Rhian E. Jones

1 month ago | redpepper.org.uk | Rhian E. Jones

Like many things enabled in the idealistic early days of Web 2.0, the opportunity for public responses to mainstream journalism via the comments section wasn’t a bad idea to begin with. But under the particular business model of left-leaning newspapers like the one where I worked in the 2010s, comment sections became a battleground in the emerging ‘culture war’. Let’s start with the headlines.

Jan 8, 2025 | historytoday.com | Rhian E. Jones

A sustained campaign of attacks blazed across the Welsh counties of Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire, and Pembrokeshire from 1839. Tenant-farmers and labourers, infuriated by increased charges on road travel that made their working lives and finances even more burdensome, took matters into their own hands by destroying tollhouses, gates, and bars in what became known as the Rebecca riots.

Jan 30, 2024 | historytoday.com | Rhian E. Jones

Ahead of a possible Labour victory in Britain’s next general election, three new histories published on the centenary of the party’s first government provide a useful opportunity for reflection and perspective. Peter Clark’s brisk and personable The Men of 1924 devotes roughly half its length to Labour’s early years, as the party transformed itself ‘from pressure group to government in waiting’.

Sep 27, 2023 | historytoday.com | Rhian E. Jones

In the UK, May and June 2022 were officially a ‘hot strike summer’, in which the context of the country’s cost of living crisis generated popular support for workers’ action and admiration for plain-speaking union leaders such as the RMT’s Mick Lynch. The whole thing seemed underpinned by a certain nostalgia, not least bringing to mind that other ‘hot strike summer’ of 1984. In his introduction, Robert Gildea notes the resonance of Lynch’s rhetoric as a reason to pay the strike renewed attention.

Aug 29, 2023 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Rhian E. Jones

References and (2020) “Catching Up or Falling Behind? Geographical Inequalities in the UK and How They have Changed in Recent Years.” The Institute for Fiscal Studies and Nuffield Foundation https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/geographical-inequalities-in-the-uk/ (last accessed 19 July 2023) , and (2014) Thinking with “White Dee”: The gender politics of “austerity porn”. Sociological Research Online 19(3): 256–262 and (1993) Place and space in contemporary Europe: Some lessons and reflections.