Can ridiculous music be sublime? As music and film critic Lesley Chow argues here, traditional music criticism tends to be taxonomic, ‘placing and summarising work rather than being overwhelmed and struggling to make sense of sounds’. In You’re History, Chow...
Photo credit: Arne Müseler / arne-mueseler.com / CC-BY-SA-3.0 When the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid team was wooing voting members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), it tendered lofty promises designed to entice. On the first page of the bid’s introduction, the...
Image credit: lolostock So far this year, I have not exchanged sexual services for money. I tend to call myself a retired sex worker. The jargon du jour refers to me as having ‘exited’ the industry. Exit schemes, strategies and services are a current preoccupation for...
Deliveroo riders demonstration in Shoreditch, London (Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0) Back at the beginning of March, the chancellor Rishi Sunak was breathless in his praise for the forthcoming stock market debut of Deliveroo. Despite long-standing complaints from riders about...
Surinder Bassi and other strikers on a march through Smethwick, 1992. Photo: Inqilab magazine The workers involved in the 1992-3 Burnsall strike, which took place at a small car part factory in Birmingham, gained national support in their fight for union recognition,...
A parade at the 2019 Durham Miners Gala, held annually on the second Saturday of July Imagine the mixture of pride and elation at getting a letter from the Durham Miners’ Association, asking you to speak at the annual Durham Miners’ Gala – the ‘Big Meeting’ I have...
Mark Ruffalo’s Twitter climb-down on Palestine At the grassroots level, support for Palestinian rights appears to have grown louder this year, thanks partly to support from other social movements like Black Lives Matter. Yet, despite Israel’s two-week bombing of Gaza...
What motivates you to run for Unite GS and what distinguishes your bid from the other candidates? Sharon Graham: I led my first walk-out at 17 and I understand the power of trade unions to change lives. I want fundamental change. Positive, progressive change. The...
The Birmingham Rep theatre is located in Centenary Square, Birmingham. Photo: Ell Brown (Creative Commons) There has been a fine history of theatre challenging prejudice but the government’s counter-extremism Prevent strategy is pushing theatre in a different...
Picton Library, Liverpool (Image: Terry Kearney) In her book Steal as Much as You Can (Repeater, 2019), Nathalie Olah observes the disparity between the reality of life for the majority in the UK and the perspectives that populate the presses of the mainstream...
Fans mark Neville Southall’s 60th birthday in September 2018 with a special banner at Everton’s ground, Goodison Park Neville Southall, the league-winning former Wales and Everton goalkeeper, has been described as one of his era’s greatest players. He’s also an...
One of the first of the 2010-11 UK student protests in London, 10 November 2010. Photo: lewishamdreamer (Creative Commons) The student protests of 2010-11 in the UK marked a period of largescale demonstrations and occupations in defence of education as a public good....