BARRY WINTER reviews Anti-Capitalism: The social economy alternative, by Chris Hill, and considers the role of the social economy in creating change, as well as sustaining socialism. This is an intriguing book. Written and, indeed, published by a former, long-standing member of Militant and, at the time of writing, a member of one of...
Pushed into enemy hands
One of the sad aspects of Labour’s farcical London mayoral selection contest, argues BERNARD HUGHES, is how the leadership is turning even some of its closest friends into foes. When Glenda Jackson announced on 19 January that she would ballot her constituency party on how she should cast her second vote in the London...
Beneath American skies
GARY KENT reports on the diversity of opinions he found on a recent State Department-sponsored trip to USA. The United States is not a uniform entity. Anyone who says, “America thinks this, that or the other” is just plain wrong. There is possibly more diversity of opinion in America than in Europe. Bush made...
London Labours
DAVID CONNOLLY wonders what happened to Tony Blair’s once passionate support for one member one vote. In his book, The Unfinished Revolution, the new Labour strategist Philip Gould comments on the rivalry between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at the time of John Smith’s death in 1994. Of Blair he says that “it was...
It’s the end of the world as we know it
The British National Party won its fifth local council seat in a matter of months in Halifax in January, attracting a brief flurry of national media comment and political hand wringing. BEN TURLEY looks at what happened. “Halifax is a wonderful place and its people are not racist,” Alice Mahon MP said the day...
The Travellers’ tales
Gypsies have become the object of increasingly racist, anti-immigration demonology over the last few years. As MATTHEW BROWN reports, they have been the one of the most victimised groups in society for centuries. It could be any day in modern London. A tube pulls into King’s Cross underground station. The doors slide open and...
Zimbabwe in crisis
WILLIAM BROWN unpicks the rhetoric and looks beyond the headlines to examine the origins and assess the likely outcomes of the recent unrest in Zimbabwe. Not since independence was granted in 1980 has Zimbabwe accounted for so many minutes of TV news and so many column inches in the broadsheets in Britain. However, the...
For Queen and country … and socialism
When BARRY WINTER went to Belfast to meet the movers and shakers of the new politics, it was the working class unionists who made the strongest impression. Traditionally, the left has shown great sympathy for the nationalist/Catholic, working-class population of Northern Ireland, and with good reason. Their history of poverty, poor housing, unemployment and...
Republicans and the choreography of peace
The Good Friday Agreement has been described as “Sunningdale for slow learners”, reports PAUL DIXON. So how have the Republican leaders managed to sell it to their supporters? The peace process is back on track but still precariously balanced. The Good Friday Agreement is far from safe and probably won’t be for the next...
From third way to one way
DAVID CONNOLLY ponders the latest examples of new Labour style democracy. With the best will in the world it is difficult to take Philip Gould seriously. Anyone who has read his book The Unfinished Revolution will know that his political starting point is a deeply felt hostility to the Tories. He is genuinely desperate...
Theatres of conflict
JONATHAN TIMBERS rallies to remember the October revolution and spends a day at Millbank and Number 10 – all in one very bizarre week in November. When Harold Wilson said ‘a week is a long time in politics’, perhaps he should have added that sometimes an hour can seem even longer when you’re stuck...
The power and purposes of the United States
What some are now referring to as a US ‘empire’ is a complex and dynamic creation, says WILLIAM BROWN. Every great international conflict in the modern world – from the Napoleonic wars through the first and second world wars – has been followed by a recasting of the international order. Yet, although George Bush...