The US-Israeli strikes against Iran are part of a decades-long war against the Islamic Republic which has refused to bow to US demands that it surrender its sovereignty, argues VIJAY PRASHAD
Latest editorial
If you are asking: ‘Where is all the protest music?’ you aren’t looking hard enough
If you’re prepared to look beyond guitar-based rock music, you’ll see the protest song is still alive and well, says IAN SINCLAIR
Scotland’s deepening crises expose the human cost of political complacency — and the toll it is taking on working-class communities, says NEIL FINDLAY
History shows from Iraq to Libya, and now Iran, that regime-change fantasies rarely deliver stability — but they always deliver human and economic cost, says MARYAM ESLAMDOUST
Hundreds protested against the US-Israel attacks on Iran in Parliament Square on Saturday, fearing a wider conflagration and horrified by the targeting of young schoolchildren, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
More than a century-and-a-half after its first publication, the message of the first Communist Manifesto continues to resonate throughout the world, says the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
LUKE FLETCHER outlines Plaid Cymru bold plans for wide-ranging policy consultations with trade unions in Wales
Every now and then an opinion piece is published in the press lamenting the lack of political songwriting today.
A couple of assumptions lie behind this much repeated concern about popular music.
First, “political music” is taken to mean music giving voice to left-leaning, anti-Establishment politics — aka protest music.
Second, that the “golden age” of political music ran from the 1960s to the 1980s, from Bob Dylan’s broadsides against the military-industrial complex and US racism to John Lennon’s feminist Woman Is the Nigger of the World and a slew of anti-Vietnam war songs.
Similar stories
On January 2 2014, PJ Harvey used her turn as guest editor of the Today programme to expose the realities of war, arms dealing and media complicity. The fury that followed showed how rare – and how threatening – such honesty is within Britain’s most Establishment broadcaster, says IAN SINCLAIR
TONY BURKE revels in the publication of previously unreleased tracks by the great US folksinger
How underground bands formed a vital part of the struggle against white supremacy
Reviews of Ella Fitzgerald, My Morning Jacket, and Toria Wooff