The success of Reform UK in the British general election of July 2024 is unprecedented.1 The far right, anti-immigration party won 4.12 million votes, 14 percent of the total, and five seats: Clacton in Essex, Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire,… Continue Reading
In the final weeks of a close—and nasty—presidential election, a feeling of dread took over. This replaced the temporary and undeserved “Kamalamania” that had peaked as I wrote for the previous issue of International Socialism.1 The re-election of Donald Trump… Continue Reading
A tangle of seemingly disconnected signals emerged from the sequence of elections in 2024, encompassing the dramatic victory of Donald Trump in the United States presidential elections as well as Labour leader Keir Starmer’s landslide in Britain.1 One of the… Continue Reading
This article seeks to build a Marxist case for reparations related to transatlantic slavery—an issue that has recently returned to the political agenda of the left and crossed over into mainstream discussions. Until recently, reparations were often seen as a… Continue Reading
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the 1984-5 miners’ strike, a major class confrontation between the government of Margaret Thatcher and a trade union that had helped bring down the previous Conservative administration in the early… Continue Reading
During the 1970s and 1980s, members of the International Socialists (IS), later the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), produced a number of publications with the purpose of politically organising different communities in Britain.1 These publications were either printed in the English… Continue Reading
An excellent May-June issue of New Left Review contains several strong articles. They include a fabulous interview of Rashid Khalidi, editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, conducted by the veteran socialist activist and writer Tariq Ali. The discussion goes… Continue Reading
A review of Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat by Hannah Proctor (Verso, 2024), £14.99 Some years ago, I was at a Celtic Connections folk concert in Glasgow. Following what seemed like an endless succession of dreary songs lamenting… Continue Reading
A review of Paul Foot: A Life in Politics, Margaret Renn (Verso Books, 2024), £30.00 It always seems that an anniversary with a zero at the end is a good time for a biography. It is therefore appropriate that the… Continue Reading
A review of No Justice, No Police? The Politics of Protest and Social Change by Matt Clement (ed) (Zero, 2023), £22.99 It is estimated that more than 600 people are killed by law enforcement each year in the United States.… Continue Reading