The Stop Shopping Choir perform for ‘Joe’s Pub’ at the Public Theatre in New York. Photo: John Quilty Maybe we don’t need more artworks about icebergs. Or, more specifically, maybe we don’t need more fragmented blocks of ice left to melt poignantly in our city...
Red Pepper
Education for an alternative
Photo credit: Alarichall Students and academics across the UK are preparing for a new round of strikes. They come at a time when university staff face extra difficulties with the cost of living crisis after a 20% real-term pay cut since 2010, postgraduate staff lack...
Compulsory voting: the debate
A map on which the countries marked in red have enforced compulsory voting. By SPQRobin (licensed under Creative Commons) Australia’s electoral mandate Should citizens be compelled to vote? Most of the world’s democracies say no, but a few compel electors to turn up...
The war on the Uyghurs
The Uyghur tribunal published its findings in December 2021. Photo credit: Lily Vetch In September 2021, I attended a London tribunal that heard evidence from several Uyghurs who had experienced persecution at the hands of China. Despite having given my own evidence...
Can Boric’s government end Chile’s Mapuche conflict?
Protesters wave the Mapuche flag on the streets of Chile. Photo by Pablo Bell (Instagram: @_pablobell) On 21 January, Chile’s new president Gabriel Boric unveiled his much anticipated cabinet of ministers. To the delight of Chile’s strong contingent of feminist...
Shareholder democracy has failed
Stock market trading figures Margaret Thatcher claimed that shareholder democracy would give ordinary people the chance to have a greater stake in the economy and the companies they work for. At the same time, she demolished Britain’s post-war settlement and...
Israeli apartheid: an international consensus
Credit: Montecruz Foto The landmark report released by Amnesty International last week can be condensed into a single, stark sentence: ‘whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior...
Fighting workplace surveillance
A cartoon from the February 1927 issue of US magazine Labor Age, depicting how systems of surveillance like Taylorism were intended to shape workers’ behaviour. The Covid-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down, forcing many changes at work. One of the most...
Rejecting the new cold war
Photo credit: Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen (USAF) At a time of heightened US-China geopolitical tensions, it is right to be wary. Concerns are valid that we are hurtling toward conflict between the two superpowers, articulated on the left as a ‘new cold war’ in some...
A ‘red’ new deal for China?
Nanshan District in Shenzhen, China. Many of China’s largest tech companies are located in Shenzhen, including Huawei and the world’s largest video game vendor Tencent. Over just a few months, a dizzying array of actions and rhetoric by the Chinese state to prioritise...
Mali protests highlight French influence
Credit: manhhai On January 14, tens of thousands of people gathered in Bamako and other cities around Mali to protest against severe sanctions imposed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Waving Malian flags, the demonstrators were responding to...
What remains to be said about Bloody Sunday?
A moral (right) depicts Jackie Duddy, shot dead on Bloody Sunday, carried away by a local priest. Credit: Will Bakker ‘I forced myself to look back inside again. In a surprisingly short time I found that I was no longer bothered by the sight. But for the smell, I...