Spring 2020
Day by day, in actions small and large, labour provides the collective basis that makes society possible. It stitches together the social fabric — only for capital to tear it apart.
The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a generation of socialists, trade unionists and anti-fascists, and will likely claim many more before it ends. Here, we remember several of those we have lost from Britain and around the world.
The coronavirus crisis shows us that we can no longer afford to deal with healthcare in narrow technocratic terms. We need a public health doctrine that sees the full social and political context.
Coronavirus has exposed the scandal of our privatised, fragmented and underfunded social care system. It’s time to demand a public alternative.
The coronavirus crash will concentrate economic power in the hands of the state and major multinational corporations – the task for the Left is to fight for democratic alternatives.
We now know there is such a thing as a society. But after this crisis, will it be run in the interests of private profit or the public good?
Every week the public claps the migrant workers who keep the NHS running — but the Tory government remains intent on treating
Nearly two hundred years ago, shipping merchants ignored all health warnings and brought cholera to Britain. Their act of greed triggered widespread social revolt.
A new biography of Peter Shore rediscovers the life of a parliamentary radical who fought any attempt to weaken the political strength of working people.
In the twenties and thirties, the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement mobilised thousands to resist the indignities of unemployment. As we enter another economic crisis, we should learn from their fight.
In the wake of the revelations in the leaked Labour Party report, former NEC member Liz Davies recalls her battles against the party right-wing under Blair – and says little has changed.
The failure of Corbynism was its inability to speak to the working-class in all its diversity. The risk of Starmer’s leadership is that it abandons that project altogether.
The market has failed to rise to the challenge of coronavirus, and states everywhere are stepping in – it’s time to make the case for a democratically planned economy.
The coronavirus pandemic is teaching the world a lesson: we can’t leave the future of medicine in the hands of corporate profiteers.
The case for a new social contract is growing by the day – but it will only happen on progressive terms if Labour makes the case.
If the Left is to draw any comparisons between the current crisis and the Second World War, it should look to the broad left-wing movement that built a consensus for the welfare state.
‘Underlying conditions’ has become just the latest throwaway remark reminding disabled people that society doesn’t value their lives.
The demonisation of Muslims, asylum seekers and refugees under Tony Blair may make many in Labour feel uncomfortable. But if the party is serious about its anti-racist credentials, it must confront its past.
Labour’s recently departed leadership team of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott stood firmly for socialism against incredible pressures — and history will vindicate them.
Cuban doctors have been praised for their contributions to the fight against Covid-19 – they are a symbol of a socialist model which has now survived longer in the post-Soviet world than before it.
Mexico last dealt with a pandemic in 2009, causing a terrible economic crisis, in the aftermath of an election stolen from the centre-left candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. How well prepared is it now that ‘AMLO’ is in power?
The newspaper columns of Paul B. Preciado combine queer history and a sober account of the last decade of left advance.
Working life is being rapidly reshaped in response to Covid-19, but the balance between work and leisure time has been contested for centuries.
The newly published notebooks of the Russian-Belgian revolutionary Victor Serge record the bitter defeats of the twentieth century, but contain within them a boundless curiosity about the world and a stubborn hope for the future.
The late Alasdair Gray was Glasgow’s greatest writer and painter, a talent worthy of that great city, which he depicted in murals and his monumental novels.
A new book on Kraftwerk’s ‘Future Music from Germany’ and a Caribbean tribute both reckon with the echoes of an imagined utopia in a bleak present.
Walsall’s ‘New’ Art Gallery opened twenty years ago, and is still one of the best in Britain. As one of the few enduring successes of New Labour’s lavish arts programme celebrates its anniversary, we ask: what went right?
Tribune’s one-time literary editor has become a meme and a ciché, but he remains one of the Left’s most ethically complex writers, and nowhere more so than in his depictions of the British Empire.
A new set of translations of the great socialist poet and playwright contain consolations and lessons for the dark times.