The military coup of July 2013 was a serious setback for the revolutionary movement in Egypt.1 For army leader Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi it was an act of rescuing the revolution: for Egypt’s radical activists it was a counter-revolutionary offensive aimed to… Continue Reading
Once upon a time, after the end of the Cold War, a fairy tale came to prevail, especially in Europe: economic globalisation was washing away national antagonisms and drawing states into a benign system of “global governance” under which the… Continue Reading
Seven years ago Britain’s main nationalist parties were making tangible gains. In 2007 the Scottish National Party (SNP), Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru all took some degree of control in their respective devolved institutions. Sinn Fein entered into a new… Continue Reading
There have been heated debates on the left over the last few years on the role of the internet and social media through web based communication (WBC). In an article in International Socialism two years ago Jonny Jones reviewed these… Continue Reading
In regard to what was to be understood by “the Gospel”, [Thomas] Münzer asserts: “It is an article of our creed, and one which we wish to realise, that all things are in common [omnia sunt communia], and should be… Continue Reading
In 1957 E P Thompson in a private letter to his friend, the fellow dissident Communist historian John Saville, described Raymond Challinor (1929-2011) warmly as a “Trot of the milder persuasion”.1 Thompson had recently resigned from the Communist Party of… Continue Reading
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