The extraordinary British general election of 8 June 2017—held amid the echoes of police gunfire on London Bridge—showed that the forces destabilising the advanced capitalist societies since the global economic and financial crisis that broke out nearly a decade ago… Continue Reading
In June and July 1917, the then secretary of the Labour Party Arthur Henderson visited revolutionary Russia on behalf of Lloyd George’s coalition government. He returned extremely disturbed by what he had seen. The radicalism of the Russian working class… Continue Reading
“In passing across a narrow and unreliable bridge, a small but reliable prop may prove one’s salvation. But woe to him who clutches at a rotten prop that crumbles at a touch—for, in that case, a plunge into the abyss… Continue Reading
Something remarkable happened over the summer of 2015. Immediately after Ed Miliband resigned following Labour’s defeat in the general election, the grip exercised by Blairism over the Labour Party had seemed set to continue grimly on. The field competing for… Continue Reading
In our last issue we advised the radical left in Britain to be “open to the sudden fissures that the crisis of the British state can…unexpectedly open up, perhaps making possible a qualitative advance”.1 And the unexpected came very quickly,… Continue Reading
With over 1.4 million members, Unite is Britain’s biggest union, representing more than a fifth of all trade unionists in the UK. A mainly private sector union, it is also well represented in parts of the public sector—local government, the… Continue Reading
A review of John Prescott with Hunter Davies, Prezza: Pulling No Punches (Headline, 2008), £18.99; Peter Mandelson, The Third Man: Life At The Heart Of New Labour (Harper Press, 2010), £25; Tony Blair, A Journey (Hutchinson, 2010), £25 With David… Continue Reading
It is more than a little ironic that the recent race for the leadership of the Labour Party came down to a contest between the Miliband brothers.1 For their dad, Ralph, was the author of a devastating socialist critique of… Continue Reading
The least expected beneficiary of the September-October 2008 financial crisis was Gordon Brown. The whole media, and at least half the cabinet, regarded him as one of the living dead in the run-up to the Labour Party conference. Within weeks… Continue Reading
The smell of death around this government is so overpowering it seems to have anaesthetised them all… The imaginary Blair/Brown ideological distinction has now been exposed as the sham it always was… The sad truth is that he [Brown] opposed… Continue Reading