Fascism, the Lost Pillar of British Political Culture: The Black Experience of White Supremacy
5:30pm - 7:00pm /
Wednesday 9th October 2024
/ Venue: Lecture Theatre B Central Teaching Hub
Type: Other /
Category: Department
- Jessica White
- Admission: Free
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Please join us on 9th October 2024 for the University of Liverpool History Department's Black History Month lecture with Dr Liam Liburd (University of Durham) who will be presenting his work on the Black experience of fascism in Britain. The event is hosted by the new political lives research cluster, which aims to bring together academics working on the lives and experiences of activists across a range of chronological periods and geographical locations.
After several years of renewed interest in Black British history within and beyond academic institutions (a ‘moment’ which may well be at an end), this talk add to calls for a wider transformation of the discipline of British history more generally, rather than thinking of Black British history only as a means of rescuing ‘lost’ histories or diversifying curricula. It does so through an exploration of the history of Black British activists' theoretical engagements and physical encounters with what they called British ‘fascism’ from the 1930s through to the 1970s. It argues that these encounters confront historians of Britain with new questions – not about how we define fascism but about the limits placed on liberal democracy by white supremacy.
Dr Liam J. Liburd is Assistant Professor of Black British History at Durham University. He understands Black British history not just as historical subject matter but as a theoretical lens. Using this lens, his research reappraises the role of the white supremacist movement within the wider politics of race in modern British history. He was mostly recently published in the collection The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism (Hurst, 2024), which features a chapter of his on the history of comparisons between imperialism and fascism in Black political thought. He is also in the process of trying to turn his thesis into his first book, under the working title: Thinking Imperially: The British White Supremacist Movement and the Politics of Race in Modern Britain.
After several years of renewed interest in Black British history within and beyond academic institutions (a ‘moment’ which may well be at an end), this talk add to calls for a wider transformation of the discipline of British history more generally, rather than thinking of Black British history only as a means of rescuing ‘lost’ histories or diversifying curricula. It does so through an exploration of the history of Black British activists' theoretical engagements and physical encounters with what they called British ‘fascism’ from the 1930s through to the 1970s. It argues that these encounters confront historians of Britain with new questions – not about how we define fascism but about the limits placed on liberal democracy by white supremacy.
Dr Liam J. Liburd is Assistant Professor of Black British History at Durham University. He understands Black British history not just as historical subject matter but as a theoretical lens. Using this lens, his research reappraises the role of the white supremacist movement within the wider politics of race in modern British history. He was mostly recently published in the collection The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism (Hurst, 2024), which features a chapter of his on the history of comparisons between imperialism and fascism in Black political thought. He is also in the process of trying to turn his thesis into his first book, under the working title: Thinking Imperially: The British White Supremacist Movement and the Politics of Race in Modern Britain.