The new Employment Rights Act is a step forward, but restoring collective bargaining and union power remains essential to tackling insecurity, outsourcing and low pay, says PAUL WHITEHOUSE
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Power and Patriarchy
JOANA RAMIRO talks to renowned novelist and former political prisoner Nawal El Saadawi about
love under capitalism and whether men can ever be fully feminist
Trade unionists are mobilising to support Cuban workers and public services, amid escalating US pressure on the socialist island. RONAN OGILVY explains
The defence secretary’s resignation reveals not a split over principle but a dispute over pace of military spending, as Britain’s political Establishment unites behind deeper Nato commitments, argues NICK WRIGHT
The ceasefire may have halted the fighting for now, but years of economic warfare and recent military attacks have left millions of Iranians facing hardship and uncertainty, says Codir’s RUBEN BRETT
The struggle for Palestinian freedom has become a defining issue for everyone committed to justice, democracy and peace, says PETER LEARY ahead of the Stop the War International Conference on Saturday
Unison director of organising KEVIN LUCAS explains the Organising to Win strategy, its successes to date and key tests on the union’s horizon
SHE lies on a sofa in front of me. Legs stretched out under a coat, her white cotton hair incandescent against the dark room. The author is resting before confronting her readers in a London club but I was granted a quick audience.
“Come closer,” she says when I introduce myself, and I pull my chair nearer. Nawal El Saadawi is Egypt’s most famous novelist. A psychiatrist, feminist, former political prisoner and Nobel nominee, the power of her words is such that she has recently been cited as the inspiration behind US pop-singer Ariana Grande’s new album.
I am not a little intimidated by her. I ask her about her best-known novel, Woman At Point Zero, the real story of a woman whose lifelong abuse led her to prefer execution over contesting her wrongful death sentence. “I never forget her. I met her. I’ve never met a woman like that in my life,” Saadawi says in a whisper. “The most honourable woman I met was this woman.”
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