Paul’s contributions spanned his political life, although he didn’t write for it very often.
Article examples on the Marxist Internet Archive
This article was written as Paul prepared his first book, Immigration and Race in British Politics, for publication.
Immigration and the British Labour Movement
Autumn 1965
Ever since the start of industrial history the ruling classes have sought propaganda methods to divert the attention of the workers from the ineptitude and savagery of capitalism…’
This review of Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician by Bernard Donoughue and G.W. Jones seems suddenly topical. Morrison was the Mayor of Hackney before becoming a Labour MP and government minister. He was also the grandfather of Peter Mandelson.
Portrait of an Appalling Man
February 1974
Herbert Morrison was appalling. In his youth he flirted with Marxist ideas and organisations until one day he went to listen to Ramsay Macdonald. From that day, Morrison modelled himself on ‘the old man’, and took up Macdonald’s stance on the extreme right wing of the Labour Party.
An extended book review of Shelley: The Pursuit, by Richard Holmes, which led Paul into a greater exploration of Shelley’s poetry and his own book Red Shelley.
Shelley: The Trumpet of a Prophecy
June 1975
I have come to Shelley far too late, and for that I blame my accursed education. I still have the small dark blue text book Shelley by Richard Hughes, which was forced down my throat at school.
There is no suggestion in the volume that Shelley had any ideas whatever. He was interested, apparently, in skylarks, clouds, west winds, Apollo, Pan and Arethusa.
Paul’s review of two extraordinary books about the poet William Blake: Blake by Peter Ackroyd and Witness against the beast – William Blake and the moral law, by E. P. Thompson
A Passionate Prophet of Liberation
June 1996
In London in the 1790s, like in London today, it was commonplace to see a woman being beaten up in the street, and equally common for embarrassed or irritated bystanders to pass by on the other side. William Blake had a short temper and often lost it. Walking in the St Giles area, and seeing a woman attacked, he launched himself on the scene with such ferocity that the assailant ‘recoiled and collapsed’.