The UN has shamefully empowered the occupation of Gaza rather than ending it – we must redouble our efforts to build the movement required to establish a true peace, argues BEN JAMAL
Raymond Williams at 100
Described as ‘the last of the great European male revolutionary socialist intellectuals’ in his time, read him today a century after his birth and you will never see the world the same way again, writes NICK MATTHEWS
Raymond Williams with Frank Kermode, Cambridge, 1981
On International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, HUGH LANNING warns that the US-led “Comprehensive Plan” entrenches decades of Western complicity in Israel’s domination and denial of Palestinian land and rights
Morning Star political reporter Andrew Murray speaks to ZARAH SULTANA on the mass party of the left holding its inaugural conference this weekend
DIANE ABBOTT warns that Shabana Mahmood’s draconian asylum proposals fuel racist scapegoating and risk demoralising Labour’s base – potentially paving the way for Farage to No 10
With ‘Your Party’ holding its founding conference in Liverpool this weekend, JEREMY CORBYN speaks to Morning Star editor Ben Chacko about its potential, its priorities — and a few of its controversies too
In part V of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY argues that to confront capitalism’s escalating crises, unions must reorient toward class politics and help build a united, explicitly socialist alternative capable of representing the working class and its material needs
“AHEAD were the Black Mountains and we climbed among them, watching the steep fields end at the grey walls, beyond which the bracken and heather and whin had not yet been driven back. To the east along the ridge, stood the line of grey Norman Castles; to the west the fortress wall of the mountains.”
This is from the first paragraph of Raymond Williams’s seminal essay, Culture is Ordinary, written in 1958, his rebuttal to those at Cambridge University who saw “culture” as something to be acquired by the upper classes.
We were on a pilgrimage to see the Border Country that had shaped Raymond Williams’s worldview. We stopped for lunch at the Old Pandy Inn. Not for the pub or its excellent menu but to see what remained of Pandy railway station. It was closed in 1958 and explains why Raymond had caught the bus in his essay.
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