Alan Lester
@alanlester.bsky.social
British Empire Professor, University of Sussex. Co-editor, MUP Studies in Imperialism series. Views here own. Blogs on politics of colonial history here: https://alanlester.co.uk Editor https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-truth-about-empire/
Reform’s political programme amounts to: 1. Obtain as much money as possible for Farage regardless of its provenance by promising donors policy favouritism once in govt. 2. When 1 is noticed, promise more cruelty to migrants. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Former navy officer criticises Reform plan to use military to stop small boats
Retired commander says policy lacks substance as party accused of trying to distract from Nigel Farage’s scandals
theguardian.com
Important to note as well that Quakers are making concrete statements and taking action to address their past. www.quaker.org.uk/action/repar...
Reparations
Quakers have committed to making practical reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and economic exploitation. This page offers some resources to help meetings think about this work.
quaker.org.uk
Lord Sewell’s unqualified paean to Quaker businesses like Cadbury’s, as capitalism that fights injustice, isolates Britain from its colonies. While it improved worker conditions at home, Cadbury’s used enslaved workers on is cocoa plantations on São Tomé. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
Let’s rekindle capitalism with a conscience
Britain’s pioneering Quaker businesses showed that success and social good can work together
thetimes.com
1/3 I’m not sorry for siding on principle with a man being hunted by a lynch mob, led by an outright racist. I am sorry though, for suggesting that the extent of Arday’s uncited duplication of other scholars’ work is widespread among peers or “appropriate”. It isn’t.
Alan Lester@alanlester.bsky.social · last wk.Disgusted with @thetimes for presenting this non-story. If it has to be covered at all it should be framed as Discredited Racist Smears Black Cambridge Professor in Sustained Campaign to Undermine Him. Arday quoted & cited sources appropriately. www.thetimes.com/uk/education...
Why is it OK to dehumanise North African migrants when similar imagery, say of Jews, would rightly provoke outrage?
The web of dubious finance and lies that propelled Farage’s personal, & Reform’s political fortune is gradually being unravelled. Thanks to all the investigative journalists, not least @carolecadwalla.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
The tangled financial web at the heart of Reform UK
Nigel Farage’s £5m gift, the Cottrell family’s links and donations, and Richard Tice’s business dealings form part of an increasingly clear nexus of relationships
theguardian.com
Unusually, I agree with everything Ferguson writes here. An AI-enhanced far right is catastrophic for any truthful understanding of the past & present. Having noted its antisemitism, racism, transphobia & misogyny, maybe he’ll reconsider his own anti-“woke” tune? www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
When AI helps trolls to hype Hitler, historians stand no chance
A toxic blend of far-right influencers, algorithms and bots is pushing antisemitism into the mainstream, poisoning minds and imperilling Jews
thetimes.com
1/4 Jameela Jamil clearly had her tongue firmly in cheek when describing British people as “evil” in imperial days. But the reaction does indicate how little most Britons know about the violence entailed in holding on to an unprecedentedly extensive empire. One example: youtube.com/shorts/SaGNs...
Jameela Jamil: Britain Is "The Most Evil Country In History"
YouTube video by Eastern Eye
youtube.com
Let's keep signing and sharing! Signatures have increased 4.6% this morning! Can we get a 10% increase today overall?
Warren Oates@warrenoates1.bsky.social · last mo.Let's boost my petition today which calls for stronger regulation of all our news media through the creation of a single, powerful regulator across broadcast, print and online news, with powers to action on misinformation and the blurring of fact and opinion! Currently at just over 2700 signatures!
#historyteacher Important and sobering - for KS3 we can only do so much in 90 minutes a week, but we try! I would love to do the migration unit for GCSE - but it didn’t exist when we initially chose our specification, and now we’ve got C&P until spec change. We need more empire in Year 9, though.
Alan Lester@alanlester.bsky.social · 3w agoIn this new blog I show how Paul Marshall (GB News, The Spectator, UnHerd) and Michael Gove are frustrated by @willdalrymple.bsky.social’s erudite & rival influence on the public’s historical understanding. Also, how the British Empire is *really* taught in schools: alanlester.co.uk/blog/teachin...
It’ll be interesting to see whether the constitutionally contrary Kemi Badenoch can ever be persuaded to work collaboratively. Burnham invites Tories and Lib Dems to social care talks www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Burnham invites Tories and Lib Dems to talks about social care
In a speech, the PM is expected to say finding common ground across party lines will be key to fixing social care.
bbc.co.uk
If we adopt Helen Fein's definition of developmental genocide - the destruction of "people who stand in the way of the economic exploitation of resources”, then humanity as a whole is being subjected to a fossil fuel loby-perpetrated, slow genocide. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Wildfires 'stark reminder' of extreme climate challenge - William
The prince's warning comes as wildfires rage in parts of Europe and the UK during a spell of extreme heat.
bbc.co.uk
I’m going to sound like an old-fashioned Marxist here but perhaps the glimmer of a waning interest in political drama & extremes (despite Chris Mason’s best efforts) might be to do with capitalism finally, gradually, absorbing its self-induced 2008 crisis? www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
Public are finally tiring of the No 10 Show
No great drama can continue indefinitely and in our politics-as-entertainment culture, we may be reaching series fatigue
thetimes.com
Finally the right wing populism that has so damaged Britain since unscrupulous charlatans first started propagandising for Brexit may have crested. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Labour overtakes Reform in voter poll for first time since March 2025
Labour up four points to 28% while Reform falls to 24% as Andy Burnham apparently wins favour for cost of living focus
theguardian.com
📢 Looking for a book about empire, colonialism, & its long legacy for a course this autumn? Check out these new pbs from @alanlester.bsky.social, @mark-condos.bsky.social & @amalkc.bsky.social. @eriklinstrum.bsky.social, @garethknapman.bsky.social, @bickers.bsky.social, @eicathomefinn.bsky.social
‘The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism’, edited by @alanlester.bsky.social with foreword by @sathnam.bsky.social, was a ‘Book of the Year’ from @historytoday.com. ‘A useful volume with broad coverage.’ @iajournal.bsky.social Sample 👉 tinyurl.com/yj8dy267
The Truth About Empire | Hurst Publishers
Foreword by Sathnam Sanghera Selected as a 'Book of the Year' by BBC History Magazine Sharp, authoritative essays on the dark realities of Empire and the true historian’s importance for democracy, a...
tinyurl.com
This is why “it’s just a few of them” and the “just ignore them” responses to racism etc. because these people are given free rein to intimidate and harm people up until it becomes an embarrassing spectacle.
Alan Lester@alanlester.bsky.social · last wk.The racist vigilantes behind this unlicensed flag hoisting campaign shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it simply because they insist, pathetically, on gaslighting everyone with protestations of innocent patriotism. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/prid...
Pride with a dash of prejudice: How the Spectator embraced the narrative of anti-Muslim bigotry
Britain's oldest and most venerated political magazine has given innumerable column inches to unapologetic racist diatribe that has fanned the flames of Islamophobia
middleeasteye.net
Trump’s war on Iran has cost the equivalent of Ghana’s entire national debt (US$ 37.5 billion). Ghana’s annual debt repayments are five times its combined health & education budgets. He could have arrested a whole nation’s underdevelopment. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
‘Shameful’: Pentagon accused of cover-up over US military casualties in Iran war
No press briefing has been held for months, as the defence department belatedly or inaccurately releases figures
theguardian.com
The racist vigilantes behind this unlicensed flag hoisting campaign shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it simply because they insist, pathetically, on gaslighting everyone with protestations of innocent patriotism. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Birmingham council accused of giving ‘free rein’ to group erecting England flags
Campaigners call for injunction against Raise the Colours, which is accused of spreading anti-immigration rhetoric
theguardian.com
Disgusted with @thetimes for presenting this non-story. If it has to be covered at all it should be framed as Discredited Racist Smears Black Cambridge Professor in Sustained Campaign to Undermine Him. Arday quoted & cited sources appropriately. www.thetimes.com/uk/education...
Cambridge University pioneer Jason Arday in plagiarism row
The youngest black professor ever appointed at Cambridge has been accused of plagiarising the work of other academics, a month before his memoir is published
thetimes.com
They respond “it’s all an Establishment stitch up”. Others say this bunch of grasping millionaires ARE the Establishment. In reality they are worse. Their greed is unmoderated by the desire for respectability & their views are too abhorrent even for the Establishment. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Police investigate donations by Richard Tice company to Reform UK
Britain Means Business, owned by the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice, made two donations of £250,000 in the run-up to the 2024 general election.
bbc.co.uk
“Five years ago, academic and media analyst Brian Cathcart wrote this: “today’s Spectator is a far- right organ of intolerance.” He added: “Letting The Spectator into your home, in other words, is for me pretty much like decorating your coffee table with a book about race by Oswald Mosley.””
1/2 The Centre for Media Monitoring has surveyed over 3,000 Spectator articles. It will come as no surprise that it is Islamophobic: “stupid, bigoted, racist and irrational”, in the words of its former political editor Peter Oborne: cfmm.org.uk/wp-content/u...
cfmm.org.uk
Just published, open access: Trump is floundering in a quagmire of his own making in Iran, not least because he completely misunderstands the lessons of imperial history. @willdalrymple.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Trump Completely Misunderstands the Lessons of the British Empire
Published in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2026)
tandfonline.com
MAGA’s attempts to censor US museums & cultural institutions are extreme but we must remember that it was culture war obsessed right wing extremists in the last Tory government who set us on the same path, on the pretext of defending against “radical” anti-racism. www.aam-us.org/2026/07/20/a...
AAM Statement on the Independence of the Smithsonian and America’s Museums
The American Alliance of Museums condemns the Administration’s continued attacks on the Smithsonian Institution and the museum professionals responsible for preserving, researching, and interpretin…
aam-us.org
This MAGA influencer conversion is more significant than it should be. Perhaps she could come to London next and defuse some more US far right propaganda? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Maga influencer Laura Loomer reverses course on Ukraine after Kyiv visit
Rightwing provocateur meets Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who says he expects to meet Donald Trump in Washington next week
theguardian.com
Do listen to this masterful exposition of the links between trans-Atlantic slavery and Australian settler colonisation from the brilliant & meticulous Zoe Laidlaw (working with @janelydon.bsky.social) www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...
How British slave money flowed to colonial Australia - ABC listen
In 1833, slavery in the British Empire was abolished, but not without a massive compensation scheme paid out to slave owners. Some of that money flowed to colonial Australia. Two-thirds of Australia's...
abc.net.au
