In this Labour Studies Podcast, Prof Peter Linebaugh discusses "Magna Carta Anniversary Lecture 'Liberties and Commons for All!' Reclaiming the Magna Carta from below 800 years later." The podcast is provided by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), Rhodes University. The link is anchor.fm/nalsu. or search for us on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1OXQEJnqPZxcbCCSJJCNhU. You can also download the Anchor FM app for your phone at the Google Play Store.
Linebaugh's work is also part of an active, public, progressive proļ¬le. His recent books - 'The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All' (2008) and 'Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance' (2014) - engage the history of commons, which he relates to contemporary, popular articulations of equality, freedom and practices of mutual aid, and class struggles, against the destruction of commons through capitalist and imperial enclosure that continues until this day. He will speak on why we should reclaim the Magna Carta, one of the two Great Charters of English Liberty that recognised political freedoms along with social and economic rights, and why we need to reclaim these Charters from the neo-liberal offensive today Prof Peter Linebaugh is widely recognised "as one of the most innovative, radical social historians of a generation". He is best known for authoring (with Marcus Rediker) the multi-award winning 'The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic' (2000) and 'The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century' (1991). According to Robin D.G. Kelley, there is "not a more important historian living today. Period." This talk was originally given on 29 July 2015 at Rhodes University, Makhanda.
The Labour Studies Podcasts are from our popular Labour Studies Seminar Series, launched in 2015. We cover "labour studies" in the broadest sense: labour and left history, policy and political economy, unions and popular struggles. NALSU, based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team from disciplines including Economics, History and Sociology, it has active partnerships and relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. It draws strength from its location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and the contradictions of the post-apartheid state, are keenly felt. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, a union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.