Latest editorial
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
Son’s cathartic biography of a Jewish parent turned fascist
John Haylett reviews Fascist in the Family: The Tragedy of John Beckett MP, by Francis Beckett (Routledge, £16.99)
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
JAMES WALSH is moved by a provocative and original take on the relationship between ecology and architecture, and a plea to work with, not against, the materials and minerals of our world
An immersive, participatory display by a queer Australian Aboriginal performer, and a rebellious unravelling of traditional Scottish dance
“SELF-HATING Jew” is a concept misused in recent decades to slur Jews critical of Israel’s deeds or the entire zionist project. But here it is entirely apposite.
Francis Beckett grew up knowing that his father John Beckett had been a left-wing Labour MP who threw in his lot with Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF)before setting up the National Socialist League with William Joyce.
While Joyce, under his Lord Haw-Haw guise, broadcast nazi propaganda from Berlin during WWII — he was hanged at its denouement as a traitor — Beckett was interned in Holloway jail alongside Mosley.
Similar stories
A champion motorcyclist, trade union organiser and communist, Clem Beckett went from Britain’s speedway tracks to the battlefields of Spain, where he gave his life resisting Franco’s forces at Jarama. GEOFF BOTTOMS pays tribute to this remarkable anti-fascist
![Richard Baxell speaking at the Marx Memorial Library in London [Pic: Karl Weiss]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-07/RichardBaxell22Jul23.jpeg.webp?itok=HCh8iPRb)
Driven by anti-fascism and anger at Britain’s policy of non-intervention, thousands volunteered to fight in the Spanish civil war. Historian RICHARD BAXELL reflects on their sacrifices and enduring significance
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
It’s not just the Starmer regime: the workers of Britain have always faced legal affronts on their right to assemble and dissent, and the Labour Party especially has meddled with our freedoms from its earliest days, writes KEITH FLETT