Plaw Hatch Farm and Tablehurst: a socialist countryside prefigured?
These twin Sussex co-ops selling their produce directly to locals offers a glimpse of a future of sustainable, democratised food production – all in harmony with nature, says DAVE BANGS
The welcome news that Cuba has finally been removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list is tempered by the fact that Donald Trump, the man who put it there, is returning to the White House, warns NATASHA HICKMAN
Thanks to impressive progress in Britain with wind and solar generation, clean electricity now costs a fraction of the price of gas — yet the current system keeps bills artificially high to protect fossil fuels, writes TOM HARDY
By spreading race-based conspiracy theories, the billionaire tycoon turned right-wing provocateur has been seriously undermining the case against those who really did let victims of the grooming gangs down, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Many Western countries are grappling with deep political instability. What are the causes of this, and what could be a possible way forward? asks MARC VANDEPITTE
KEITH BENNETT explains why, despite its present meagre economic outcomes, an honest and fruitful partnership with China is worth pursuing
Nick Wright talks to photographer and author JANINA STRUK
MOST socialists who love the countryside and nature will have ideas about what a socialist countryside would be like. They may have model projects that they think prefigure that future.
For myself, those ideas would include the return of land-based labour on a large scale to the countryside and the long-term replacement of giant cities by a settlement pattern that combines the advantages of urban and rural living.
Something, maybe, like the pattern of the best of the old South Yorkshire coalfield, where industrial mining villages were scattered in a lacework of woods, rich farms of corn and pasture, lakes, small meandering rivers, grazing marsh and moor.
More from this author
From John Clare country to ancient fenland, Ed Miliband’s solar farm approvals risk industrialising precious rural spaces — we must find greener solutions that don’t sacrifice our countryside’s beauty, writes DAVE BANGS
Decades of right to buy have eroded the social balance of our countryside — and now holiday lets and second home owners from the cities are compounding the crisis, writes DAVE BANGS
Spring has sprung in all its glory — but DAVE BANGS is disturbed by the absence of a crucial sound
Similar stories
From John Clare country to ancient fenland, Ed Miliband’s solar farm approvals risk industrialising precious rural spaces — we must find greener solutions that don’t sacrifice our countryside’s beauty, writes DAVE BANGS
We need alternative modes of food production, but these won’t come out of an adherence to today’s corporately rigged markets or from a politics desperate to become more anodyne by the day, warns ALAN SIMPSON