17 Sept 2019 | XR Fashion Boycott: RIP London Fashion Week Funeral March
Tuesday 17th September 2019. Gathering 5pm at Sir Henry Havelock Statue, Trafalgar Square See Facebook details here
Author Public Reading Rooms
Defend Democracy: Stop the Coup!
Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament is the latest stage of a right-wing Tory coup that has been unfolding since the Brexit referendum in 2016. The suspension of parliament will presage a calamitous hard Brexit – very likely followed by a general election. In this, Johnson will posture as the person who carried out the Brexit will of the people, as well as advancing an utterly reactionary programme based on being ‘tough’ on crime and fake spending promises. Johnson’s suspension of parliament has revealed the utter cynicism of the Tory leaders. If it suits them, they will trumpet the sovereignty of…
Corporate Democrats Have Been in the Driver’s Seat for 30 Years. Not Anymore.
Source: In These Times by Branko Marcetic For the past three decades, the Democratic Party has been living with a debilitating trauma that’s left it a shell of what it once was. But if Tuesday night’s debate is any indication, the Democrats may finally be moving into the home stretch of a long, painful recovery. Rather than sticking to the longtime script of Democrats pandering to the center, the two highest polling candidates on the stage—Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—articulated a clear-eyed left-wing vision of the direction the party should take. Sanders railed against the “ruling class” while advocating enshrining…
No war on Iran
Kate Hudson writes: As the situation in the Gulf gets more dangerous by the day, responsibility for the escalating crisis has to be laid at the appropriate door. There can be no doubt that the driving force is the long-standing US drive for regime change in Iran. It couldn’t have been clearer in George Bush’s Axis of Evil speech in 2002; now it’s revived with a vengeance by the Trump administration, with John Bolton leading the charge. The latest development involves UK impounding of an Iranian oil tanker, deemed to be breaking EU sanctions on Syria. Now Iran has returned…
Shipwreck of the Third Way: Tony Blair, New Labour and Inequality
Phil Hearse writes: As a general election approaches, especially one which might lead to a Johnson or Johnson-Farage government, (and, less likely, a Corbyn government) the record of the last Labour government is bound to come up. As memories fade, rose-tinted spectacles can be deliberately deployed to airbrush past realities. At the end of June, Tony Blair took to twitter to attack Jeremy Corbyn’s speech which proposed Labour’s objective should be equality and not ‘social mobility’. Blair took issue with Corbyn’s claim that for decades governments had resisted the objective of equality. Speaking at the Nation Education Union conference, Corbyn…
Do Remainers want to abandon the working class?
Phil Hearse writes: Jon Cruddas’s new Guardian article has a simple message, widely backed by left-wing Brexiteers, that Labour will lose its traditional working class base if it backs a ‘Remain’ position on Brexit. Moreover, he argues, there is a growing false position that wants Labour to stop being a party based on the traditional working class, and move towards a less class specific urban base in ‘Remainia’ – the clear implication being that this is a capitulation to middle class interests and values. Cruddas takes as a key example of this false position articles by Paul Mason. He…
24 June 2019 | Don’t Attack Iran: Downing Street Protest
Assemble at 5pm. More details here