To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
IN JUNE 2001, there was a sudden outburst of racial rioting in the old Lancashire town of Burnley, one with a long weaving tradition and home to a settled minority community of Asian Muslims, mainly from Bangladesh, Gujarat and Pakistan who had lived in the town in seeming amity with their neighbours. That was clearly not the case.
Mike Makin-White, a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was at the time working in community relations for Burnley Council, helping to promote community cohesion and good race relations during a decade when the BNP won seats on the council.
In this book, after a short but useful historical introduction to the town, he provides an incisive step-by-step description and perceptive analysis of what lay behind those riots.
All the areas that cause working people to feel insecure have to be addressed, through a return to unashamedly pro-worker politics, if the horror of a Farage government is to be avoided, writes IAN LAVERY MP
As extremist hate spreads and disillusion deepens, the labour movement must offer more than resistance — it must offer a future, writes MATT WRACK, general secretary of NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
BEN CHACKO reports on the struggles against sexism, racism and the brutish British state that featured at Matchwomen’s Festival this year


