious implications for future housing policy.