In the aftermath of the Financial Crash, it briefly looked like a left-wing alternative would benefit from anti-elite sentiment. But in recent years, the Right has waged a campaign to portray the Left as an out-of-touch elite — and turned the tide of politics in the process.
If we want to win the future for working people, we must be honest about the weaknesses of the labour movement — and begin to think ambitiously about building power in the here and now.
Bryan Simpson
The Workers’ COP26
While world leaders met in Glasgow to dither and dive from taking effective action against climate catastrophe, trade unionists from across the globe met to discuss a future of justice and dignity for workers.
Sophia Akram
Residents Against Charges
Housing association residents around the country are striking against spiralling service charges — charges that they say lack any clear justification.
The Internationale
Beauty Dhlamini
Leaving Africa Behind
Two years into the global pandemic, the world’s wealthiest nations are almost fully vaccinated — but the governments and corporations which control healthcare resources have abandoned almost one billion Africans.
Marion Beauvalet & Tomek Skomski
France’s Trump Candidate
From encouraging racist ‘great replacement’ fantasies to defending French collaborators in the Holocaust, presidential candidate Éric Zemmour is attempting to smash the cordon sanitaire between fascism and the political mainstream.
Parliamentary Socialism
Joe Blott & Ian Byrne
Building Fan Power in Football
This year’s bold billionaire attempt to destroy the beautiful game as we know it has been greeted by something unexpected — a mass fans’ movement against modern football.
Chris McLaughlin
As I Please: Labour’s Losing Road
When it comes to the issues impacting working people, Keir Starmer’s voice isn’t ‘failing to cut through’ — it’s absent entirely.
Tom Blackburn
The Forever War Against Corbyn
Every day brings new reason to be furious at Tory rule. But little of this anger gets reflected by Labour MPs.
Tribune Investigates
Solomon Hughes
The Labour Right’s Bookie Boys
As the gambling industry preys on millions of vulnerable people for profit, it can be comforted in the knowledge that it will always have one friend it can rely on: the Labour right.
Features
Liza Featherstone
The Personal Isn’t Always Political
A crucial feminist insight goes awry.
Anton Jäger
From Post-politics to Hyper-politics
In the years before the Financial Crash, technocrats relegated politics to the sidelines of public debate — today, it's back with a vengeance, but not in the way many on the Left had hoped for.
Perry Blankson
There’s No Racial Justice in Neocolonialism
Recent years have seen corporations embrace Black Lives Matter, but the system they preside over continues to exploit Africa for the benefit of a global elite.
Giorgios Venizelos
After Populism and the Pandemic
A Conversation with Paolo Gerbaudo.
Grace Blakeley
Do Unto Others
As Christmas season approaches, it’s time to remember the radical teachings of Jesus Christ.
Zarah Sultana
Socialism Is Freedom
Freedom under capitalism is the ‘freedom’ to exploit or be exploited. Real freedom is the absence of all barriers that prevent people from living life to the fullest — the socialist movement fights for this kind of world.
Francesca Newton
The Unfinished Revolution of Women’s Liberation
A conversation with Sheila Rowbotham.
History
Owen Dowling
Tribune and the Struggle for India’s Freedom
In its early years, Tribune offered a rare platform for those making the case for Indian independence in the British press — and featured a regular column from anti-colonial leader Jawaharlal Nehru.
Marcus Barnett
The Tribunite who Tried to Kill Hitler
During the Second World War, Jewish socialist Hilda Monte was forced into exile by the Nazi government — but the connections she made in Britain helped her to become one of the resistance’s most formidable operatives.
Joe Mathieson
When Socialists Built our Homes
In the early 20th century, socialist guilds across Britain built thousands of quality homes for working families — and provided a real alternative to housing profiteers.
Culture
Owen Hatherley
Red Library: The Art Books of Yevgeniy Fiks
Conceptual artist Yevgeny Fiks explores the relationship between the Communist world and the West, hoping to shed light on what was suppressed in each Cold War system.
Huw Lemmey
Regulating the Night
The late Christopher Chitty’s Sexual Hegemony is a landmark book on how capitalism created the modern heterosexual family.
Juliet Jacques
Travels in Inner Space
The short stories of the Japanese feminist and science fiction writer Izumi Suzuki have an eerie correspondence to the world of the present day.
Hannah Proctor
Smells Like World Spirit
A newly translated book tells the fascinating interwoven histories of two perfumes with a shared origin, but what does it take to write the history of smell?
Houman Barekat
Barry the Military Contractor
Adam Mars-Jones’ novel Batlava Lake mixes Gardeners’ Question Time with the discovery of mass graves in Kosovo, in a story of the late 1990s.
Robert Barry
Conduct Yourself!
The revolution in classical music in the early USSR began with getting rid of the boss — the conductor.
Douglas Murphy
Personal Utopias
Stefi Orazi’s guide to modernist houses you can stay in or visit democratises these experiments in landscape, materials, and space.
Carl Neville
Invented Traditions
Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth uses the contemporary setting of the pandemic to play with some increasingly familiar imagery of folk horror and hauntology.
Oleksandr Burlaka & Olga Kononova
A Letter from Zatoka
The town of Zatoka, in southern Ukraine near the Romanian border, has grown into a private, chaotic seaside utopia, outlasting several states. How much longer can it last?
