In July 2013 Bradley Manning, the American soldier who passed thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks in protest at US military operations in the Middle East, was sentenced to 35 years in Fort Leavenworth military prison.1 The day after sentencing… Continue Reading
There is a scene in The Spirit of ‘45, director Ken Loach’s documentary about the achievements of the 1945-51 Labour government in Britain, where a general practitioner tells of visiting a poor family where a child was very ill with… Continue Reading
The last few weeks of 2013 saw three important events in the life of the radical left in Britain-the defeat suffered by workers at the Grangemouth oil refining and chemicals complex in Scotland, the founding conference of Left Unity, and… Continue Reading
Introduction Since the onset of the economic crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, governments across the world have attempted to implement policies that try to stabilise capitalism. In Britain these attacks have focused on the welfare… Continue Reading
This year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the “German October”, the aborted socialist revolution that came to mark the end of the post-war revolutionary wave that had washed away monarchical government from most of Central and Eastern Europe. For a… Continue Reading
In recent years the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has become one of the most vital and most discussed figures in academia.1 But as with other major figures such as Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri and Alain Badiou, Agamben’s name and influence… Continue Reading
Is Michael Gove simply mad? Is he a vain loose cannon who was given the education ship’s wheel by captain David Cameron in June 2010?1 He is certainly derided as being professionally unqualified for his job by teachers and lecturers.… Continue Reading
There has been a significant revival of interest among the radical left in “big picture” questions of socialist strategy that, as Mark L Thomas has pointed out, represents a return to “important debates of the left largely absent over the… Continue Reading
Neil Davidson has produced a lengthy piece on the neoliberal era in Britain, which raises important questions for us as revolutionary socialists.1 We agree with much of his narrative. However, the article is a piece of two halves and there… Continue Reading
For almost a year the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has been seized by deep division. It has not stopped us acting as a revolutionary organisation. We have had successes and recruited hundreds of new members. The trade union conferences saw… Continue Reading