Gerrard Winstanley was 40 years old when Charles I was executed.1 Had he been born 20 years before, or after, history would likely have been robbed of one of its most inspiring visionaries. Winstanley was the ideological driving force behind… Continue Reading
A review of Erik Olin Wright, Understanding Class (Verso, 2015), £14.99 Erik Olin Wright has been worrying about class for 40 years. Much of his conceptual thinking and rethinking came about as a result of the empirical investigation Wright led… Continue Reading
Art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. John Berger, 1985.1 In 1969 Kenneth Clark presented a 13-part television series… Continue Reading
I shall never forget that thunder-like speech, which startled and amazed not only me, a heretic who had accidently dropped in, but all the true believers. I am certain that no one had expected anything of the sort. It seemed… Continue Reading
Within weeks of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, news and media channels were dominated by charges of antisemitism levelled against his supporters, the National Union of Students and others for their opposition to the State of Israel. The furore… Continue Reading
The commission was chaired by Bob Geldof and headed by prime minister Tony Blair, chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown, and minister for international development Hilary Benn. It also included: Michel Camdessus, who as managing director of the IMF until… Continue Reading
Towards the end of the 1980s and early 1990s strikes, riots and demonstrations forced 19 one-party states in Africa to institutionalise a democratic opposition. But the headlong rush into neo-liberalism and continued structural adjustment policies somewhat de-֊legitimised the ‘birth of… 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
During the blisteringly hot summer of 1976 a group of Asian workers, predominantly women, walked out on strike at a small factory in north west London. Most were recently arrived migrants from Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya and were as unlikely… Continue Reading