This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny-habeas corpus, trial by jury, due process of law, prohibition of torture and the commons-are being abridged. 

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Review in the Independent, UK


Boyd Tonkin: A Week in Books

Friday, 20 June 2008

Strange times make strange bedfellows. When he resigned to trigger a by-election and campaign for lost liberties, David Davis doffed an obligatory cap to Magna Carta – sealed at Runnymede 793 years and five days ago. I have some good news for the maverick Tory, and some not so good. On the positive side, a recent book could help him in his long march back to freedom. It traces a proud lineage of battles against the over-mighty state with the "Great Charter" to hand. And it does so with a passion, eloquence and lyrical reverence for the hard-won freedoms of Old England that take the breath away. On the other hand, its author could be called the finest socialist historian in the US. Except that, I suspect, he might even prefer "communist".

Peter Linebaugh was a student of the great EP Thompson who, with him, co-authored a classic study of the hang-'em-and-transport-'em class-based "justice" of the 18th century, Albion's Fatal Tree. Later, The London Hanged offered a masterly – and moving – local variation on that theme. With Marcus Rediker, The Many-headed Hydra presented the unruly Atlantic milieu of pirates, sailors and runaway slaves as a crucible of underclass revolt. It made those wild buccaneers into the seaborne forebears of Che Guevara. Indeed, Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow (in Pirates of the Caribbean) captured the Linebaugh-Rediker thesis rather well.

Linebaugh can often sound like the most romantic of radical historians. In The Magna Carta Manifesto: liberties and commons for all (University of California Press, £14.95), he soars higher than ever with an almost rhapsodic account of the way that the rights wrested from King John on the "lovely field" of Runnymede have stiffened the spines of many later freedom-fighters. To him, the heirs of 1215 range from the Levellers in the English Revolution to America's Founding Fathers; from anti-slavery militants to civil-rights agitators. Mired in the "war on terror", he argues, we need its shield more than ever. "Magna Carta is required to open the secret state. Magna Carta is needed for the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. Magna Carta is needed for the prisoners who have been rendered to torture chambers in other countries... Magna Carta is needed to condemn torture altogether."

Linebaugh's rhetorical flights do come down to earth. He shows how Magna Carta was (in his analyisis) misread and distorted to buttress a ruling-class doctrine of "private property, laissez-faire and English civilisation". He mocks its elevation into a misunderstood "sacred cow", and quotes the peerless parody in 1066 and All That: "That everyone should be free (except the common people)... That the Barons should not be tried except by a jury of other Barons who would understand."

Crucially, Linebaugh maintains that the "common people" do count. If we pay proper attention to the "Charter of the Forest" that joined Magna Carta in 1217 (with both ratified by Edward I in 1297), then ancient economic rights to "commons" – to subsistence and livelihood – will loom as large as protection from bad laws and unjust rulers.

William Morris would love this book; and so, I think, would William Blake. For me, it threw into glaring relief the curious paradox of modern British politics. So-called "conservatives" and New Labour clones seem to believe in obliterating every stubborn memory of the past to maximise the profits of corporate business or to gratify the security state's voracious appetite for power. For a genuine devotion to history and heritage, look to the tradition-conscious Left, aided by those High Tory relics with whom they share so much. So, if David Davis is truly sincere in his ecumenical mission, he should give Peter Linebaugh a call.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/boyd-tonkin-a-week-in-books-850689.html

Interview with Lewis Lapham

May 27th interview on The World in Time with Lewis Lapham 

www.bloomberg.com/tvradio/podcast/lewis_lapham.html

Video of the New York Launch

Here's  video from the New York launch by Dee Dee Halleck

http://deedeehalleck.blogspot.com/search?q=magna+carta

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Events in April and May

25 April 2008
lecture and book signing
Historical Materialism 
First North American conference
Toronto, Canada

May Day 2008
"The Commons and Magna Carta" 
Bristol Radical History Association
Bristol, U.K. 

Chicago

27 March 2008
Book Signing
The Seminary Co-op Bookstores
1301 East 57th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637
semcoop.booksense.com

26 March 2008
Lecture, History & Sociology
Loyola University
Chicago, Illinois

March Radio Interviews on MCM

12 March 2008
"The Journey Home Show" 
radio interview with Diego Mulligan
KSFR, Santa Fe, New Mexico
www.ksfr.org

11 March 2008
"The Peter Werbe Show" 
WRIF, WCSX, WMGC
Detroit, MI

3 March 2008
radio interview with Krys Boyd, "Think" 
KERA, Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas
www.kera.org

XVth E.P. Thompson Lecture

28 February 2008
XVth E.P. Thompson Lecture
University of Pittsburgh

Toledo

20 February 2008
Reading, Discussion, Signing
Law School, University of Toledo

Ann Arbor Signing

7 February 2008
Reading and Signing 
Shaman Drum Book Store
Ann Arbor, MI

www.shamandrum.com/bookshop/

New York Launch

2 February 2008
Reading and Signing
Bluestockings Book Store, Manhattan, New York
www.bluestockings.com

1 February 2008
Michael Ratner & Peter Linebaugh at the New York Launch
Dee Dee Halleck, "Magna Carta," Hand Held Visions
deedeehallack.blogspot.com

31 January 2008
Lecture on The Magna Carta Manifesto
Atlantic Studies Program
New York University

31 January 2008
Radio interview with Doug Henwood
"Behind the News," Pacifica Foundation, WBAI, New York

31 January 2008
Radio interview with Michael Smith
The Lawyers' Guild, KPFK, Los Angeles

29 January 2008
Radio interview with Michael Ratner
"Law & Disorder," Pacifica Foundation, WBAI, New York

Early Publicity

The Magna Carta Manifesto was published on February 10, 2008. The author began speaking on the Magna Carta and the Commons first in India in January 2005, then in Bristol in Novemberr 2006 and again in April 2007 at Berkeley City College in California. 

What follows is a list of the publicity prior to publication. 

26 December 2007 
Seminar with Gustavo Esteva, Universidad de la Tierra
Oaxaca, Mexico

15/16 December 2007
"A People's Penny for the Magna Carta"
Counterpunch 
www.counterpunch.org/linebaugh12152007.html

7 December 2007
Lecture, "The Commons and Magna Carta"
Conference, "From Magna Carta to the Sky Trust: Historical Arc of the Commons"
Center for 21st Century Studies, 
University of Milwaukee Wisconsin

10 November 2007
Presentation, "1968 Confidential!" Movement for a Democratic Society,
Loyola University, Chicago, Illionois

27 October, 2007
Keynote Address, "The Commons and Magna Carta"
Hudson Bay Company, Canvassers' Conference
Paducah, Kentucky

27 April 2007
Keynote, "The Commons: From Magna Carta to May Day"
Crisis of the California Commons, California Studies Association
Berkeley City College, Berkeley California

27 November 2006
Interview with Michael Portillo, "Things I Forgot to Remember"
chosen as "the Pick of the Week" 
BBC Radio Four & the Open University
www.open2.net/historyand the arts/history/magnacarta.html

3 November 2006 
Keynote, "The Commons and Magna Carta" 
Bristol Radical History Association

3 May 2005 
"Magna Carta and May Day" 
Counterpunch
www.counterpunch.org/linebaugh05032005.html

7 January 2005 
Keynote Address, "The Commons and Magna Carta" 
Delhi, India