Against the Centre
The centre is back. But it still hasn’t got any answers.
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Editorial
The NHS’s Winter of Discontent
Even before the pandemic hit, health workers warned that hospitals were struggling to cope. Now, as they fight through one of the darkest periods in living memory, those at the frontline are increasingly angry at the government’s failures.
Britain’s Chumocracy
For a small clique of Tory-aligned business figures, the pandemic hasn’t been a crisis — it’s been a golden opportunity to hoover up government contracts and make millions.
As I Please: How the Unions Got Covid Right
While the government meandered in mixed messaging, misconduct, and mistakes, trade unions have consistently called the pandemic correctly — but have been ignored.
Years in the Making
The NHS crisis didn’t begin with Covid-19 — years of outsourcing, competitiveness reforms, and obsessions over ‘efficiency’ have decimated the public health service.
The Fight for Labour Party Democracy
Newly-elected NEC member Nadia Jama on the battle ahead for the Labour left in 2021.
The Campus Revolt
Ripped-off students are engaged in the largest rent strike in decades — but that’s only the beginning. The only way to bring about real change is to stop the marketisation of higher education.
Features
Did Blairism Work?
Tony Blair was the last Labour leader to win a general election, and now many in the party want to emulate his direction — but the New Labour years did little to resolve Britain’s deep social crises.
The Centre Won’t Save Democracy
For decades, liberals have sought to divorce politics from the economy. The technocratic machine this created paved the way for the very right-wing movements they now plan to save us from.
The Warmonger Internationalists
The political centre’s recent history suggests its progressive internationalism will be advanced at the point of a cruise missile.
How Liberals Rewrite Their Own History
Ian Dunt’s new book How to Be a Liberal constructs a mythology of liberalism that ignores its role in abetting imperialism, slavery, and fascism.
The Market Can’t Be Tamed
In the post-war era, centrists abandoned the cause of a truly democratic economy in favour of trying to civilise the market — giving up any prospect of social equality in the process.
Class Struggle Built the Welfare State
The welfare state wasn’t created by enlightened dialogue or ‘sensible’ moderate politics. It was won by workers from business interests — after decades of struggle.
Paper Straws Are Not Enough
The climate crisis and ecological breakdown threaten the future of our planet. They can’t be confronted by half measures: we need to tackle their root causes.
Against Trade Union Timidity
The pandemic taught a new generation that even weakened trade unions can make a difference in people’s lives. If unions can’t seize this moment with imaginative strategies to embolden their members and fight back, a historic opportunity will be wasted.
History
Tribune’s Tribunes
In the 1960s, the Labour left organised around Tribune and tried to build itself into a parliamentary vehicle for socialism.
‘We Face Forward’
Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah sought to build an Africa free from capitalism and imperialism. Although defeated, his legacy remains a source of inspiration for a new generation of leftists.
Remembering Australia’s Green Bans
In the 1960s and ’70s, Australian construction workers created the blueprint for a green class politics.
Culture
A Letter from Lisbon
The Portuguese capital has been turned upside down in recent years by property speculation and vacation rentals. What has its left-wing government been able to do to stop the rot?
I Love a Man in Uniform
The 1940s novels of Patrick Hamilton are marinaded in seediness and booze — but within them is one of the clearest and darkest portrayals of British fascism.
Something in the Air
A new book on modern architecture and climate researches the passive cooling strategies that immediately preceded the age of air-conditioning. In the age of accelerating climate change, can we learn anything from them?
Second City Blues
Two new accounts of growing up and leaving Birmingham provide moving accounts of the snobbery and misunderstanding directed at England’s second city.
Pernicious Messaging
There is an enduring idea that Britain spread the freedom of speech around the world — but it enforced censorship in its own Empire.
Repetitive Beats
The Design Museum’s show Electronic showcases how a once-revolutionary music has become bourgeois and clichéd, but contains scattered hints at what was once possible.
Ruins of the Mind
Joelle M. Abi-Rached’s new book uses a single psychiatric hospital to tell both the history of psychiatry and the history of modern Lebanon.
The Trawler and the Seagulls
The Eric Cantona-starring drama Inhuman Resources is an improbable but involving thriller about a worker thrown on the scrapheap who becomes a heroic supervillain — a character that resonates with recent populist insurgencies of right and left.
Workers in the Saddle
A newly discovered archive of photos from the Spanish Republic depicts the collectives, institutions, and workplaces of a social revolution.
Red Library: Pamphlets
A serious crisis is always a good time for short, sharp, and prophetic pamphlets. The Covid-19 disaster has especially spurred works dealing both with how the crisis has unfolded, and ways activists can survive it.