On 7 August 2011 the Observer ran a column by Nick Cohen with the headline “No riots here, just quiet, ever-deeper misery”.1 After outlining the Tory attacks on working class people, he states, “These arrant insults ought to push the… Continue Reading
“The future begins today,” declaimed Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, the day after the 11 September 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.1 This kind of hype seems very distant now. For all the genuine emotion present in… Continue Reading
As it has remorselessly unwound, the global economic and financial crisis has passed through a succession of turning points. The first came when the credit crunch began in August 2007. Then there was the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September… Continue Reading
The trade union leaders, almost to a man, deplored it, the government viewed it with alarm, the Independent Labour Party regretted this untoward disregard for the universal panacea of the ballot box, the Social Democratic Federation asked, “Can anything be… Continue Reading
If someone in England stands up and establishes a party which positions itself between the racist BNP and the conservatives, it would also get 20 percent of the vote. I would very much like to establish parties in other countries.… Continue Reading
Multiculturalism is once more under attack. David Cameron’s speech, delivered in Germany on 5 February 2011 at a European governmental conference on security, repeated many familiar criticisms of multiculturalism. It was delivered on the same day as the viciously anti-Muslim… Continue Reading
This article is a preliminary and incomplete account of an unfinished revolution.1 It represents a first attempt to explore the implications of the great wave of strikes and social protests which preceded Mubarak’s fall from power and dominated the first… Continue Reading
After 13 years of exile the Conservative Party has returned to office, but weaker than ever and dependent on a coalition with the Liberals. Amid a global crisis, with a weak incumbent and against a widely disliked government, the Tories… Continue Reading
The past has been A mint of blood and sorrow – That must not be True of tomorrow. 1 From appeasement to coordinated strike action Langston Hughes wrote the short poem “History” ,just as the US labour movement rose like… Continue Reading
For a while the high priests of capitalism congratulated themselves on the robustness of the economic recovery. Financial markets soared and there was euphoria about the robust expansion of the “emerging market” economies of the Global South. But in the… Continue Reading