With its track record of leveraging cultural power for US gain and barely concealed promotion of coup attempts, the US Agency for International Development will not be mourned among the US’s southern neighbours, write JOHN PERRY and ROGER D HARRIS
British governments have a long history of repressing protest, but protests continue
With Gove, Lord Walney and others seeking to restrict our freedom of dissent, KEITH FLETT reminds us that such state repression is not new and it can be overcome
KEITH FLETT looks back 50 years to when the Iron Lady was elected Tory leader…
Social security is lagging further and further behind inflation and our government quite simply does not care, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
RAVISHAAN RAHEL MUTHIAH agues that much as social media are presently guilty of fanning hostilities, the roots of it lie with decades of xenophobic narratives peddled by politicians and the traditional media
ESTHER, from Nordic Model Now! explains how decriminalisation of prostitution, rendering it just another form of ‘work’, would undermine the Equality Act 2010
As a partial successor to the post-war Marshall Plan, USAid is not simply a humanitarian aid programme, but is involved in projecting US power as an instrument of foreign policy, argues NICK WRIGHT
Locals have been let down by procrastination over the upgrade to Ardrossan Harbour, says KATY CLARK MSP
THE huge wave of demonstrations since October 2023 in support of Palestinians and demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza has got the government rattled. It’s not just the hundreds of thousands who have marched peacefully week after week in central London but a range of protests across Britain.
The former Labour MP Lord Walney, appointed to the Lords by Boris Johnson, was meant to have produced a report on political violence in 2021. It never appeared, but recently Walney has been demanding restrictions and bans on protests he doesn’t agree with. The Tories’ “counter-extremism tsar” Robin Simcox has also weighed in with calls for bans. He was appointed by Priti Patel and was formerly a cheerleader for Donald Trump.
Finally Michael Gove has taken it upon himself to produce a little list of organisations he thinks are extremist. The list has a couple of fascist groups which are certainly extreme but also tiny, and several Muslim organisations because Gove, in reaction to Palestinian protest, is determined to promote Islamophobia.
More from this author
KEITH FLETT looks back 50 years to when the Iron Lady was elected Tory leader…
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
Britain’s first woman Chancellor delivers the same old fudge, as Labour’s commitment to economic orthodoxy, seen throughout its history, always betrays working people, writes KEITH FLETT
Every few years, it seems like the ‘right time’ to build a new left party — but what are the right conditions, asks socialist historian KEITH FLETT, looking back at the last two centuries and the insights of Ralph Miliband and EP Thompson
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Forget Farage and the recent daft demands for a new election against Labour: the greatest petition Britain has ever known gathered millions of names demanding the right to vote — and it didn’t work either, writes KEITH FLETT
LYNNE WALSH reports from the recent ‘Chartism Day’ conference at Reading University, where sisters of the 19th century Chartist struggle emerged from the pages of history
KEITH FLETT uncovers the links between Dorset landowners, Caribbean plantations, slavery and the prosecution of trade unionists, revealing a darker side to the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ story
KEITH FLETT looks at a Labour turncoat behind the ratcheting up of measures to courtail the right to protest