Given the power of the live experience, MIK SABIERS recommends Jon Spencer’s new album
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Labouring to overcome imperialism
JOHN FOSTER recommends an essay collection on how the global workers’ movement has challenged the might of empire
ROCK OF EMPIRE: Aerial view of Gibraltar and (insert) trade union leader Albert Fava
[Port of Gibraltar/Creative Commons]
Reviews of T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, Tamikrest, and Dub Colossus
The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer
This right-wing conspiracy theory is used to justify the coercive measures against gender, race and labour rights that best serve capitalism, attests GAVIN O’TOOLE
KENNY MONROSE recommends a new exhibition that highlights the significance of Black British music
ANGUS REID is bowled over by an exuberant film about the making of Keith Jarrett’s legendary concert
Workers of the Empire Unite: Radical and Popular Challenges to Imperialism
by Yann Beliard and Neville Kirk
(Liverpool University Press, £95)
IN OCTOBER 1948, Gibraltar’s colonial governor ordered the deportation of Albert Fava, the general secretary of the Gibraltar Congress of Labour (GCL), the colony’s biggest trade union federation.
Along with his wife and four children he was transported to Britain, never to return. He had committed no crime. No legal case had been taken against him.
Willie Gallacher, the communist MP for West Fife, raised his case with the minister of state for colonial affairs. In face of Gallacher’s objection that Fava had simply been engaged in trade union duties, the Colonial Office replied that “no-one has ever suggested that Mr Fava should refrain from lawful political activities. Communists must, however, be expected to be treated in this way.”
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The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON