Rachid Taha

Music and Politics

By Carrie Giunta

From refugee child to political artist: what makes MIA so controversial?

They dismissed not just her and her message. They went on to label her a terrorist despite having zero grounds for doing this.

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Jeremy Corbyn

By Public Reading Rooms

Why the Israel lobby’s non-stop attacks on Jeremy Corbyn will backfire

By Asa Winstanley

How Labour’s “anti-Semitism crisis” was fabricated out of thin air

• 

  3 September 2018

  Mass media is the enemy of the people like the cage is the enemy of the bird
• 

  2 September 2018

  Apologies and appeasement will not stop the witch hunt against Jeremy Corbyn
• 

  2 September 2018

  Time to fight back against the lies: will Labour defend free speech in the party?
• 

  1 September 2018

  Israel’s racist laws and colonial policies represent the Israeli government, not the Jewish people
• 

  1 September 2018

  How to keep the Corbyn show on the road as its enemies circle for the kill
• 

  28 August 2018

  Why the lying and the smears against Jeremy Corbyn have got to stop

Harry Leslie Smith

By Harry Leslie Smith

Life before the NHS: hunger, filth, fear, death

• 
  3 July 2018

  If we let them, the Tories will destroy the NHS and return us to dog-eat-dog world of my youth
• 
  21 June 2018

  I’m nearly 100 years old, I saw the 1945 refugee crisis firsthand – listen to my warning
• 
  15 February 2018

  Eulogy to the NHS: What happened to world my generation built? By 95-year-old Harry Leslie Smith

Media

By Tasnim Nazeer

How BBC series Bodyguard misrepresents Muslims and feeds Islamophobic hatred

By Gregory Shupak

When is a government not a government? When it’s a “regime” and ripe for “change” by the US

• 

  15 August 2018

  How much lower will Jeremy Corbyn’s enemies sink in the race to the gutter of British politics?
• 

  13 August 2018

  What if in interests of humanity we took control of the media away from a few sociopathic oligarchs?
• 

  22 June 2018

  John Pilger: The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Or it will end in tragedy.
• 

  9 June 2018

  The Guardian censors cartoon in memory of Razan al Najjar: cartoonist Steve Bell responds

Politics

By Phil Hearse

The politics of hurricanes: how climate catastrophe victimises the poor

By Public Reading Rooms

How depraved individuals like Jeff Bezos rise to the top and rule over us

• 

  13 September 2018

  Tom Waits releases anti-fascist record: Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful)
• 

  12 September 2018

  Who will save us from America and the nightmare of US exceptionalism?
• 

  12 September 2018

  How Victor Jara wrote his last song, Chile Stadium, in the midst of torture and mass slaughter
• 

  10 September 2018

  Les Misérables: a beacon of hope and testament to the power of the human spirit

Rise of the Far Right

By David Rosenberg

What can we learn today from Britain’s first anti-fascist street battle?

By Neil Faulkner

Israel, creeping fascism, and the ferocious attack on the Labour Party

• 

  8 August 2018

  Rise of the far right: we must learn from history, or be doomed to repeat it
• 

  29 July 2018

  Austerity produced Brexit and Brexit has unleashed a carnival of reaction
• 

  14 June 2018

  The far right threat is real and we can’t be complacent
• 

  14 June 2018

  The resistible rise of far right icon Tommy Robinson
• 

  14 June 2018

  The Brexit traitor trope: how hard-right fantasies put us all at risk
• 

  11 June 2018

  The rise of the far right: how to meet the challenge

Music and Politics

By David Wilson

RIP Rachid Taha: “To be called a political artist is no insult, but there’s not many of us left”

His music dealt with working life, migration and racism and celebrated musical eclecticism, which of course was lost on racists.

By Public Reading Rooms

Bruce Springsteen’s tribute to Victor Jara, killed by the CIA-directed coup in Chile

• 

  9 September 2018

  The Battle of Stockton (when our grandfathers said no to the fascists). By the Young’Uns
• 

  16 August 2018

  RIP Aretha Franklin: musical genius, truth teller and freedom fighter

Michael Rosen

By Michael Rosen

Why the Nation State of Israel does not mention the people who are not mentioned

By Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen: When fascism arrives as your friend…

• 

  11 June 2018

  To control all of us, blame ‘the other’ – foreigners, immigrants, refugees
• 

  10 December 2017

  Bah! Humbug! Michael Rosen rewrites A Christmas Carol for modern age of austerity
• 

  8 July 2017

  “Concerns about immigration”? Where does that come from?
• 

  9 April 2017

  Would you support Labour if George Clooney was leading it instead of Jeremy Corbyn?

Islamophobia

By Susan Ram

How what some Muslim women wear has become the cutting edge of racist ideology

By Lindsey German

How Boris Johnson opens the door to the far-right and a rag bag of racists

Brexit

By John Wight

Brexit crisis engulfing UK politics only goes to show you can’t make soup out of an idea

• 
  30 July 2018

  The fools, frauds, fakes and incompetents leading Britain into Brexit suicide
• 
  30 July 2018

  Trump, Brexit and Tory Mayhem: is this a crucial turning point in British politics?
• 
  30 June 2018

  Billy Bragg on Brexit, Trump, migration, and why we build walls

Palestine

By Daniel Barenboim

Danel Barenboim: why I am ashamed of being an Israeli in a racist apartheid state

• 
  25 August 2018

  Israel’s war against education, against Palestinian children, against memory and history
• 
  12 August 2018

  Mike Marqusee, friend of Jeremy Corbyn, describes how and why he became an anti-Zionist Jew
• 
  5 August 2018

  What the story of Ahed Tamimi tells us about Palestinian resistance

Heathcote Williams

By Heathcote Williams

Celebrating Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite poet Shelley – a poet for the many not the few

By Heathcote Williams

Fake News and Trump the orange Fuhrer making America great again

• 

  10 July 2018

  The reality behind bumbling, blustering ‘national treasure’ Boris Johnson
• 

  5 July 2018

  What they don’t tell us about Winston Churchill: Great Britain’s Greatest Beast
• 

  4 July 2018

  Donald J. Trump: president of the US plutocratic pornocracy
• 

  1 July 2018

  Bees – no human revolution has ever produced anything as good
• 

  1 July 2018

  The citizen’s arrest of war criminal Tony Blair. By Heathcote Williams
• 

  21 June 2018

  God save the Queen and her family as they lubricate Britain’s wars

Steve Ashley

Music and Politics

By Steve Ashley

Another Day (for Jeremy Corbyn)

Jeremy Corbyn

By Steve Ashley

Jeremy Corbyn and Trident nuclear ships of shame

Music and Politics

By Steve Ashley

That’s Why (We Don’t Comply With Your War Cry)

 

Poetry

By Ben Okri

If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower. By Ben Okri

By Kate Tempest

Kate Tempest’s brilliant takedown of Theresa May at Glastonbury Festival 2017

• 

  9 July 2018

  MARDUK (neoliberal sonnet). By Niall McDevitt
• 

  7 July 2018

  Langston Hughes: I look at the world
• 

  10 June 2018

  Dick Lander by Charles Causley. Read by Heathcote Williams
• 

  7 June 2018

  How William Blake got rid of stalker hacks, soul stealers and 19th century paparazzi
• 

  2 June 2018

  How Statue of Liberty’s burka gives lie to Trump’s anti-Muslim policies
• 

  10 September 2017

  Migrants welcome here: Imagine there are no borders (it’s easy if you try)

Politics of Fashion

By Tansy Hoskins

Stamping out human rights and environmental abuses in the fashion business

By Tansy Hoskins

Are celebrity culture and fashion the new opium of the people?

• 

  5 January 2017

  How the fashion industry is a stitch up that swindles us all
• 

  22 October 2016

  Is more ‘ethical’ shopping the way to tame corporate greed and the inequalities of capitalism?
• 

  9 September 2016

  What’s it good for? Almost nothing. The trouble with second-hand clothes
• 

  4 September 2016

  Why “fashion” is just an excuse for the rich to exploit the poor