Industrial militancy is (at least briefly) back in fashion and for many trade union members this will be their first time living, and participating, in a sustained period of industrial strife. However, the long-term efficacy of militancy as a knee-jerk reaction to...
Celebrations of the centenary since his birth on 31 August 1921 have cemented the resurgence in interest in Raymond Williams (1921-1988), one of the Twentieth Century’s leading thinkers on the left. On 15 October, in partnership with the Raymond Williams Foundation, I...
A Sivanandan speaks at the IRR emergency general meeting in April 1972 (Image courtesy of the IRR) On a balmy evening on 18 April 1972, a somewhat incongruous group of people entered the basement hall of St James’s Church, Piccadilly, for a meeting that would have...
Gustavo Petro gestures to the crowd at the presidential inauguration on 6 August, 2022. Photo by Daniela Díaz Rangel The government of Gustavo Petro and his vice president, Francia Márquez, began with a bang. The duo was sworn in on 6 August, 2022 amid a diverse crowd...
Industrial militancy is (at least briefly) back in fashion and for many trade union members this will be their first time living, and participating, in a sustained period of industrial strife. However, the long-term efficacy of militancy as a knee-jerk reaction to...
Celebrations of the centenary since his birth on 31 August 1921 have cemented the resurgence in interest in Raymond Williams (1921-1988), one of the Twentieth Century’s leading thinkers on the left. On 15 October, in partnership with the Raymond Williams Foundation, I...
I often wonder if Keir Starmer has a humiliation kink: whether he draws joy or pleasure from what one can only imagine is the sheer weight of humiliation and shame that must push itself down on his chest with every waking breath. It is, one might reasonably argue, the...
Anti-government protestors in front of the Presidential Secretariat in Sri Lanka on 13 April 2022. Photo by AntanO (Wikimedia Commons) Sri Lanka, the ultimate island travel destination, has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. We are in the middle of our...
The author, Jonathan Steele, and Mikhail Gorbachev after an interview in Moscow, 2011. For a few days after 30 August 2022 reports from Russia were not dominated by the latest bloodshed in Putin’s criminal war on Ukraine. The death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last...
Statues, flags and street names. Given the recurrent topics and tenor of discussions about the British empire in tabloid headlines and parliamentary polemic, you’d be forgiven for thinking that these are the sole focal points of British decolonial resistance in the...
Peter Brook at his theatre in Paris (Credit: Thomas Rome) Peter Brook’s death prompted a fanfare of tributes that have transformed his radicalism into theatrical chic. It’s what happens to our cultural icons. Once they are safely dead and unable to fire arrows at the...
Protesters wave the Mapuche flag on the streets of Chile. Photo by Pablo Bell (Instagram: @_pablobell) On Sunday 4 September 2022, Chilean voters convincingly rejected their country’s proposed new constitution. In a straight ‘approve’ or ‘reject’ referendum, reject...