Building from the Ruins
2020 brought political defeat for the Left just as the pandemic caused a profound social crisis. In 2021, we must rebuild.
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Editorial
Corbyn’s Suspension and the Lessons for the Left
The battles of recent weeks aren’t really about Jeremy Corbyn — they are about purging the Labour Party of the socialist politics he represents.
Young Labour’s Socialist Future
The newly-elected chair of Young Labour writes about her vision for a campaigning organisation that fights for the radical policies young people demand.
The State Against Democracy
The structures of the British state are designed to suffocate movements that aim for real democratic change. If we want to see it in our lifetimes, they will have to be transformed.
The US Left in the Biden Era
DSA’s Carlos Ramirez-Rosa speaks to Tribune about the future of the socialist movement in the United States after the defeat of Donald Trump.
Building from the Ruins
How Money Shapes Our Politics
Capitalism’s greatest myth is that it is a democratic system, but real democracy cannot survive in a society run by and for the rich.
The Scouse Exception
As many post-industrial heartlands drifted rightward, Liverpool remained red. The reason is clear: working-class community organising.
Where Next for the Green New Deal?
The resurgence of the political centre has one benefit for the Left: it will prove definitively that there are no moderate solutions to the climate crisis.
After Trump, Black Lives Still Matter
This year’s Black Lives Matter protests produced a tenuous alliance between street radicals and multinational corporations. The defeat of Donald Trump marked the end of that road.
Care Workers Versus Covid
The Tory government failed frontline workers from the beginning of the pandemic — but in the North West, thousands of them organised to fight back.
The Care Crisis
The commodification and marketisation of care in Britain — and its unloading onto the underpaid and unpaid — has been brutally exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Enduring Lessons of Red Vienna
For almost two decades at the start of the 20th century, Austria’s Social Democrats pursued a radical agenda in the country’s capital — even as dark clouds gathered around it.
Home Rule for London
In the interwar years, the Labour Party under Herbert Morrison used London as an example to the country of what a socialist government could provide.
The Literature of Landlordism
An anonymously published ‘secret diary’ provides a rare glimpse into the spiteful, self-pitying psyche of Britain’s landlords.
History
The Man Who Made a Million Socialists
Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, was born 150 years ago. His writing left an indelible mark on the socialist movement — but the man himself was almost forgotten by history.
Rugby’s Class War
125 years ago, rugby league was formed in a split with union. The dividing lines were based on class and shaped both codes for decades to come.
The Diggers’ Green Roots
Almost 400 years ago, a band of English Civil War radicals set out to imagine a world turned upside down — but until recently their ecological politics were largely ignored.
Culture
Letter from Palestine
While the pandemic complicates the lives of Palestinians living under brutal occupation even further, world leaders look the other way.
Left to Our Own Devices
As the government regards the cultural industries — and cultural workers — with open contempt, the importance of local centres and activist cultures may be the only way for cultural spaces to survive after the pandemic.
The Woman with the Twitter Account
A book of the famous Soviet Visuals Twitter account reveals how social media turns even the most loaded political imagery into vacuous fluff — but in turn, produces a nostalgia for the era when images had meaning.
Noisy Listening
Composers and politicians both have often seen ‘listening’ as a passive activity — but there’s a way of listening democratically, where the public is active rather than quiet.
We Can’t All Be Max Bygraves
Trevor Griffiths’ play Comedians, shown on the BBC in 1979, took a serious look at what makes us laugh, and why. What can we learn from it in a political era where comedians, journalists, and politicians are often the same people?
Charley Says
At its creation, the virtues of the new National Health Service were promoted via public information films; witty and clever examples of progressive propaganda that still repay viewing today.
In Their Miserable Hearts
Patrick Keiller’s classic 1994 film of English queer socialist melancholia, London, has just been published as an illustrated book. How has it withstood the test of time?
The Problem of Britain
Britain is a country coming down from its trip. Four new books try to work out why such a gulf emerged between the country’s self-image, and its shabby, privatised and shrill reality.