MATTHEW HAWKINS relishes the valiant defiance of two gay Scottish painters whose example resists both collectors’ taste and historical fiction
From strength to strength
JAN WOOLF celebrates the forward march of radical publisher Pluto Press, which is about to mark its 50th birthday
On a mission: Pluto’s managing director Veruschka Selbach
Essays on contemporary Latin American feminism, a poetry debut by a queer Texan of Mexican heritage, and a lush volume of tango and milonga drawings
JOHN McINALLY welcomes a rigorous class analysis of the history and exploitation of sectarianism by the Scottish ruling elite
The bard pays homage to his two muses: his wife and his football club
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by an incoherent show that fails to question stereotypical assumptions about the Soviet Union
WILL STONE, JAMES WALSH and MARIA DUARTE review Souleymane’s Story, Sunlight, Good Fortune, and After The Hunt
PUBLISHING house Pluto Press was born out of the radical consciousness brought about by the Vietnam war, the student movement and grassroots workers' organisations of the 1960s, a time of possibilities and hope for political change.
That generation was the offspring of those who fought fascism in WWII and were themselves politicised to the point of overthrowing Churchill and ushering in the welfare state of Bevan and Attlee.
They set up a momentum of change that could not be halted by what was seen as Harold Wilson’s rather weedy version of socialism that kept in place capitalist structures with its built-in inequalities. Inspired by Karl Marx, this was the youth who wanted a true egalitarianism.
Similar stories
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
STEVEN ANDREW welcomes the third instalment of autobiography by a libertarian socialist whose political work is charged with Gramscian realism
MAT COWARD remembers the curious character of Sir Stafford Cripps, who was Winston Churchill's ambassador to the Soviet Union, with a famously eccentric diet