16 June 2021

Books that inspired me: The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

"A scathing, humorous and urgent call to arms in the fight for socialism": 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressell, published in 1914, portrays with compassion the plight of the working class in the early 1900s

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26 May 2021

Get up, stand up - don't give up the fight!

The life and legacy of Bob Marley: Forty years ago, on 21 May 1981, the island of Jamaica came to a halt as the celebrated reggae musician and political activist Bob Marley was given a state funeral

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20 January 2021

Books that inspired me: The Road to Wigan Pier

In early 1936, a then unknown George Orwell was commissioned by the publisher Victor Gollancz to travel to the north of England to research 'the conditions of the working class'

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28 October 2020

Books that inspired me: Germinal

I sold the Militant newspaper at the entrance to Snowdown pit in Kent throughout the 1984-85 miners' strike, and until the pit's closure in 1987.

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21 October 2020

Books that inspired me: For Whom the Bell Tolls

"I have fought for what I believe in for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."

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19 August 2020

75 years since the publication of Animal Farm: From 'two legs bad' to 'two legs better'

What does Orwell's fable actually say about revolution?

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20 May 2020

The Jungle: capitalism's remorseless attack on workers' safety and conditions

Fiction review: The parallels between Upton Sinclair's description of 1906 meat packaging factories and workplaces under coronavirus are frightening

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30 October 2019

Film reviews: Sorry We Missed You by Ken Loach

"A stark reminder of the inhumane lengths bosses will go to under capitalism to increase their profits": "Let's get one thing straight, you don't work for us, you work with us". Those words from the boss's mouth in the opening scene of Sorry We Missed You get turned into a sick joke over the course of the film

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5 June 2019

70 years since the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four: "But if there was hope, it lay in the proles"

George Orwell's last and most famous novel is still the go-to source, 70 years on, for anti-authoritarian imagery. But the socialist author's 1949 dystopian masterpiece is also widely misrepresented.

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6 March 2019

Women workers' militancy during the 'great unrest'

Townsend Productions' new folk ballad "Rouse Ye Women" follows events in the 1910 chainmakers' ten-week strike in Cradley Heath, the Black Country.

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13 February 2019

Liverpool: 200 march to commemorate Robert Tressell

The event remembered the celebrated author of 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists'

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28 November 2018

Wonderful socialist play finds Edwardian poverty not in past

Theatre: The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists: On a cold November evening, myself and other Newcastle Socialist Party members went along to see The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. To say it was wonderful is an understatement

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17 May 2017

Barcelona May Days 1937 - a civil war within a civil war

This month marks the 80th anniversary of the 'May Days' in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Below is a reply to an article in the Observer on 7 May (both this and a shorter version were unpublished) by Socialist Party general secretary Peter Taaffe.

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12 April 2017

Newham socialists attend 'I, Daniel Blake' film night

Newham Community Cinema held a showing of Ken Loach's film 'I, Daniel Blake' on 8 April. On behalf of East London Socialist Party branch I was asked to introduce the film.

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7 December 2016

Food banks and the real Daniel Blakes

Hundreds of thousands of people are surviving and feeding themselves by using foodbanks in Britain today

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7 December 2016

Obituary: John Sharpe: 1953-2016

John died of heart disease very suddenly, at a too early age.

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9 November 2016

Socialist inbox

Letters to the Socialist's editors including Suez strife, Blake benefits and tax trouble.

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2 November 2016

We are all Daniel Blake: no more deaths from benefit cuts

Thousands of people have died since the implementation of 'work capability assessments'. This is what the new Ken Loach film 'I, Daniel Blake' is all about. Enough is enough with this inhumane system!

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26 October 2016

"We are all Daniel Blake!"

The new Ken Loach film "I, Daniel Blake" premiered at a cinema at Leicester Square, London, on 18 October. The film is about the hard life the main character, Daniel Blake, faces when he needs to access the benefit system after his health deteriorates.

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19 October 2016

The radical life of Paul Robeson

Fighting racism and capitalism with solidarity, socialism and song: An actor who starred on Broadway, a talented college American football player, a brilliant singer - and a socialist and civil rights campaigner at a time when Malcom X and Martin Luther King were just children.

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