Opinion

Fighting austerity fuels independence

Issue section: 
Opinion
Issue: 
July / August 2018
Author: 
Raymie Kiernan

We were told the sharp fall in the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) Westminster seats last year was proof that Scots had rejected independence. Not so, according to the latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey released in June.

It said the increase in support for independence in the 2014 referendum “has proven to be much more than a short-term phenomenon”.

Despite the SNP vote dropping from 50 percent to 37 percent between the 2015 and 2017 General Elections, with 21 fewer seats, there was no corresponding slump in support for independence.

Letter from South Korea

Issue section: 
Letter from
Issue: 
July / August 2018
Author: 
Kim Young-ik

The handshake in Singapore between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un marked a radical shift in US policy towards North Korea. It was an unfamiliar scene, indeed. For more than 70 years, US and North Korea have been in armed stand-off. During the summit Kim is reported to have told Trump: “Many people will think of this as a form of fantasy… a science-fiction movie.” While the US president declared, “We have developed a very special bond.”

Great war on a knife edge

Issue section: 
Opinion
Issue: 
June 2018
Author: 
Steve Guy

In spring of 1918 the German military began an offensive against the allies called Operation Michael. Steve Guy details its impact on the strategy of allied forces and the tensions it led to between them.

When the Russian Revolution propelled the Bolsheviks into power in 1917, they made good on their commitment to take Russia out of the war and concluded an armistice with Imperial Germany. But the Germans insisted on imposing onerous conditions on the Bolsheviks who, faced with the overwhelming might of their military machine, were compelled to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Royals remain out of touch

Issue section: 
Opinion
Issue: 
June 2018
Author: 
Brian Richardson

The rich man at his castle,/ The poor man at his gate;/ God made them high or lowly./ And ordered their estate.

That was one of the verses of a popular hymn we used to sing when I was a child.

Exactly one mile away from my primary school is a real castle and it was here that Henry Charles Albert David Windsor married Meghan Markle on 19 May.

The spirit of 68: Chris Harman at the LSE

Issue section: 
Opinion
Issue: 
May 2018
Author: 
Wenda Clenaghen

Wenda Clenaghen was a student at the LSE during the radical period of 1968. Here she recalls the involvement of the young Chris Harman in events, from the anti-war movement to the streets of Paris.

Chris was a familiar figure, along with Richard Kuper, Steve Jefferys and David Adelstein, on the London School of Economics Old Theatre stage. He was the most shambolic of the four. With wild curly black hair and a strange stuttering style of speaking, that often matched his movements, he was convincing to the uninitiated of which I was one.

His speeches had a combination of intellectual depth, a call to action and sincerity. The International Socialists’ (IS) slogan of “Neither Washington nor Moscow” was particularly attractive.

Jamaica’s labour rebellion

Issue section: 
Opinion
Issue: 
May 2018
Author: 
Christian Høgsbjerg

Anger at low wages, unemployment and colonial racism provoked a series of strikes across the British Caribbean 80 years ago. Christian Høgsbjerg describes the events which solidified the working class.

Amid the great depression of the 1930s the British Empire was rocked by a series of mass strikes and anti-colonial revolts across the Caribbean colonies. These events were central in the making of the Caribbean working class and reached their climax in Jamaica from late April to June 1938.

Donald Trump and the evangelicals

Issue section: 
Opinion
Issue: 
May 2018
Author: 
John Newsinger

The Christian right played a crucial strategic role in the election of Donald Trump and continues, despite everything, to provide him with the hard core of his support. According to one poll, not only did evangelical Christians constitute nearly a third of votes in the 2016 presidential election, but 81 percent of white evangelical Christians voted for Trump.

From #MeToo to #WhatAboutUs

Issue section: 
Opinion
Issue: 
March 2018
Author: 
Sally Campbell

What began as a discussion of sexual harassment has broadened out to other aspects of the fight for women’s liberation. But working class women must be at the centre of debate, writes Sally Campbell.

The #MeToo movement, which took off in reaction to the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault revelations, has continued to reshape discussions around women’s equality.

Who makes the Nazis?

Issue section: 
Opinion
Issue: 
March 2018
Author: 
Roddy Slorach

A new book examines how Hitler’s early regime in the 1930s looked to US laws on immigration, citizenship and mixed marriage to legitimise itself. It is a crucial history in the era of Trump, writes Roddy Slorach.

“In the early 1930s, the Jews of Germany were hounded, beaten and sometimes murdered by mobs and the state alike. In the same years the blacks of the American South were hounded, beaten and sometimes murdered as well.” So reads the introduction to a revealing new book by James Q Whitman.

Today’s debates on the nature of Trump’s presidency and the way it has boosted far-right parties across the globe lends urgency to this story: how Hitler’s new Nazi state drew on US state racism to help consolidate and legitimise its new regime.

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