The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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A marred understanding of the present
Unite picket
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
Nothing to Lose but Our Chains
by Jane Hardy
Pluto Press £19.99
THE key strength of Jane Hardy’s book is charting ‘new terrains of struggle’, some of it successful, among precarious, zero-hours workers, many of whom are migrants and women.
She focuses on “microcosms of struggle” and provides a useful record of some recent strikes, for instance by university lecturers, Birmingham care workers, outsourced cleaners in government departments and universities, McDonalds, Sports Direct and the games industry. Some have featured the new unionism of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) and the United Voices of the World (UVW), but many feature old unions, the Bakers, Unite, PCS and GMB, so belying the accusations against them of ignoring “marginalised” workers.
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