May Day: inventing our own traditions Socialist historian KEITH FLETT looks at the 19th-century roots of the labour movement’s celebratory day
Features | Monday 18th Mar 2024 British governments have a long history of repressing protest, but protests continue
Monday 01st May 2023 Their May Day bank holidays and ours KEITH FLETT looks back on some working-class and ruling-class traditions
Thursday 20th Apr 2023 Kennington Common 1848: 100,000 Chartists assemble Socialist historian KEITH FLETT looks at an enormous but messy day south of the Thames for England’s early working-class movement
Wednesday 05th Apr 2023 Splits in the Tory Party. A historic chance for the left Ruling-class crisis might present more opportunities than disillusioned leftwingers might think, says KEITH FLETT
Wednesday 22nd Mar 2023 Striking to win the dispute or defeat the government? KEITH FLETT looks at the long-running quandary faced by strike movements like the one gripping Britain today: do we aim for influence over the ruling party — to drive it from power — or both?
Tuesday 07th Mar 2023 The Starmer project and the SDP: back to the 1980s What is the Labour leader up to? It is not clear from his recent vague pronouncements — could the real goal not be winning an election, but creating the 1981 split in reverse, with the left forced into a rival party, asks KEITH FLETT
Thursday 09th Feb 2023 ‘French workers wouldn’t take this’ — is our movement exceptionally tame? KEITH FLETT argues against the lazy trope that British workers and their organisations are inferior in the militancy stakes to those around the globe – especially in light of the current strike wave
Monday 09th Jan 2023 Lawfare on class warfare: the Tories and the strikes Since the 1980s the Conservative Party has been trying to win its battles against the unions by changing the rules they are fought on — but you can’t change the material basis of industrial struggle, writes KEITH FLETT
Sunday 18th Dec 2022 The travesty of liberal Christmas — from Ebenezer Scrooge to Simon Thompson Despite being possibly the most popular Christmas story after Jesus's birthday, the political logic of A Christmas Carol — that poverty is not justified punishment for indolence — still escapes Britain's bosses, writes KEITH FLETT
Wednesday 30th Nov 2022 Elon Musk and Twitter: all that is solid melts into air KEITH FLETT pours scorn on the liberal-minded pretensions of the ‘world's richest man’ and his claim that Twitter can be an open forum for free debate, somehow abstracted from the perversions of capitalism
Monday 07th Nov 2022 State racism and street racism are always connected From Thatcher’s ‘swamped,’ to May’s ‘hostile environment,’ to Braverman’s ‘invasion,’ the Tories know what they are doing when they blow the dog whistle of racist rhetoric in their speeches, writes KEITH FLETT