The general thrust of the left’s reaction to the Tories since the hurried departure of David Cameron has been to focus upon the gap between Theresa May’s rhetorical flourishes concerning the problems faced by working class people and the brutal [...]
Read moreBuilding a mass Labour Party
It’s hard to believe now, but before the May 2015 general election the Labour Party had 190,000 members. This July, in just 48 hours, over 183,000 more parted with £25 to become registered supporters and vote in the leadership election, the [...]
Read moreWhy Paul Mason is wrong on Brexit and Labour
When he came under attack earlier this year from George Osborne for his one-time membership of Workers Power, Paul Mason countered quite heavily, asserting that he is now a “radical social democrat” who had comprehensively critiqued Bolshevism in his latest [...]
Read moreA wave of hate after Brexit
People like me were warning that the EU referendum would be a racist carnival of reaction. But events have proved that the carnival is by no means over. It would be wrong to say that the Referendum was a referendum on [...]
Read moreA battle for Labour’s heart and soul
A civil war has erupted inside the Labour Party, initiated by the party’s minority right wing with the backing of the media. It is a battle between the ordinary labour party members and the anti-democrats in the Parliamentary Labour Party [...]
Read moreThe return of the status-quo socialists
When she was a communist Sylvia Pankhurst wrote that “he only school we learn at is history” and since 1920 we have had a lot to learn. The Soviet Union and its satrapies fell into barbarism and were eventually dissolved [...]
Read moreLabour: The Broad Church collapses
"You don't have the right to lead just because you've been elected". Harriet Harman MP, Camberwell & Peckham Constituency Labour Party meeting, 30 June 2016 Since its inception the Labour Party has talked about being a broad church, by which it means [...]
Read morePCS conference report: With friends like these
Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) Conference 2016 in Brighton was exciting. Delegates seemed to have more of a spring in their step this year, for various reasons. But I think a lot of the spring was due to the [...]
Read moreTowards a strategy for mass resistance
This article is intended to build on the framework laid down by Nick Wrack in his article of January 2015, “Labour: mass resistance can win”. I endorse the perspectives in that article and think it takes us a considerable way [...]
Read moreOn punishment and prison
The government’s prison reform programme has been gathering pace since Parliament returned in autumn 2015. In speeches to the Conservative party conference in October 2015, both David Cameron and Michael Gove called for a shift in thinking and policy to [...]
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