Articles
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Donald Trump is a man in a hurry. Better prepared than when he came to office in his first term as President, he has embarked at breakneck speed on achieving his international and domestic objectives. He is not hampered by the niceties of diplomacy nor does he pay lip service to other countries and their leaders. This has come as a shock to Western “allies” of the US, whose second class position in relation to the world’s hegemonic superpower Trump has made painfully clear. They are struggling to adjust to this new reality.
The EU is struggling with multiple problems of weak leaders and economic and political stagnation. In Britain too Kier Starmer’s government is failing to address the country’s economic problems nor is it trying to meet the needs of the British people. In fact, the reverse. It is threatening more cuts to welfare and services to fund war and the arms build-up.
So the old imperial European powers are not well placed to challenge Trump by carving out an independent road for themselves. But he will face other challenges from within the US establishment and from a disgruntled voter base, who will be made worse off by his policies. There will be resistance too from the Global South. The question is what will the long-term impact of his policies be and will he actually make the US stronger or weaker?
Friday, April 25, 2025
Although Trump is notoriously erratic, beneath the surface of this and his egregious, insulting behaviour there are consistencies. One is that he will continue to support Israel as the bastion of US interests in the Middle East and Palestinians who continue to suffer from Israel’s genocidal actions both in Gaza and the West Bank.
One bright spot in a rather grim political landscape in Britian has been the unified and determined campaigning by activists in solidarity with Palestine. In particular we can learn from the past success of the boycott of South African apartheid to mobilise people to boycott Israeli apartheid now.
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Hilary Cave was an official of the National Union of Mineworkers during the historic strike of 1984-85. She recounts the principled battle staged by the miners, their families and working class communities to defend jobs. The strike demonstrated the solidarity of workers pitted against the might of the state conspiring against them. Whilst they ultimately lost there is a lot to be learned today from their experiences.
Saturday, April 19, 2025
This British Museum exhibition dealt with British colonialism and conveyed something of the scale and brutality of Britain’s empire using selected objects, artworks, documents and images, mainly from the British Museum’s but some from other UK collections.
The exhibition showed how colonial power has been asserted through symbols like portraits, crowns, thrones, or coats of arms, which sometimes appropriate objects or images of the colonised themselves; the relationship between trade, armed conquest and various forms of subjugation; and the colonial conversion of objects of veneration or symbolic or simply utilitarian purpose into trophies, treasure, art or trash.
Sunday, January 5, 2025
The tasks of the peace movement in Britain are urgent, as people continue to suffer poverty, cuts to services and crumbling infrastructure yet the government plans to increase arms spending to 2.5%of GDP or £87.1 billion including massive expenditure on replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system. This has nothing to do with self-defence and everything to do with Britain playing its part in fighting wars and imposing military power across the globe. Not only could this money be better spent elsewhere but Britain’s active involvement in wars such as Ukraine make this country a target. But there is an alternative to an imperialist, warmongering UK. We could take the path of non-alignment and join with others, like BRICS, to have a more secure and prosperous future.
Thursday, January 2, 2025
The current homelessness crisis can trace its roots back 40 years to the "right to buy" policy of the conservative Government that took council housing out of public ownership and into private hands. Subsequent governments have done nothing to reverse this trend and additionally a lot of social housing has been hived off to housing associations.
Increasingly individuals and families find it hard to afford homes of a decent standard. When council housing was widely available it acted as a break on rent increases and standards were higher.
Organising tenants to put pressure on landlords and government is vital, but a task made harder by the fragmentation of housing stock where neighbours will have different landlords - private, housing association and maybe even the council.
Above all we need more council housing.
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
The Labour government has made reform of the planning system central to its efforts to increase growth. There are problems with the system which has become increasingly fragmented and dominated by the private sector in recent decades. However Labour's response does not address the central problems and some of its proposals are quite negative, like changing the designation of green belt lad so that it can be built on.
It seems to entirely have forgotten its own history where previous Labour governments took a broad visionary approach to planning which was in the hands of national and local government. Pioneering work was done in those times. Current proposals fall very far short of these past ambitions to ensure that people had good environments to live and work in.
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Russia is routinely accused of interfering in democracy in other countries. While these accusations have been insubstantial, there is a growing body of evidence of Israeli interference in British politics.
Both in the United States and in the UK pro-Israel groups have channeled cash into defeating pro-Palestine law-makers and funding a wide range of Members of Parliament. In the UK some of these groups have close working relationships with the Israeli embassy and have arranged for trips to Israel by MPs. This funding and these relationships are being used to further the interests of a foreign power and undermine British sovereignty as well as subduing criticism of Israel's genocide against the Palestinians.