Books published by The Merlin Press Ltd

As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century, it refashioned both our ways of working and our ways of consuming, as well as our ways of communicating.

Clash is set against the backdrop of the 1926 general strike. It describes political and personal issues as Joan Craig, an activist in the trade union movement and Labour Party, lives through the excitement of mass protest and individual turmoil in her relations with two men friends.

Millions of people across the globe face a precarious existence because of Covid-19, climate change, and the greatest wealth inequality in a century. In Britain, the pandemic has revealed critical failings in the social safety net, especially the damage to the National Health Service caused by years of underfunding and creeping privatisation.

'By the gains of Industry, we promote Art' 'In Birmingham you may generally recognise a board school by it being the best building in the neighbourhood, with its lofty towers, gabled windows, warm red bricks and stained glass.' So observed the Pall Mall Gazette in 1894. The famous civic gospel shaped Birmingham

Misbehaving gives us the story of the protesters against Miss World Contest in the words of the rebels themselves. Through the wonderful diversity of their personal and political life stories it does something more. By chronicling the influences that led them to take action, it vividly reveals

Margaret Llewelyn Davies (1861-1944), a co-operator, feminist and socialist, was well known in her time as the outstanding leader of the Women's Co-operative Guild. This first full scale biography chronicles her life and achievements, intertwining activity among working class women with her personal story.

Climate change is a product of the entire social and economic system within which we exist, in a word, capitalism.

Transform! 2020 explores the future of Europe in the emerging multipolar world. What is the impact of the global crisis of hegemony? What is at stake for democracy and labour and what opportunities are opening up for political and social subjects in the era of digital capitalism? Can art and history still provide some answers?

Tells the stories of young prostitutes, many of them under sentence of death from AIDS.

This book addresses the challenges facing socialists and the recent shift from protest to politics. It examines the limits and possibilities for class, party and state transformation and the democratic and socialist insurgencies inside the Labour Party in Britain, and the Democratic Party in the USA.

Over the past few years a new breed of multinationals has arrived, almost unnoticed, on the scene. Like early capitalist adventurers, they have found a rich new source of wealth to exploit. But this seam of gold is to be found, not in the mountains of California or the depths of Africa but at the very heart of the welfare states of the developed world. This important collection of essays anatomises the emergence of the 'public services industry' and analyses the way in which government services have been commodified so that they can be privatised or outsourced. It charts the growth of the global companies that have sprung up to supply these services and documents the devastating impact on workers, including work intensification, casualisation, loss of union protection and erosion of occupational identities. It also explores the changing relationship between the state and the private sector and the implications for democracy of developments which transform citizens into shoppers.

Much loved in his own era, William Morris has inspired Prime Ministers (Clement Attlee), artists and eco-socialists (John Bellamy Foster).

Paul grew up in the 1930s South Africa. He awoke to political activism as an Indian in the racially segregated schools and slums of Johannesburg, and aged just 15, committed himself to fight oppression. He participated in ANC political campaigns from the passive resistance of the 1940s - inspired by Gandhi - through to the armed struggle

Hugo Blanc is Peru's best-known revolutionary. A leader of the indigenous people of the Andes, he was born in 1934 in Cusco, the former Inca capital. He is a lifelong environmental campaigner in defence of the natural riches of the Andean region and beyond.

George Julian Harney was one of the half-dozen most important leaders of Chartism. This selection from the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle is the first book to reprint any of his journalism. Harney is a key figure in the history of English radicalism.

Supply chains are becoming ever more tightly integrated as corporations vie with each other to bring their products to global markets before they lose their value through replication or obsolescence. This restructuring of supply chains involves the interaction of a range of different public and private, local and global actors, including companies

It is often argued that 'digital labour' or 'virtual work' is fundamentally different from traditional forms of labour carried out offline, with 'work' and 'play' collapsed together to become 'playbour' and new forms of value creation that do not fit traditional economic models. But however 'immaterial' their labour processes, workers still have bodies that become exhausted and require feeding and housing in the 'real' economy. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical research, this collection takes a critical look at how online work can be theorised and categorised (including revisiting concepts of 'deskilling' developed in the 1970s). It also analyses how the development of online work has meshed with broader trends in organisational restructuring to erode traditional employment norms, time structures and models of behaviour at work, placing new stresses on offline daily life.

This book focuses on the men of the convict transport Eleanor who arrived in NSW in 1831. They were all from the counties of Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire and were transported for their part in the Swing riots - the great agricultural uprising of 1830-31. This episode which touched thirty counties and has been called 'the last peasants' revolt' led to more than 480 people being sent to Australia ('the largest single group in the history of transportation' (George Rude). The men on the Eleanor who made up 30% of the Swing transportees. Part I of the book deals with the men of the Eleanor in their English setting, Part II with their experiences as convicts and free men in New South Wales. The chapter headings below give a clear indication of the contents of each chapter and the focus of the book on ruined and then reconstructed lives Written with full academic apparatus but with that elusive being the general reader in mind, this theme will appeal to that large readership in England which is interested in rural social history and popular protest.In Australia there is a large and enthusiatic readership for books on colonial history, convictism and works which provide a context for family history. This book also has the advantage of being focussed on Hardy's Wessex and is thus, to some extent, a contribution to the regional history of southern England. The Swing Riots are a topic which features in the history syllabuses of most examination boards in southern England.