Feature

In a context of growing political turmoil and polarisation, the far right are attempting to win the battle of ideas. They aim to seize on the racism that comes from the top of society — from islamophobia to myths about refugees — and sharpen it. In the process their goal is to make their ideas more acceptable and in turn to win larger numbers to their politics.

Joseph Arch, agricultural labourer, trade unionist and Liberal MP, died in February 1919 at the age of 92. Today he is almost forgotten, yet in his lifetime tens of thousands of agricultural workers looked to him as a leader. In the 1870s, in response to poverty and unemployment in agricultural communities, he was at the heart of an explosion of trade unionism that terrified landowners and farmers.

This month sees the 140th anniversary of the Battle at Isandlwana. This, the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War and a decisive win for the Zulu, will be commemorated and celebrated across KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. Isandlwana brought the name “Zulu” to the attention of the world and established them as the paramount native force on the African continent.

The film BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee, in the context of the rise of the far-right in the US and globally, has once again put a spotlight on the history of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The KKK claims a near 150-year history since its origins in the US’s Deep South after the American Civil War of 1861-65.

Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20 November 2018 commemorated 369 trans people murdered globally that year. The 2017 figure was 325, itself an increase on 2016. These figures don’t cover the much higher numbers who took their own lives.

Rosa Luxemburg is, without a doubt, one of the most important revolutionaries to emerge from that tumultuous period that ran from the end of the 19th century through to the aftermath of the First World War. This was a time of immense social, political, technological and economic change. It was also the time when socialist revolution became real — and Luxemburg contributed to theorising and partaking in those revolutions, right up until her murder at the hands of the counter-revolutionaries in Berlin on 15 January 1919.

An extraordinary transformation in the image of the Labour Party happened in 2015 with Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader. A party that had acted as an efficient and loyal servant of the capitalist class was suddenly speaking about a challenge to big business, the banks, and the super-rich.

Phenomena as varied as Donald Trump’s election, Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity and the Brexit vote have been explained in the mainstream media as the result of “populism”. The term is abused by the defenders of the neoliberal consensus to dismiss anybody that questions the dominant economic and political set-up — whether the racist right represented by Italy’s new Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, or the radical left.

Eve R Stone Light

There was an evening during the hot sunny summer and Beyonce and Jay-Z were on stage in East London. Every time I think of it, I smile.

My favourite book of the year turned out to be the first book I read, Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. It is quite simply a masterpiece. I am hoping to find Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel Unsheltered under the Christmas tree.

In September Christine Blasey Ford bravely and matter-of-factly testified before a senate hearing about her accusation of attempted sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The next day president Donald Trump, at a rally, mocked Blasey Ford and bemoaned that “A man’s life is shattered”. He said of her and her supporters, “They destroy people. They want to destroy people. These are really evil people.”