JOE BESWICK of the London Renters Union talks to the Morning Star’s new Left on Record programme
Latest editorial
Sending up the ’80s
STEPHEN ARNELL looks at how The Comic Strip proved that overtly political humour could be effective in skewering the Tories – as well as some of the left’s own pretensions
comic strip
The unnecessarily violent police intervention at a Quaker place of worship is a PR disaster and will only serve to deepen the chasm between them and the public. SYMON HILL reports
ANDREW MURRAY wonders whether recent opinion polling and a fresh local authority by-election result in Ilford are an indication that the time is ripe for the left to make inroads
Due to the actions of this government, the challenges facing those with disabilities, such as spinal cord injuries, are nigh on insurmountable, argus RUTH HUNT
General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
AFTER a few short years, the early 1980s saw a group of young comedians named by leader Peter Richardson as The Comic Strip soon graduate from seedy Soho venues to Britain’s TV screens in the shape of the newly launched Channel 4.
With the exception of older associates such as Alexei Sayle, The Comic Strip’s brand of “alternative” comedy was not especially political, but as the Thatcher years wore inexorably on, the “Great She-Elephant, she-who-must-be-obeyed, the Catherine the Great of Finchley” and her increasingly rabid Tory government presented too tempting a target not to aim at.
In a series of TV movies, the company spoofed both the Conservatives and the (largely) ineffectual Labour opposition on issues of the day, ranging from the Falklands war to the abolition of the Greater London Council.
More from this author
ROS SITWELL reports from a conference held in light of the closure of the Gender Identity and Development Service for children and young people, which explored what went wrong at the service and the evidence base for care
ROS SITWELL reports from the three-day FiLiA conference in Glasgow
ROS SITWELL reports on a communist-initiated event aimed at building unity amid a revived women’s movement
London conference hears women speak out on the consequences of self-ID in sport