The following article was first published in International Socialism 56 in autumn 1992. It is presented here to mark the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – also known as the Rio Summit or Earth… Continue Reading
A review of Christopher Hitchens, Hitch–22: A Memoir (Atlantic, 2010), £9.99 Given Hitchens’s political inconsistencies, Hitch–22 is better than it ought to be, a fact which is a consequence of his undeniable talent A petty bourgeois individualist, in his last… Continue Reading
Since his death Frantz Fanon has been appropriated for almost every cause. Five years after his death in 1961 he emerged as the preferred theorist of the emergent Black Power movement in the US, influencing Bobby Seale and Huey P… Continue Reading
This article explores the history of housing in Britain over the past 150 years, and the ways in which access to housing has been shaped by collective struggle.1 It traces the rise and the decline of council housing, and the… Continue Reading
In respect of climate change, the hurricane that tore into New York was the game changer. The floods it unleashed forced the authorities to organise a mass airlift evacuation of much of the city’s population, and to begin planning the… Continue Reading
Rupert Murdoch’s enforced appearance before the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport on 19 July 2011 was an unprecedented humiliation. It signified the eclipse, at least temporarily, of his political influence in Britain. And this was… Continue Reading
In February of this year the Tory employment minister, Chris Grayling, launched an astonishing attack on the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) while live on national radio. Responding to a campaign against a government “workfare” scheme which puts unemployed people to… Continue Reading
David Cameron chose to open 2012 with one of those tactical misjudgements increasingly typical of the overconfident, untested politicians of the coalition. On this occasion the subject was the timing and content of a future referendum on Scottish independence. Under… Continue Reading
Undeniably the global economic and political crisis has accelerated a broad process of political radicalisation visible, for example, in the impact of the Occupy movement during the winter of 2011-12. But these developments have not stilled the question of how… Continue Reading
Panos Garganas, editor of the Greek newspaper Workers Solidarity, spoke to International Socialism about the latest developments in the country. The kind of figures that we now have for the economic crisis in Greece are absolutely horrifying – 7 percent… Continue Reading