REBECCA LONG BAILEY MP writes that it is time not just to adopt policies that will revitalise the lives of workers, but speak honestly and openly about whose side we are on and who the Labour Party is for: the millions, not the millionaires
Raymond Williams at 100
Described as ‘the last of the great European male revolutionary socialist intellectuals’ in his time, read him today a century after his birth and you will never see the world the same way again, writes NICK MATTHEWS
Raymond Williams with Frank Kermode, Cambridge, 1981
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
We cannot refuse to abolish the unjustifiable two-child benefit cap that pushes children into poverty while finding billions of pounds for defence spending — the membership and the public expect better from Labour, writes JON TRICKETT MP
JIM JUMP looks forward to the International Brigade Memorial Trust AGM taking place in Belfast later this week where the spirit of solidarity will be rekindled
If we can tackle the big issues, like delivering decent public services and affordable state-built and owned housing by making the richest pay a fair amount of tax, Labour can win back the trust and support of the electorate, argues ANDY McDONALD MP
Huge protests against corruption and preventable deaths during flooding have rocked the government — the masses are not likely to be able to take direct control in their own interests yet, writes KENNY COYLE, but it’s a promising show of people power
“AHEAD were the Black Mountains and we climbed among them, watching the steep fields end at the grey walls, beyond which the bracken and heather and whin had not yet been driven back. To the east along the ridge, stood the line of grey Norman Castles; to the west the fortress wall of the mountains.”
This is from the first paragraph of Raymond Williams’s seminal essay, Culture is Ordinary, written in 1958, his rebuttal to those at Cambridge University who saw “culture” as something to be acquired by the upper classes.
We were on a pilgrimage to see the Border Country that had shaped Raymond Williams’s worldview. We stopped for lunch at the Old Pandy Inn. Not for the pub or its excellent menu but to see what remained of Pandy railway station. It was closed in 1958 and explains why Raymond had caught the bus in his essay.
More from this author
Our annual memorial event and lecture honouring a legend of English working-class history, who ‘organised the unorganisable’ in the countryside, will hear from today’s organisers of the unorganisable fighting the bosses of Amazon, writes NICK MATTHEWS
NICK MATTHEWS welcomes the return of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s music to the repertoire of this years’ Three Choirs Festival
From sexual innuendo about Blackpool Rock to Bob Dylan’s ‘God-almighty world,’ the corporation’s classist moral custodianship of pop music has created a roll call of censored artists anyone would feel honoured to join, writes NICK MATTHEWS
NICK MATTHEWS previews a landmark book launch taking place in Leicester next weekend
