ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Hope lies with the grassroots
GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds a timely reminder of a past victory, and its clear message that leadership is not to be found among the Labour right
More than 300 protesters demonstrate against the poll tax outside the magistrates' court in Warrington, Cheshire where the first of 5,000 people charged with non-payment of the tax was appearing.
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: A Short History of the Anti-Poll Tax Struggle 1987–1993
Chris Robinson, Thinkwell Books, £10
A LESSON for the Labour leadership lurks at the moral core of this timely history of the poll tax and the juggernaut of rebellion against it by working people.
Chris Robinson’s book reminds today’s leaders — and the wider labour movement — that the unjust, cynical “community charge” as it was euphemistically called was defeated on the streets, in parlours and in pubs, and not in Parliament.
The abject failure of the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and his party’s cowardly siege of its own left wing in the miserably deluded hope that this would reward them at the ballot box comes across on every page.
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