KEVIN DONNELLY asks HOLLY GRAHAM how she, as an artist, can confront an institution over its own association with the slave trade
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Rethinking Labour’s Past: nationalist-flavoured phrasemongering
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GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
Rethinking Labour’s Past
Ed. Nathan Yeowell
IB Tauris (2022) £17.99
“Firm principles and policies are open to objections
And the streamlined party image is the way to win elections.”
The editor and most contributors to this collection of essays appear to have taken the words of Leon Rosselson’s 1960s satire on the Labour Party as sound advice. The writers are drawn from a small group of institutions, who generally hail Starmer’s election as a reprieve and an opportunity.
Its success, we are told, will depend on “craft(ing) a new narrative capable of defining a new future for country and party alike.”
They come to bury Corbynite “historical narratives” such as Ken Loach’s Spirit of ’45 or the 1983 Labour manifesto. They seek to revive “narratives” and “insights” of Wilson, Kinnock and “the early Blair.”
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