Danni Perry’s flag display at the Royal Opera House sparked 182 performers to sign a solidarity letter that cancelled the Tel Aviv Tosca production, while Leonardo DiCaprio invests in Tel Aviv hotels, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Who was Dorothy Kuya?
DAVID HORSLEY pays tribute to a remarkable anti-racist communist campaigner, born 91 years ago this month
Dorothy Kuya (right) with US activist Angela Davis
YANA PETTICREW explains what’s behind the strike and how the entire sector rests on super-exploiting an unorganised workforce
STEPHEN ARNELL casts a critical eye over the sudden rash of challenges to the two-party system on both sides of the Atlantic, noting that today’s performative populist politics sadly lacks Roosevelt’s progressive ‘Bull Moose’ vision of the early 20th century
BILL KIDD MSP says increasing Britain’s nuclear arsenal at this time is dangerous and expensive folly
ROGER McKENZIE asks whether the US’s shift to targeting everyone at once will instil greater co-operation among rising powers
IN 2021, students at the University of Liverpool voted by a huge majority to rename Gladstone Hall, one of the halls of residence, Dorothy Kuya Hall. The wonderful irony of choosing a black Liverpudlian communist to replace the several-times prime minister of Britain speaks volumes. But who was Dorothy Kuya?
She was born on March 16 1933 in Liverpool, her mother a local woman and her father from Sierra Leone. The latter soon disappeared from their lives but her mother married a Nigerian seafarer, so young Dorothy took his name and he proved to be a loving father to her and her siblings. His influence alongside others like Ludwig Hesse, a communist seafarer from the Gold Coast, now Ghana, had a positive influence on her life.
The Kuya family lived in Liverpool 8, virtually a ghetto at that time with mainly black and mixed-heritage people suffering poor housing and constant unemployment.
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DAVID HORSLEY recalls the militant origins of the Notting Hill Carnival which takes place this weekend
