New releases from The Orb, Meredith Monk, and Marconi Union
The right to live
MARTIN GRAHAM recommends an excellent starting point for unions and the wider movement for discussion of the housing crisis
Protestors take part in a demonstration, United for Education, marching along Piccadilly in London, over access and quality of higher education, November 2016
RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
Against landlords – how to solve the housing crisis
Nick Bano, Verso, £16.99
HOW can we solve the housing crisis? The government is set on relaxing planning restrictions in the hope that the private sector will step in and build the houses we need. Nick Bano disagrees.
In his book Against Landlords – how to solve the housing crisis he argues that there is no shortage of houses – it’s simply that the prices are too high and this is caused by the high level of rent that landlords can extract with impunity from renters.
He introduces his book with an apposite quote from Marx: “Poverty is a more fruitful source for house-rent than the [silver] mines of Potosi were for Spain... One section of society here demands a tribute from the other for the very rights to live on the earth.”
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JOE BESWICK of the London Renters Union talks to the Morning Star’s new Left on Record programme
RICHARD CLARKE recommends a hugely valuable text for those seeking theoretical analysis and practical action to defend public services