Transnational solidarity excavates the forgotten histories of solidarity that were vital to radical political imaginaries during the 'long' 1960s. It decentres the conventional Western focus of this critical historical moment by foregrounding transnational solidarity with, and across, anticolonial and anti-imperialist liberation struggles. The book traces the ways in which solidarity was conceived, imagined and enacted in the border crossings - of nation, race and class - made by grassroots activists.

This diverse collection draws links between exiled revolutionaries in Uruguay, post-colonial immigrants in Britain, and Greek communist refugees in East Germany who campaigned for their respective causes from afar while identifying and linking up with wider liberation struggles. Meanwhile, Arab immigrants in France, Pakistani volunteers and Iraqi artists found myriad ways to express solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Neglected archives also reveal Tricontinental Cuban-based genealogies of artistic militancy, as well as transnational activist networks against Portuguese colonial rule in Africa.

Bringing together original research with contributions from veteran activists and artists, this interdisciplinary volume explores how transnational solidarity was expressed in and carried through the itineraries of migrants and revolutionaries, film and print cultures, art and sport, political campaigns and armed struggle. It presents a novel perspective on radical politics of the global sixties which remains crucial to understanding anti-racist solidarity today.

With a foreword by Vijay Prashad.

Reviews

'This valuable collection of essays casts fresh light on a very significant period of anticolonial resistance and connected struggles across national borders. Its global scope decentres the geopolitical West without obscuring the links between various movements in the 'long sixties'. Textured histories of transnational solidarity, at all times a demanding practice, are particularly welcome at a time when anti-imperialism too often devolves into a simplistic campism.'
Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire, University of Cambridge

'This is an important and politically timely collection which foregrounds the agency of activists from the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and South Asia in shaping the left internationalisms that defined the 'Global Sixties'. It also reinscribes the centrality of anticolonial solidarity to events such as '1968' in Paris and the emergence of the anti-apartheid movement. Through doing so it provides necessary resources for thinking about left futures and global transnational solidarities.'
David Featherstone, author of Solidarity, University of Glasgow

Foreword - Vijay Prashad

Introduction: Transnational solidarity in the long sixties - Zeina Maasri, Cathy Bergin and Francesca Burke
1 'We took the notion' - Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
2 The voice of the immigrant worker and the rise and fall of France's long 1968 - Matt Myers
3 Comités Palestine (1970-72): on the origins of solidarity with the Palestinian cause in France - Abdellali Hajjat
4 Cultural guerrilla: tricontinental genealogies of 1968 - Paula Barreiro López
Manifesto: For the cultural congress of Havana (1967)
5 New left encounters in Latin America: transnational revolutionaries, exiles and the formation of the Tupamaros in early 1960s Montevideo - Marina Cardozo
6 Connected struggles, anticolonial solidarity and liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies in Africa - Víctor Barros
7 'Action needed': the American Committee on Africa and solidarity with Angola - Aurora Almada e Santos
8 On transnational feminist solidarity: the case of Angela Davis in Egypt
Sara Salem
9 'Don't play with apartheid': anti-racist solidarity in Britain with South African sports
Christian Høgsbjerg
10 The Gulf Committee: Interview with Helen Lackner
11 'The brilliant sun of revolt' rising in the East: solidarity in Britain with the uprising in Pakistan of 1968-69 - Talat Ahmed
12 Palestine through the prism of Pakistani cinema: imagining sameness and solidarity
through Zerqa (1969) - Sabah Haider
13 The long sixties and Islamist activism: radical transregional solidarities - Claudia Derichs
14 A witness of our time (1972): Selected drawings by Dia al-Azzawi
15 Greece in the Third World: solidarity through metonymy in a refugee magazine
from the GDR - Mary Ikoniadou
16 Solidarity as an absence: the productive limits of Adorno's thought - Patricia McManus

Index

Editors

Zeina Maasri is a Senior Lecturer on the Humanities Programme at the University of Brighton

Cathy Bergin is a Principal Lecturer on the Humanities Programme at the University of Brighton

Francesca Burke is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Brighton