Rupert Murdoch has emerged virtually unscathed from the phone hacking scandal, which some naive optimists hoped might actually bring his empire down. This much has been clear for some time, but it was made public on 21 December when David Cameron, George Osborne and half of the rest of the cabinet attended a Christmas drinks party at Murdoch’s London flat. The Conservative government was collectively acknowledging Murdoch’s rehabilitation.
Nicola Field is working with independent LGBT+ publisher Dog Horn Publishing to bring out a new edition of her 1995 book Over the Rainbow. She talks to SR about why the book is needed now more than ever.
What is Over the Rainbow: Money Class and Homophobia about?
The government is trying to drive a wedge between hard anti-racists and the wider layer who have supported refugees
The tail end of 2015 brought chilling news for Muslims and for anti-racists. In France the far-right Front National took a quarter of the vote in the first round of regional elections. Its campaign was steeped in Islamophobia in the wake of November’s terrorist attacks in Paris. Its leader, Marine Le Pen, had been on trial just two months earlier for comparing Muslims praying in the streets with the Nazi occupation of France. In the US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump made the extraordinary demand that all Muslims be barred from entering the country.
Hilary Benn's much lauded speech for war on Syria needs to be challenged, not just for promoting imperialism, but for using anti-fascist rhetoric to sow confusion on the left.
Hilary Benn proclaimed, “We are faced by fascists — not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us… They hold our democracy — the means by which we will make our decision tonight — in contempt.” He continued, “they need to be defeated. It is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists, trade unionists and others joined the International Brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It is why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our party [has] always been defined by our internationalism.”
There was much build up, for participants and campaigners alike, to the COP 21 climate talks that took place in Paris in December. The outcome of two weeks of deliberation by 196 countries, now known as the “Paris Agreement” has been heralded as a historic success.
During the last 100 years universities have shifted from training grounds of the ruling class to become significant sites of struggle.
The number of people going to universities has significantly expanded as capitalism requires a highly trained workforce. Many students will go on to work in the public sector or take up jobs in call centres, shops and fast food restaurants.
Students when studying are not part of the working class. They do not have to sell their labour power, face the discipline of the workplace and they have greater time to discuss ideas.
In December 1915 the evacuation of allied troops from the Dardanelles straits in the Ottoman Empire finally began. A century on Steve Guy looks at the significance of the allies' failed Gallipoli campaign.
A century ago allied troops retreated, defeated, from the shores of Turkey after the eight-month Dardanelles campaign. The allies — Britain, France and Russia — had wanted to carve up the Ottoman Empire — Turkey, the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia (Iraq and Syria) and the area south of the Caucasus mountain range.
The British and French wanted Mesopotamia, which was known to be rich in oil deposits, while Russia wanted Constantinople, which would give it unfettered access to the Mediterranean.
A rise in the numbers of self-employed people in Britain raises interesting questions for Marxists about the changing nature of the working class.
Self-employment in Britain is at its highest level in four decades, comprising one in six people in the workforce. About half of the employment expansion since the recession can be explained by its growth.
Has there been an explosion of entrepreneurialism, perhaps made up of the kind of hi-tech start-ups that cluster around “silicon roundabout” in east London? Or are people simply being pushed into more precarious forms of work by employers keen to reduce tax bills, and avoid offering sick pay and other benefits?
On 19 November 1915 Joe Hill was executed by the State of Utah on trumped up charges. Dave Gibson reminds us of the power of Hill's organising and songwriting skills at a time of upheaval in US politics.
When Alfred Hayes wrote the words “Joe Hill Ain’t Never Died” in a poem about Joe Hill’s murder, he could never have imagined that this would still be true a century later.
Paul Robeson popularised Hayes’s poem, now set to music. So did Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. Other writers have celebrated Hill’s life and exposed the injustice of his judicial murder through historical accounts, novels, plays and film.
Self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders has gathered unprecedented support in the US presidential primaries. Lewis Nielsen looks at how significant a shift Sanders' success represents.
Is Bernie Sanders the American Jeremy Corbyn? Both are grey haired political veterans, until recently unheard of outside the left circles of their respective parties, who have taken mainstream politics by storm with their election campaigns.
Most importantly Sanders, like Corbyn, represents a rejection of the neoliberal consensus.
