Jeremy Corbyn in his first leadership speech at the 2016 Labour Party conference quoted the poem I Look at the World by Langston Hughes.

I Look at the World

By Langston Hughes

I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!

I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that’s in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.

“Langston Hughes has perhaps the greatest reputation worldwide that any black writer has ever had. Hughes differed from most of his predecessors among black poets, and until recently from those who followed him as well, in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read.” – Donald B. Gibson

Video and narration by Alan Cox

My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One.
At least they were in it, but not in it:
Conscripted but never committed.

My Dad was called up in 1915,
And then run over by a field gun
In an army camp at Lydd marsh in Kent,
So he never actually made it
Across the Channel to fight.
His pelvis and both legs were crushed,
In his first week, in a training exercise,
By a Howitzer rolling downhill.
It weighed over thirty hundredweight.

While pushing and dragging the gun up a slope
My Dad and the other eighteen-year-olds carried shells,
Shells to be fed into the Howitzer’s six-foot-long barrel.
One of the group lost his footing
And they lost control of the gun carriage,
Then two were crushed by its cast-iron wheels;
Each wheel being the height of a man’s shoulder.
One of them died, but my Dad survived.

As a child I was ashamed of the story,
Naively wanting him to be a hero
But, of course, if he’d never been invalided out,
I might never have come into existence.

There were a thousand Howitzers on the Western Front,
Heavy, Swedish-made guns towed along
By boys, men and horses from battle to battle
Which, by the war’s end, had fired 25 million shells,
Stealing thousands of lives, and generations unborn,
Making the gun crews primary targets.

My Uncle Jack’s connection to the war
Was stronger than my Dad’s, as Jack “saw action”.
He made it across the Channel
In a Royal Artillery troopship,
And lost the use of a limb in 1916.
His arm was half severed by shrapnel:
He held it in place until it was patched up
And then he was returned to his unit,
With a flask of iodine to dab on it.

Jack was in one of that war’s most famous battles,
One of those whose very name makes you well up –
But Jack ran counter to the received wisdom
About the soldiers serving in the Great War
With its sentimental patina and its mythologized tales
Of Nurse Edith Cavell, and the Angel of Mons,
And lions led by donkeys and plucky Brits,
Because my Dad’s elder brother
Never really participated either,
And he certainly never gave it his all.
Jack had “reservations” was how my Dad put it.

More often than not Jack didn’t have “one up the spout”
Meaning he’d avoid putting a bullet in his gun,
Because, with a dodgy arm, it was a nuisance to load it
And when his hands were freezing he just thought ‘sod it’.
It was easy to escape their corporal’s attention,
And Jack said there were many others who did the same.
“Hundreds, if not thousands,” Jack always claimed,
Men whose instincts told them to do the minimum.

Jack won the Military Cross, but not for that.
He won it for dragging their Sergeant Major
Back into the trenches from No Man’s Land,
Where the Sergeant Major was lying wounded.

Jack’s commanding officer came to know of it
And Jack was “mentioned in dispatches” –
The Army’s understated way
Of saying that he’d shown courage
In undertaking his one-armed rescue,
Though, as far as his fellow soldiers were concerned,
Jack’s exploit had been a waste of time
For their Sergeant Major was unpopular,
And in any case he was dead on arrival.

Jack lived with the taunts and the ribbing
About his gesture having been pointless,
And was even accused of doing it to “show off”.
Cripplingly shy, this was a knife to the heart,
And it lasted long, long afterwards.
Jack never picked up his Military Cross
And whenever a family member mentioned it,
He dismissed it as “a putty medal with a wooden string.”

As a child I never quite knew what that meant,
But apparently it was a common expression,
Applied to the top brass when they visited the front,
When they strutted up and down –
Martinets with black gloves and swagger sticks
Fact-finding desk-jockeys from the War Office
Clanking away with their rows of flash medals
And drawing attention to themselves –
Those below in the dugouts would mutter,
“Putty medals with a wooden string.”

“Your Uncle Jack lost all his friends in the trenches,”
My Dad would say, “And he’s never made any, ever again.”
And it was true, I never saw Jack with a friend.
I saw him throughout my life, but he was always alone
Except for his sister, Mabel, who looked after him.
He never made another friend in over fifty years.

Neither he nor my father ever explained the war to me.
It was just something that had happened to them.
Something irrational that hung over them;
A grisly cloud of spectral blood;
A tumour that fogged the psyche;
Something in their history that had spoiled both their lives.
Stoically they never admitted to the pain
But, looking back, my Dad was always in pain
And Jack could be painfully silent
To the point of catatonia.

Even though they were little more than children,
They’d been forced to endure a random, excruciating pain
That had confiscated parts of their bodies,
Bodies that had been their birthright.

But afterwards each was able to exact
A small but significant revenge
By their both giving the war some fifty years
Of unremitting negative spin.
They’d scoff at those who tried to romanticize it;
They’d never buy poppies for their buttonholes;
And on Remembrance Day they’d say
That there was nothing worth remembering.
To my father the cenotaph was “a monument to Jack’s hell.”
“A traffic hazard”, he’d say when we drove past it.
And he’d curse it, that dreary Lutyens plinth
With its floral lifebelts laid beneath it,
Lifebelts that save no one’s lives,
Propped up against a memorial
That’s used to fetishize war after war.
“They should have a picture on it,” my Dad said
“Of your Uncle Jack living beside rotting corpses –
“Pictures of doomed youth with froth-corrupted lungs.”
(He had a first edition of Wilfred Owen.

When my father died, Jack invited me to go out for a meal
On the first Friday of the month, every year till he died.
The meals were largely silent. His bad dream was still there,
Even in the nineteen-seventies.
His mind was still numbed by something whose origins
Were inexplicable and which he’d never decoded.
A war that had caused another war, like a cancer
That people still seem unable to cauterize.
Over the years, I’d winkle out his memories
As tactfully as I could.

As a boy I seem to have been set the uninvited task
Of probing a world that they wished never existed,
And which left them wishing it would go away.

Jack didn’t mind talking about actual events
Allowing himself only to recount the facts,
But never touching upon his emotions.
A waiter would bring the cheese trolley and most months
Jack would tell the same story about a mule cart
That had arrived behind the lines ferrying an enormous cheese,
A Dutch cheese which they’d all salivated at the sight of.
Jack’s best friend from the same street in Chester
Impulsively ran towards it, his mouth watering
Only to be picked off by a German sniper.
“Fell down against the cheese”, Jack said,
“I won’t eat the stuff now.”
And I’d nod and say, “No,”
As understandingly as I could manage.

The story was unchanging, several times a year.
A hapless waiter wheeled off the cheese trolley untouched.
“I ever tell you about that?” Jack would ask at the end.
I was sure that he half knew he had, but why not?
If the fact of it never went away.

My Dad and my Uncle were in the First World War
Though it’s not quite the whole story,
Because neither of them were exactly in it,
Not in the way that most people might think,
But from their experiences I was able to learn
What callous folly had killed thirty million.

They were forced to serve King and Country for no reason,
They both had lifelong scars, and got nothing in return –
Nothing from the King, and nothing from the Country,
But both ended up certain there must be another way
And for that I’ve been grateful to them, ever since.

They may or may not be in some other world now
But something is certain, if only to me.
They won’t be commemorating World War One

And may not even think the matter worth raising.

Free Movement and Beyond: Agenda Setting for Brexit Britain is an edited collection that draws together the current thinking of many of Britain’s most prominent ‘critical Remainers’ – those who argued to remain within the European Union while seeking its democratic and progressive transformation.

Seeking to contribute to the policy agenda for the Brexit process, the contributors centrally address the controversial issue of free movement of people, defending it as central to Britain’s economic success and as an advance for the working class across Europe; myths that blame migration for economic woes are debunked and the racism that such myths give rise to is condemned.

Policy proposals and principles are outlined for democracy, economics, trade policy, security policy, the environment and workers’ rights.

Editor: Kate Hudson | Contributors: Diane Abbott MP, Yanis Varoufakis / Caroline Lucas MP / Mary Kaldor / Marina Prentoulis / Andrew Burgin / Luke Cooper / Zoe Gardner / Laleh Khalili / Nick Dearden / Tom O’Leary / Neil Faulkner

Price: £9.95

“Scrapping Trident is an indivisible part of Labour’s forward march. The heated debate in Labour’s ranks is not reflected in public opinion. Talk to your next door neighbour, your mates in the pub or club, chat to that person sitting on the bus next to you. You’ll find little appetite for nuclear weapons.
Opinion has changed. Nuclear disarmament is mainstream. The problem is one of ‘operationalising’ those sentiments, putting pressure on politicians to understand and honour them.”

So says Carol Turner, longstanding Labour party member and CND activist, author of Corbyn and Trident: Labour’s continuing controversy. Highly topical, this book looks at the challenges facing Labour’s anti-Trident leader Jeremy Corbyn as he steers his party through a difficult defence policy debate where the question of nuclear weapons has again raised its controversial head.

Turner situates Corbyn’s dilemmas in the context of Labour’s longstanding and continuing controversy over Britain’s nuclear weapons possession – from the days of the first atmospheric tests, through Polaris and Chevaline to Trident and its replacement. The consistent theme is the struggle within the party – sometimes successful – to secure an anti-nuclear position.

“Drawing on interviews with big labour movement players of the last decades, Carol Turner has produced a fascinating account of the turbulent debates within the Labour Party over this most crucial of questions – and the impact of a CND vice-president in Labour’s top spot.”
Kate Hudson, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Price: £9.95. Postage free.

As we face a surge to the right in world politics, this new journal – linked to the transform! network of the European Left – seeks to help provide a theoretical basis to advance the left in this new political context. We welcome the submission of articles for publication which share our broad political framework as outlined in the founding statement below.

Transform: Founding Statement

Since the near-collapse of the global financial system in 2008, capitalism has plunged deeper and deeper into crisis. Governments have pursued austerity policies, ostensibly to reduce government deficits but in reality to destroy the social and economic gains working people have made over many decades, reducing wages and obliterating welfare states, further exposing populations to the brutality of neo-liberalism. The economic crisis has increasingly become a social and political crisis as many people face poverty, hunger, unemployment, homelessness, sickness and even death, as a result of the catastrophic and government-imposed failure of health systems and social services. The extremes of wealth and poverty have never been so great.

The early political response to the crisis emerged as a popular fight back, against austerity and establishment corruption in the streets and squares, workplaces, social and political institutions. Parties of the radical left built support across Europe, whilst the left governments of the anti-neoliberal ‘pink tide’ in Latin America built social and economic alternatives that defied decades of US domination and inspired millions. The Arab spring, with its upsurge across many countries, against political repression and extreme economic inequality brought hopes for democracy and social transformation in north Africa and the Middle East.

Yet whilst left and progressive forces have had some passing victories and brief moments in the ascendancy, it is now clear that right wing forces have emerged stronger from the crisis and we are facing a surge to the right in world politics. The Arab spring has turned overwhelmingly to war and repression, the Latin American left is under brutal attack and in retreat, and the far right in Europe is challenging and acceding to power in a number of countries. The Brexit vote in Britain can be understood as part of that political turn to the right – achieved on the back of a racist anti-immigration campaign, and consolidated by the May government. The disastrous election of Donald Trump has compounded and continued this trend – a radicalised right-wing victory based on a racist and xenophobic narrative.

The rise of the far right must be fought and defeated. Part of this is achieving absolute clarity about the nature of the reactionary forces we are confronting and totally rejecting any bending towards the false political narrative that condones racism in the supposed economic interests of a section of the working class. The Brexit/Trump trend is a huge defeat for the workers’ movement and democracy, and is a function of the partial or total capitulation to xenophobic anti-immigrant politics by liberal parties and social democracy.

This new journal of the radical left seeks to help provide a theoretical basis to advance the left in this new political context. It is informed by Marxism and also welcomes the contribution of other progressive political currents such as feminism and environmentalism. It seeks to theorise and critically analyse:

• The nature of the period and the character and composition of the key political and economic forces and factors
• The means and methods of political struggle and the organisation of working class and progressive forces to defeat the far right
• Left alternatives to capitalism and strategies for left political advance
• Working class unity and the politics of alliance building

Transform will work in solidarity with the transform! network of 29 European organizations from 20 countries, active in the field of political education and critical scientific analysis. transform! is the political foundation of the European Left Party. “Overcoming war, dominance of capital, social injustice, patriarchy, imperial rule and militarism as well as racism, working towards the establishment of an association in which the uninhibited development of each and every person is condition for the uninhibited development of all shall represent the highest goals of this undertaking. The equality of all people and their solidarity represent the most important values transform! is based on.”

For details of the submission process and house style please contact the editor at [email protected]

Price £7.50 post free

The Transform Editorial Board

• Oscar Garcia Agustin Associate Professor, Aalborg University, specialising in populism
• Len Arthur retired economics lecturer and political activist in Wales
• Andrew Burgin bookseller and political activist
• Katy Day Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University, specialising in feminism, gender, class identities and intersectionality
• Nick Dearden Director of Global Justice Now
• Francisco Dominguez head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies at Middlesex University
• Felicity Dowling writer and activist specializing in health, education and women’s rights
• Fiona Edwards writer and activist specializing in Latin America
• Youssef El-Gingihy GP, writer and activist on the NHS
• Neil Faulkner archaeologist, author of A Marxist History of the World: from Neanderthals to Neoliberals
  
• Suresh Grover a founder of the Southall Monitoring Group, anti-racist and civil rights activist
• Joseph Healy expert on Eastern Europe, Chair of London Irish LGBT Network
• Phil Hearse writer and lecturer, specializing in culture and communication
• Tansy Hoskins journalist, broadcaster and author of Stitched Up: The Anti-capitalist Book of Fashion
• Kate Hudson historian, writer and peace activist
• Miguel Martinez Lucio University of Manchester
• Paul Mackney former General Secretary of UCU and co-chair of the Greece Solidarity Campaign.
• Philippe Marliere Professor of French and European Politics, UCL
• Drew Milne poet and academic, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
• Susan Pashkoff economist and writer on US and gender politics
• Marina Prentoulis Senior Lecturer in Media and Politics, University of East Anglia, specialising in European social movements
• Helena Sheehan Marxist philosopher, Professor Emerita at Dublin City University
• Roger Silverman Editor of On the Brink
• Sue Sparks socialist activist and writer with interests in how work and the working class is changing
• Lasse Thomassen Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, Queen Mary, University of London, specialising in nationalism and multiculturalism
• Tom Unterrainer researcher, activist, editor of Corbyn’s Campaign and Standing Up for Education
• Dave Webb Emeritus Professor in peace & conflict studies at Leeds Beckett University, peace activist
• Michael Wongsam activist and writer on black history and politics

The worst thing would be to trivialise or downplay the entry of neofascism into Donald Trump’s White House.

Much of the new theoretical work hinges, of course, on the obvious differences between the ‘first-wave’ sledgehammer fascism of the interwar period and the ‘second-wave’ creeping fascism of our own.

In the early 1930s, the two largest economies, those of the US and Germany, went off a cliff, with unemployment hitting one in four within three years of the Wall Street Crash. Social polarisation was extreme, the breakdown of ‘politics as usual’ rapid. In Germany, the class struggle pitted a still-powerful working class against a rising fascist movement, with frequent open clashes by armed paramilitaries of the Left and the Right.

The situation today is radically different. The economic crisis in the major economies (though not in the periphery) is slower and more shallow; we are seeing a much more gradual process of stagnation-slump and social decay. This occurs, moreover, in a society which has already been substantially hollowed-out by neoliberalism; most notably, there have been catastrophic declines in union membership, workplace organisation, and strike rates over the last 30 years, so that the economic plunge after 2008 and the vicious austerity attacks launched by the ruling class since have (so far) engendered only weak and ineffective resistance.

In contrast to the situation in Germany in 1932, for example, the social terrain is characterised by a general malaise, by widespread apathy and resignation, and by historic levels of political disillusionment and disengagement (‘the democratic deficit’). In crude class terms, the rate of exploitation – both at the point of production and at the point of consumption – has continued to rise sharply since the 2008 Crash, with wealth being hoovered upwards to the rich, the banks, and the corporations, resulting in levels of global inequality without historic precedent. It is now the case that the half dozen richest men in the world (they are all men) – the occupants of a golf buggy – have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of humanity.

This terrain, in the absence of effective working-class resistance, is increasingly dominated by the Far Right. The fascists are feeding off the atomisation, alienation, and anomie at the base of society. In the hollowed-out spaces of the neoliberal dystopia – in the social vacuum created by the system’s rampant individualism, consumerism, and greed – they can quickly attract a mass following. The human wreckage of the capitalist crisis becomes the raw material for fashioning new fascist movements around the myths of nation, race, and family. In Creeping Fascism, we speak of the mass base of the neo-fascist movements as comprising ‘human dust’. We stand by this. There is no class basis – that is, no basis in a class acting for itself – represented by these movements. They are agglomerations of discontented individuals around a cocktail of blood-and-soil mysticism, anti-migrant and Islamophobic racism, and a large dose of psychotic rage.

1) The contested state

I want to make three new points based on the experience of Trump’s first 100 days (with due acknowledgement in places to John Bellamy Foster). The first concerns the fraught relationship between the Trump regime in the White House – the executive function of government – and several other parts of the US state apparatus.

What is clear is that the fascists control the executive, but not the legislature (Congress), the judiciary, the security services, or the military. Congress has contested some top government appointments and has blocked (for the time being) the dismantling of Obamacare. The judiciary has challenged executive decrees, most notably in the case of the Muslim ban.

In relation to the security services (‘the deep state’), we have the bizarre spectacle of the US police and spy agencies investigating alleged serious malpractice on the part of Trump and his entourage – with the real possibility of this leading to criminal prosecution of top regime personnel and even impeachment of the president. Whether this is preparation for a soft coup – to take out a president who is obviously mentally unbalanced, totally unfit for office, and, as far as the US ruling class is concerned, out of control – or simply a matter of firing warning shots in an internal power struggle is impossible to judge. But it is certainly without precedent in US history.

Then there is the military. The ousting of the maverick pro-Trump Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor and his replacement by the more conventional hawk Herbert McMaster represents a shift towards the mainstream military, and perhaps a relative weakening of key fascist personnel like Steve Bannon.

It is important not to overstate the significance of all this. All fascist regimes are hybrids, involving some mix of traditional elites, the existing state, and the fascist ‘new men’. All are subject to internal conflict. Even so, by 1926 – that is, within four years of becoming prime minister – Mussolini had constructed a totalitarian dictatorship, and Hitler had achieved the same by the middle of 1934 – that is, in his case, less than a year and a half after his appointment as chancellor. Their respective regimes remained hybrids, but the fascists were dominant, all opposition parties had been banned, and what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung (‘bringing into line’) of state and society had been accomplished.

By comparison, it seems clear that Trump’s victory in 2016 has far less significance than that of Mussolini in 1922 or Hitler in 1933. Gleichschaltung seems far more remote. The US ruling class and the US state seem much more out of synch with Trump than either the Italian or the German elites were with Mussolini and Hitler. The space for dissent, organisation, and resistance remains wide. But we should beware. The situation could change rapidly. Time may not be on our side. We must act now.

2) Neoliberalism on speed

In the 1930s, the fascists adopted a coherent economic programme based on one variant or another of state capitalism. As we explain in Creeping Fascism:

The aim was autarchy – national self-sufficiency – through the construction of an independent economic bloc insulated from the vagaries of world trade (the opposite of ‘globalisation’). To achieve this, the state had to become a major economic actor … State intervention took various forms: protectionist tariffs, capital controls, and currency management to control inflows of foreign goods and stem outflows of domestic capital; deficit spending to fund infrastructure projects, mop up unemployment, and inject demand into the economy; and state contracts to private capital, especially heavy industries, construction firms, and arms manufacturers.

No such programme is possible today. In the early 20^th century, it was still the case that most large corporations had one primary national base. In the early 21^st century, the dominant corporations, both financial and industrial, are truly global. They have broken the national shell and operate as international mega-corporations able to treat with even the most powerful nation-states on equal terms, trading investment in return for tax breaks, subsidies, and deregulation. In the epoch of global financialised monopoly-capitalism, no nation-state can construct an autarchic ‘siege economy’ in opposition to the giant banks and conglomerates that control the world’s capital flows.

What is clear is that the Trump regime – despite all the rhetoric about America first, American jobs, making America great again – is the most thoroughly neoliberal regime in US history. As John Bellamy Foster explains,

Although Trump promised to fight crony capitalism and to ‘drain the swamp’, he has filled his cabinet with billionaires and Wall Street insiders, making it clear that the state will do the bidding of monopoly-finance capital… Trump’s initial 17 cabinet picks … had a combined wealth that exceeded that of a third of the population of the country. This does not include Trump’s own wealth, reputedly $10 billion. Never before has there been so pure a plutocracy, so extreme an example of crony capitalism, in any US administration.

It is worth interjecting a British parallel. Phil Hearse has argued that Brexit can be interpreted as an internal Tory Party coup which ousted the soft ‘one nation’ Tories around Cameron and replaced them with a regime of hard ‘Thatcherite’ Tories under May. The aim of the Tory Right is to ‘complete’ the Thatcherite programme of deregulation, privatisation, and corporate power. By cutting adrift from Europe, they free themselves up to abolish social protections and environmental safeguards, undercut continental businesses, and create a low-wage sweatshop combined with tax haven and money-laundering centre.

So we appear to be witnessing an acute intensification of the neoliberal counter-revolution pioneered by Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s; a second phase, if you like, in that project, where government is more openly colonised by representatives of big capital, where all pretence of politics in the service of society as a whole is abandoned, and where corporate power is allowed to run rampant and the greed of the rich given free rein.

In this context, the meaning of creeping fascism is simple: it is the use of nationalism and racism to distract attention, channel discontent, demonise sundry alien ‘Others’, and justify the suppression of dissent and resistance.

3) Neoconservatism on overcharge

The Trump regime has just fired 57 Tomahawk missiles at Syria, dropped a massive Moab bomb on Afghanistan, and dispatched a flotilla of warships to North Korea. It seems to be projecting military power against three enemies at once: against the Assad regime and its Russian backers; against the Islamists; and against North Korea and its Chinese backers. What is going on?

Some of us have long argued that the historic decline of US capitalism lies behind recent US aggression, especially in the period since the 9/11 bombing of the Twin Towers in 2001 and the launching of the self-proclaimed ‘War on Terror’. In 1945, the US controlled about 50% of global production, and its overwhelming economic supremacy meant that sheer market power was sufficient for it to hegemonise the Western world – and compel its Soviet enemy to use naked military power to protect its own empire in the East against US penetration.

The US economy now accounts for only about 20% of global production, and predictions are that China will displace it as the largest economy in the world next year. Yet the US military – for the time being at least – retains massive supremacy over all other militaries. So the policy has been to use that continuing military predominance to compensate for declining economic clout. The Iraq War, for example, involved the use of military power to topple a dictator, seize another country’s wealth, and sell it off to US multinationals.

Trump’s military aggression appears to be an intensification of this neocon geopolitical strategy. Each stunt is a demonstration of US military power with multiple effects. It plays to the domestic base by presenting an image of a presidential strong man defending US interests against ‘the bad guys’ – Trump cannot deliver jobs to the rustbelt, but he can drop bombs on Muslims. It plays to allies like May, desperate to insinuate her way into a closer US alliance as the Brexit crisis unfolds. It rattles rivals like Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, serving warning of US capacity and resolve in the event of rising international discord. And it serves to create a ‘state of tension’, to militarise politics, to marginalise dissent, and to legitimise Trump’s planned 10% increase in US military spending.

Conclusion

Since I am in full agreement with him, let me conclude by quoting John Bellamy Foster:

The worse thing in present circumstances, I believe, would be if we were to trivialise or downplay the entry of neofascism into the White House or the relation of this to capitalism, imperial expansion, and global exterminism (climate change and the growing dangers of thermonuclear war).

An effective resistance movement against the Right … requires the construction of a powerful anti-capitalist movement from below, representing an altogether different solution, aimed at epoch-making structural change. Here the object is overturning the logic of capital, and promoting substantive equality and sustainable human development.

Such a revolt must be directed not just against neofascism, but against neoliberalism – i.e. monopoly-finance capital – as well. It must be concerned with the struggles against racism, misogyny, xenophobia, oppression of LGBTQ people, imperialism, war, and ecological degradation, as much as it is with class exploitation, necessitating the building of a broad unified movement for structural change, or a new movement toward socialism.

Neil Faulkner, with Samir Dathi, is the author of Creeping Fascism: Brexit, Trump, and the Rise of the Far Right.

Illustration by artist Jamie Reid, who has adapted the legendary artwork he created for the record God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols.

Creeping Fascism: Brexit, Trump, and the Rise of the Far Right

A tide of racism, nationalism, and authoritarianism is sweeping the world. With the world economy hobbled by debt and stagnation, society being torn apart by austerity and inequality, and a political system paralysed by corporate power, support for the Far Right is surging. This new book by Dr Neil Faulkner and Samir Dathi argues that we face the clear and present danger of ‘creeping fascism’.

Price £12 post free

Trump directly threatens steps towards tackling climate change, fighting discrimination, inequality, peace and disarmament. At the very moment when the world needs more solidarity, more cooperation and a greater commitment to justice, he proposes to build walls and wants to turn us against each other.

We are dismayed and shocked by the attempt of the British government to normalise Trump’s agenda. People in Britain never voted for this. It is our duty as citizens to speak out. We oppose this state visit to the UK and commit ourselves to one of the biggest demonstrations in British history, to make very clear to our government, and to the world, that this is not in our name.

Owen Jones, Brian Eno, Lily Allen, Dan Howell @DanIsNotOnFire, Frankie Boyle, Akala, Omid Djalili, Paloma Faith, Caitlin Moran, Paul Mason, Shappi Khorsandi, Gary Younge, Bianca Jagger Council of Europe goodwill ambassador, Mhairi Black MP, Clive Lewis MP, Caroline Lucas MP, David Lammy MP, Leanne Wood Leader, Plaid Cymru, Hywel Williams MP, Rushanara Ali MP, Shabana Mahmood MP, Ed Miliband MP, Tim Farron MP, Tulip Siddiq MP, Claude Moraes MEP, Frances O’Grady TUC general secretary, Dave Prentis Unison general secretary, Tim Roache GMB general secretary, Matt Wrack FBU general secretary, Mick Cash RMT general secretary, Malia Bouattia NUS president, Michelle Stanistreet NUJ general secretary, Kevin Courtney NUT general secretary, Sally Hunt UCU general secretary, Manuel Cortes TSSA general secretary, Christine Blower President, European Trade Union Comittee for Education, Paul Mackney Former UCU general secretary, Asad Rehman Friends of the Earth, Nick Dearden Global Justice Now, Kate Hudson CND, Luke Cooper Another Europe is Possible, Hilary Wainwright Red Pepper, Mohammed Ateek Syria Solidarity Campaign, Bruce Kent Pax Christi, Andrew Burgin Left Unity, Marina Prentoulis Syriza (UK), Sirio Canós Donnay Podemos (London), Olly Alexander, Michael Chessum Campaigner and journalist, Andrea Pisauro Sinistra Ecologia Libertà, Nicolo Milanese European Alternatives, Prof Mary Kaldor, Salma Yaqoob, Neal Lawson Compass, Talha Ahmed Muslim Council of Britain, Michael Collins Right to Remain, Adam Klug Momentum, Emma Rees Momentum, Zoe Gardner Refugee rights campaigner, Fizza Qureshi Migrants Rights Network, Salman Shaheen Journalist, Gracie Mae Bradley Against Borders for Children, Jerome Phelps Detention Action

Source: The Guardian

In one of his last acts as president, Barak Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s  sentence of 35 years imprisonment for the public duty he served in leaking documents which revealed the lies and deceit that governments use in secret to keep their populations ignorant of their machinations. The leak also helped bring to an end the Iraq war. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers that all previous presidents, but he is to be commended that on 17 May 2017, rather than in 2045, Chelsea Manning will be set free

Letter published in the Guardian, 10.01.17

In fact, the free movement of people can build our collective power and creativity in the face of attempts by the super-rich to turn the world into a gigantic marketplace in which we are all isolated individuals competing against one another. Fear and hate further drives this isolation and undermines our ability to cooperate. It allows the already rich and powerful who have done so much damage to our country to win.

We are therefore alarmed by the way more MPs are now also turning their firepower on immigration. While we cannot ignore the concerns of anyone struggling and feeling insecure in a country that still has huge but concentrated wealth, we cannot pander to anti-immigrant sentiment in a race we cannot win and should never want to.

A democracy must defend the most vulnerable in society – all of them. And we must provide the services and homes for people who come to this country who add to its economy and its culture. Positive movements for change have always looked outwards, with humanity.

Kevin Courtney NUT general secretary, Manuel Cortes TSSA general secretary, Malia Bouattia NUS national president, Caroline Lucas MP Green party, David Lammy MP Labour, Rhea Wolfson, Christine Shawcroft, Ann Black and Darren Williams Labour party NEC members, Neal Lawson Compass, Michael Chessum Momentum, Hugh Lanning Alliance for Free Movement, Nick Dearden Global Justice Now, Luke Cooper Another Europe is Possible, Fizza Qureshi Migrants Rights Network, Paul Mackney Former UCU general secretary, Kate Hudson CND, Matt Carr One Day Without Us, Andrew Burgin Left Unity, Jenny Killin National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, Pete Campbell Chair, BMA junior doctors committee

Free Movement and Beyond:
Agenda Setting for Brexit Britain

Monday 27 March | Book Launch with Diane Abbott MP, Mary Kaldor, Kate Hudson and more. Free entrance. Details here…

Support the Alliance for Free Movement

The most reactionary feature of the EU referendum campaign – and the most effective notwithstanding its dishonesty – was the way that all the ills of British society were laid at the door of immigration. Endless newspaper front pages told us how damaging and harmful immigrants and refugees were to the British way of life..

The fact that government policies are to blame for the shortages and cuts ascribed to migrants was disregarded, and the real economic benefits brought to our society and economy as a result of migration were airbrushed out of the referendum debate. So it is that the belief that curbing immigration will have a beneficial effect on British society has gained widespread currency and this belief has led some in the labour movement to demand that the Labour Party ends its support for free movement.

It is vitally important that the erroneous beliefs underpinning this turn on free movement are challenged vigorously. There is no evidence that immigration and particulatrly free movement within the European Union has been responsible for lowering wages, diminishing social services or creating unemployment – in fact the opposite is the case.

Migrants bring enormous benefits to our society and ending free movement will make us all poorer.

Free movement in its present form represents an important gain for the European working class and its ending would be a reactionary step bringing no economic benefit to the so-called native working classes of each country but would politically weaken all working class forces across Europe. We need to extend free movement not end it.

If you would like to sign the Alliance for Free Movement statement please visit: http://www.forfreemovement.org

Book Launch with Diane Abbott MP
Details and to register for free place…

Source: Counterfire

The radicalism of John Berger, who has died aged 90, was wholly reliable and outspoken and he will be an inspiration for generations to come.

He wrote a series of books about the lives of peasants and migrant workers, including the photo documentary with Jean Mohr called A Seventh Man, which should be required reading in schools around Europe today. The opening note to the reader prophetically suggests that ‘to outline the experience of the migrant worker and to relate this to what surrounds him – both physically and historically – is to grasp more survey the political reality of the world at this moment. The subject is Europe. The meaning is global. Its theme is unfreedom’.

Despite his supreme distance from intellectual fads or fashions, he directed probably the most important experiment in the documentary form ever made for British TV. The four-part series Ways of Seeing was a mind-blowing assault on the elitist, sexist assumptions of the capitalist cultural establishment. It managed to be both iconoclastic and deeply insightful at the same time by insisting on locating art and artist both in their historical moment and the relations of artistic production. Strong stuff for the BBC.

He followed it up with a stream of essays and books on art and culture that have proved perhaps more than any other body of work in the English language the enormous importance that creatively handled Marxism has for the appreciation of art and culture. Some of the best of them have recently been published in two excellent Verso volumes, Portraits and Landscapes.

Ever sensitive to individual artists’ dilemmas and achievements and at the same time enraged by the barriers to self-expression produced by a society based on profit rather than need, he was the wise alter ego of every artist struggling to bear witness to a more and more degraded world. His book The Success and Failure of Picasso and the recently republished essay The Moment of Cubism together constitute one of the most convincing accounts of the potential and the limits of artistic liberation.

Because he perceived culture as the active interplay between human creativity and stubborn, given reality, again and again his essays shed light on both the artists’ work and their world. This on the Romantics:

Romanticism represented and acted out the full predicament of those who created the goddess of Liberty, put a flag in her hands and followed her only to find that she led them into an ambush: the ambush of reality. It is this predicament which explains the two faces of romanticism: its exploratory adventurousness and its morbid self-indulgence.

He tended to radicalise with time. Looking back in 1979 to an essay he wrote in 1968 about the importance of a political approach to art, he admitted that in some respects he might have become more tolerant:

But on the central issue I would be even more intransigent. I now believe there is an absolute incompatibility between art and private property, or between art and state property – unless the state is a plebeian democracy. Property must be destroyed before imagination can develop further.

His radicalism was wholly reliable and outspoken. Awarded the Booker Prize in 1972 for his novel G, on air he denounced the slave-derived wealth of the Booker family and donated half the prize money to the British chapter of the Black Panther Party. It is said that he was accompanied to the ceremony by a member of the Black Panther Party who urged him to ‘keep it cool’.

Subsequent writing on philosophy, the Palestinian struggle, the depredations of neoliberalism, on looking at photography and much, much more, adds to a rich archive of humanist Marxism that will be an inspiration for generations to come. Berger’s work demands recognition as a major achievement of modern culture.

The BBC film John Berger: The Art of Looking, made on the occasion of his 90th birthday, captures poignantly his inspirational work and life. Watch here…

John Berger, author and visionary critic died on 2 January 2017, aged 90. His inspirational work and life is captured poignantly in this BBC film.

The actor Simon McBurney, close friend of John Berger, posted this tweet following his death:
Listener, grinder of lenses, poet, painter, seer. My Guide. Philosopher. Friend. John Berger left us this morning. Now you are everywhere.

The consensus among most of my friends seems to be that 2016 was a terrible year, and the beginning of a long decline into something we don’t even want to imagine.

Source: Migrants’ Rights Network

As a proportion of the world’s population of just over 7 billion the number of people mobile across international frontiers now makes up a rather modest 3.3% of everyone on the planet – up from 2.8% back at the start of the millennium.

What is the fuss and over-hyped anxiety over migration really about?  We have to probe beyond these global figures to get a better sense of what dynamics are in play here.

Two-thirds of all migrants are living in just 20 countries.  The 2015 figures set out by the UN tell us that these were the USA with 47 million migrants; and then Germany and the Russian Federation in second and third place with around 12 million each. Then comes Saudi Arabia (10 million), the UK (nearly 9 million), and the United Arab Emirates (8 million). Of the top twenty destinations of international migrants worldwide, nine were in Asia, seven in Europe, two in Northern America, and one each in Africa and Oceania.

The reasons why people move between countries is, in the main, economic. They are going in search of jobs and the chance of having a decent standard of life.  Outside of this population of migrant workers and their families stand refugees – some 20 million who face all the hardships of people who have fled their homes because of persecution and warfare.

In the realm of economic activity migrants play an extraordinariily positive role in promoting growth.  According to a report just published by Mckinsey Global Institute (MGI) migrant workers moving to higher-productivity settings have boosted global GDP by around US$6.7 trillion, or 9.4 percent, to global GDP in 2015—some US$3 trillion more than they would have produced in their origin countries. North America captured up to US$2.5 trillion of this output, while up to US$2.3 trillion went to Western Europe. MGI says that migrants of all skill levels make a positive economic contribution, whether through innovation, entrepreneurship, or freeing up natives for higher-value work.

Whilst some of the people journeying between countries have the good fortune to have the social and economic standing that allows them to access rights, others are caught up in a maelstrom that strips them of much of their capacity to stand-up against state authorities and economic stakeholders for whom ruthless exploitation is the name of the game.

A recent report from Amnesty International (AI) reminded us of the sort of risks that migrants are exposed to, even when they are set to work on such prestigious and popularly acclaimed projects like the football World Cup.  According to the AI report, the Qatar is preparing for the 2022 competition with an estimated $200bn worth of spending on new transport infrastructure, housing and sports facilities, including six stadiums.

Yet the South Asian migrants who are building all this scarcely benefit, despite government reforms that supposedly tackle international concerns about widespread abuse and slave-like conditions

The situation is hardly better in developed countries. The re-emergence of Berlin as an elegant European capital in recent years is very impressive but reports of conditions on building sites show that abusive employment conditions exist for many of the migrant workers toiling on the city’s new developments.

And there may be common patterns of labour abuse across Europe.  The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency revealed widespread payment of  starvation wages as well as abusive employment practice such the confiscation of passports and cutting migrant workers off from the outside world as commonplace forms of exploitation.

In the UK the worst abuses are recorded in the farming, hospitality and social care sectors.  The Guardian’s Felicity Lawrence has written of how the exploitation of migrant workers has become ‘a way of life’ in the food industries.  She writes of poultry workers working weeks of more than 120 hours, workers having to be continuously on the move, charging for squalid tied housing, withheld wages, and threats of violence and actual assault.

One in seven workers in the social care sector has a workforce is a migrant.  The trade union Unison reports that 80 hour working weeks paid at minimum wage rates are common.  Employers will push beyond even these limits with pay that falls below the legal minimum.

The Kanlungan Filipino Consortium reports many instances of exploitative conditions for Filipino workers in the social care sector, citing examples of care managers, a grade with immense responsibility for the well-being of elderly and frail people, being paid a meagre £7.02 an hour.

International students are engaged by the sector to provide care find themselves excessively working long hours to support themselves. Many people are working alongside those with a temporary visa and with documentation problems who feel they are unable to enforce basic workers’ rights.

The dangers of chronic injustice are growing worse as the UK authorities set up the conditions for a ‘hard’ Brexit process which will reduce the rights of 3.5 million EU nationals who live here.   If these rights go, they will find themselves joining the vast army of ‘third country’ migrants who are fighting to survive in a country which is subjecting them to a ‘hostile environment’ born out of draconian UK immigration laws.

20 February – the plan to hold events and actions across the UK to push forward the ‘One Day Without Us’ campaign.  Click on the website, and find out more on how you can get involved in the battle for the rights of all migrants!

One Day Without Migrants: 20 February 2017

Website: www.1daywithoutus.org
Facebook: One Day Without Us 20/02
Twitter: @1daywithoutus

“You’ve had a woman [ie Margaret Thatcher], I don’t know how you felt about that but I don’t vote with my vagina you know? This is bigger than that.

“I am worried about the wars, I am worried about Syria, I am worried about all of these things that actually exist. TTP and I’m worried about fracking,” Sarandon insisted. “I’m worrying about the environment. No matter who gets in they don’t address these things because money has taken over our system”.

Source: Anti-Raids Network

Source: NYT

“A theater, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.” – Dario Fo

Source: Michael Rosen Blog

Lists
Lists of foreigners
Lists of foreign born people
living and working alongside
those not on lists
Lists of children sitting alongside
children not on lists
Lists to be sent in to government
departments
Lists of names, addresses that can
pass from official to official
from department to department
so that what starts out as ‘information’
drifts into ways of saying to those
on the lists that they should have less
they should have no guarantees of the
right to work or live alongside or amongst
those not on the lists
And when it comes to a time when
those who want to say that hard times
are not the fault of people in government
and not the fault of those who own and control
everything
the lists are ready and waiting
Look who’s on the lists, they’ll say
The lists say it all, they’ll say

Source:  Al Jazeera

The circumstances may strike a chord with us today. But this was London at the height of the Great Depression, when gangs of black-shirted fascists brought fear and violence to immigrant communities, and one violent, dramatic day of barricades and riots would become mythologised as the Battle of Cable Street.

On October 4, 1936, the charismatic leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), Sir Oswald Mosley, set out to march 5,000 of his uniformed Blackshirts from the Tower of London to the heart of the immigrant communities of the East End. In the mid-1930s, the borough was mostly Irish and Jewish [PDF]. Today, it is home to London’s largest Muslim community.

It was to be a triumphant march for Mosley and his fascist legions. The aristocratic former Member of Parliament would march through London and then fly straight to Berlin to marry the famous socialite (and fervent Nazi) Diana Mitford. Their wedding would be at the home of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as the guest of honour.

Max Levitas, now 101 years old and still living close to Cable Street, was there on October 4, 1936, with his brother and father. They stood with tens of thousands of Londoners packed into the narrow streets of the East End, waiting behind police lines and improvised barricades.

Eighty years on and sitting in his modest home on nearby Sidney Street, Max recalls one of the most dramatic yet often overlooked days in 20th century British history.

“We had to stop Mosley and his fascists. We had to ensure these racists could not terrorise the people and march through the East End,” says Max.

“There were huge crowds. Everybody was shouting: ‘C’mon lads, we’re going to go out and stop them. They want to march – we’re not going to let them.’ We stood together; we fought back,” he recalls.

A fight against European fascism

In 1936, fascism was on the ascendency in Europe. Civil war had just broken out in Spain. In Britain, the Daily Mail newspaper, whose proprietor Lord Rothermere was an early admirer of Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Hitler, had carried a front-page headline proclaiming, “Hurrah for the Blackshirts”.

The Daily Mail editorial, written in 1934 by Lord Rothermere himself, eulogised Mosley and his fascist movement of some 40,000 men as the powerful alternative to the weak democrats who had failed in the face of the Great Depression, stating: “The new age requires new methods and new men.”

Rothermere’s admiration for the BUF cooled as they got involved in violence and civil unrest. On that October day, 80 years ago, Mosley’s BUF was still on the fringe of British politics. But fear and paranoia were in the air.

Posters pasted to walls all over London proclaimed the march through the “Jew-ridden and communistic” streets of Stepney and Whitechapel. The Blackshirts had already brought violence and intimidation to the narrow dockside streets, crowded with immigrant Irish dock workers, who had fled poverty and famine in their native land, and a huge Jewish population, recent refugees from the Tsarist pogroms and upheaval in Eastern Europe.

On the day of the march, the response was the mobilisation of the immigrant communities of the East End, together with British trade unionists and leftists, to stand against Mosley with barricades, bottles, bricks and fists. Figures for the crowds who opposed the Blackshirts vary dramatically, but historians agree that it was in the many tens of thousands.

“Irish dockers, Christians, Jews, socialists, union men, communists. We all joined together to fight,” says Max.

Mosley had official permission to stage his demonstration. But the thousands of policemen, including many on horseback, swinging batons as they charged the crowds, could not force a path through the barricaded streets.

And in what has been celebrated as a rare, if not unique, victory against European fascism before the Second World War, the people of the East End stopped the British Blackshirts in their tracks, forcing Mosley – who had been giving the Nazi salute from his open-topped Rolls-Royce limousine – to beat an ignominious retreat.

‘A myth partly based on reality’

The 80th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street will be marked with a series of events this October, and the streets in which the clashes took place are today marked with many commemorative plaques and signs as well as one of London’s biggest street murals.

However, while it remains a shining moment for the British Left, some, such as Daniel Tilles, a historian and specialist on British fascism in the 1930s, believe the events have been mythologised over time.

“There is a myth but it is partly based on reality,” says Tilles.

“On the day itself, it was a great victory for the anti-fascists, who greatly outnumbered the Blackshirts and stopped them from marching through the East End of London.

“But Mosley’s deliberate aim had been to provoke counter-violence to what was a lawful demonstration. In a way, he got exactly what he wanted. It allowed him to portray what happened as immigrants, aliens, violent communists stopping British citizens from exercising their lawful right to demonstrate.

“In the months after Cable Street, British Jews suffered far greater violence, intimidation and abuse than they had beforehand, So Cable Street unleashed this wave of anti-Jewish violence and abuse and gave the fascists a boost in popularity.”

Tilles says that those who opposed the fascists in Britain learned important lessons from Cable Street: that it was better to organise politically, to infiltrate the far-right groups, gather intelligence and deny them the “sense of victimhood” that came with confronting their actions with counter-violence.

“Just like Mosley in his day, the far-right today thrive off that sort of conflict; it gives them media attention, it helps them to sustain this victimhood narrative, and when it’s ethnic minorities, Jews in the 30s or Muslim communities today, violence helps them to reinforce that narrative and the prejudices these groups want to exploit and spread,” he adds.

Fiyaz Mughal is the founder and director of Faith Matters, a charity which works for interfaith understanding and against radicalism in Britain and in countries including Pakistan, Egypt and Syria.

Mughal also believes that Cable Street has important lessons for those combating racism and radicalisation today.

“I’ve been involved in anti-racism for 15 years or more, but I’ve been aware of Cable Street from a young age. It has always resonated with me, as a person who is of a minority who came to the UK,” he says.

Mughal has recently set up Tell MAMA UK – a social-media based service which records and highlights racist incidents. And he says he has seen a “very sharp spike” in hate crimes, intimidation and abuse based on religion and ethnicity since the Brexit vote.

“It is impacting greatly on Muslim communities such as those in the East End. And the main type of Islamophobia reported there are comments made from passing cars to Muslim women. We have also had far-right groups such as Britain First demonstrating there,” he says.

“The level of fear within Muslim communities has risen rapidly. Those being targeted most are Muslim women, because the way they dress makes them visible. It is causing fear and resentment. You have today, as you did in the 1930s in the same area, different communities becoming isolated, becoming fearful.

“And when people are isolated and fearful, when they believe they are being victimised, there is the danger of some becoming more open to the message of those who want to radicalise.”

Mughal believes that there are important lessons to be learned from the violence in the East End in the 1930s.

“They are pretty clear. We have given, as a society, extremist groups the opportunity to promote hatred and intolerance,” he says.

“Cable Street shows us that we cannot stand by. We must work extremely hard, be proactive, use intelligence gathering, outreach into communities, devote resources and support for those being targeted, to combat extremism on all sides.

“What the events of 1936 did was rouse people and ensure that they focused on using many ways to isolate and fragment the far-right. We must do the same with all extremist groups who would threaten us today.”

For the British fascists of the 1930s and those who opposed them, Cable Street was in many ways the high-water-mark of street violence and confrontation. Oswald Mosley did get married in Berlin, but was jailed at the start of World War II and faded into obscurity afterwards.

The Irish and Jewish communities mostly left the East End in the post-war era, to be replaced by new immigrant communities, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Somalia and the Far East. The streets themselves are also changing quickly today as gentrification takes hold.

However, with racism and Islamophobia on the rise across London and the UK, it seems the tensions and dangers of 1936 still echo through the decades.

Jeremy Hardy called the book forensic and poetic in its anger: “It’s fucking visceral. He hates Boris Johnson, in a way that everyone should” he said. “It’s prose, but it could only have been written by a poet, it could only have been written by Heathcote … and it would utterly destroy Boris Johnson, if he had the attention span to read more than a couple of paragraphs.”

Tony Allen recalled how he and Heathcote had pioneered graffiti culture in the 1970s and how they ran the Ruff Tuff Creem Puff Estate Agency for Squatters in Notting Hill.

David Erdos, who produced Heathcote’s epic Killing Kit at the Cockpit Theatre in 2014, told the audience how many years ago browsing in a second-hand bookshop, he stumbled on Heathcote’s play The Immortalist, which “blew my head off and ignited my love of language and what writing can do.”

Young author Saira Viola, whose latest novel Jukebox has been highly praised by Heathcote, explained how he had inspired and encouraged her in making her way in the world of literature.

Actor-producer Roy Hutchins, who has presented Heathcote Williams’ work in theatres across Britain for over 30 years – from Whale Nation in the 1980s to Poetry Can F*uck Off at this year’s Glastonbury Festival – was joined by guitarist Steve North in performing three of Heathcote’s poems put to music: Video here…

To cap an evening that launched Heathcote’s book and celebrated his 50 years of uniquely prolific work across many media, Housmans sold a record number of Brexit Boris. You can buy Brexit Boris now in the PRR shop…

Click image to enlarge photos by Tim Gluckman, Tansy Hoskins, Charles B. Anthony, Manuela Beste

Heathcote Williams

Heathcote Williams is a poet, playright, essayist, lyricist, actor, artist, magician, political agitator… and much else besides. He has been a scourge of the establishment for 50 years, admired by – among many others – Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs and Hollywood actor Al Pacino.

“All his work is deeply political,” said Pinter. Al Pacino, who has been obsessed by Williams’ work since the 1980s, funded and starred in a film of his play The Local Stigmatist.

As an actor, his numerous films include Alice in Wonderland, Orlando, Wish You Were Here and playing Prospero in Derek Jarman‘s production of The Tempest.