The UCU ‘Four Fights’ campaign, explained here, is running concurrent with a pensions dispute Plastered around forums popular with UK university students are messages of discontent; over the amount of money they’re paying, with their workload, with Covid-19 related...
Red Pepper
Dawn Foster memorial essay prize
Dawn Foster (1986-2021) was a brilliant and fearless working-class journalist who told the stories of those whose housing situation all too often left them voiceless. [You can read more about Dawn and her journalism here, here and here.] In her memory, HCI Skills...
The Fate of Teesside’s Industrial Heritage
The Dorman Long tower prior to its demolition (Credit: George Walker) When I went home earlier this year to visit my family, my mum was keen for us to take a walk to see something of great importance to our region and background before, as she feared, it would be...
Apathy or strategy in Chile’s decisive election
Police surveil protests in Santiago. Credit: Daniel Espinosa Guzman The twists and turns in Chile’s recent political rollercoaster has thrown up another shock as far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast is being touted by some pollsters as most likely to win this week’s...
Remembering Greenham Common
Photo Credit: NBCU. Mothers of the Revolution is available now to watch on digital download. The public alert system put in place during the Cold War gave British citizens four minutes to save themselves from nuclear annihilation. On the other side of the Atlantic,...
On feminist translation and learning from past struggles
Environmental activist Wangari Maathai. Photo: Gianluigi Guercia I joined the Kenyan feminist movement in my 20s, inspired by the Women’s Conference in Nairobi in 1985 and by powerful women’s and other progressive movements around the world. I was lucky to be living...
Fighting cuts to debt advice
Image: Unite Debt Advice Network Debt advice is a crucial public service that provides a lifeline for people drowning in debt. However, proposals to change how debt advice is funded and delivered are threatening massive job losses and cuts to support services across...
Banned words and racism in schools
Pimlico Academy, where students protested racist and discriminatory policies in March 2021. Credit: ClemRutter In September 2021, a school in South London attracted media attention for its prohibitive policy on spoken language, which targeted a number of linguistic...
The politics of the apocalypse
School strike for climate in Australia. Credit: Julian Meehan For as long as there has been civilisation, there have been people predicting its collapse. From the Maya’s great cycle to the second coming of Christ, whether it be by flood, comet, or the rising of the...
The rule of the flesh eaters
Pinhead from Hellraiser (1987) (Credit: New World Pictures) To know capitalism is to experience horror. This remains as true now, in the early decades of the 21st century, when accumulation still depends on the twinned violence of expropriation and exploitation, as it...
Learning from the Sphinx
Image: Oedipus and the Sphinx (Internet Book Archive) The Sphinx of ancient mythology was a fearful monster who waylaid passers-by and ripped them apart if they couldn’t solve the riddle it put to them. It was a good deal more alarming than the docile statue that...
Work-related suicides: the UK’s invisible crisis
A poster on work suicides by the Hazards Campaign Group In September 2021, an inquest in Halifax heard that a 24-year-old call-centre worker had been suffering from workplace stress and anxiety in the weeks before she took her own life. According to her GP, she had...











