Magazine Issues

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Issue - 412

Storm Clouds Gather Over Europe

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In this issue

Reviews & Culture

Eisenstein in Guanajuato

In December 1930 the great Soviet film-maker, Sergei Eistenstein, arrived in Mexico. He had already made three extraordinary films, Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927). All three were revolutionary in terms of subject matter — the masses in collective struggle. They were also revolutionary in form. With his experimental use of editing (montage),...
01 April 2016
Reviews & Culture

The Divide

You’ll have heard the facts. The UK’s 1,000 richest individuals own more than the poorest 40 percent. In the US 0.1 percent own as much as the bottom 90 percent. This film, a documentary inspired by the 2009 book The Spirit Level, puts flesh on the bones of the data. The book’s authors argued that...
01 April 2016
Reviews & Culture

Undercover

Legal dramas are invariably bedevilled by overacting and wild scenarios which bear little comparison with what really goes on in the criminal justice system. These misgivings aside, I was attracted by the presence of two talented black actors, Sophie Okonedo and Adrian Lester in the lead roles as Maya and Nick. Episode 1 begins with...
01 April 2016
Reviews & Culture

Sherpa

Sherpa is the fascinating story of an inspiring labour dispute, set against the breathtaking scenery of the world’s highest mountain. Film-maker Jennifer Peedom and her team were on Everest in 2014 to document the climbing season from the point of view of the Sherpas — a term used interchangeably for a Nepalese ethnic group and...
01 April 2016
Reviews & Culture

Five things to see or do this month

RanDir: Akira Kurosawa Out: 1 April Kurosawa’s late masterpiece reimagines King Lear as a historical epic set in 16th-century Japan. This dazzling 4K restoration gets an extended run at BFI Southbank as well as a UK-wide release and comes out on DVD/Blu-ray on 2 May. BFI is also showing three films from director Vishal Bhardwaj:...
01 April 2016
Socialist Review Archive

Obituary: Barry Hines

Barry Hines was born into a mining family in Hoyland Common, a pit village near Barnsley, in 1939. He qualified as a teacher and taught in Barnsley secondary schools before becoming a full-time writer. Hines’s work is characterised by his ear for dialogue, his sympathetic use of Barnsley dialect and his identification with working class...
01 April 2016
Socialist Review Archive

Missing the Corbyn bounce

It looks like a racing certainty that the SNP will regain a majority in the Scottish Parliament after the Scottish elections in May 2016. Recent opinion polls suggest 70 of the 129 seats could be held by SNP members. This is not surprising given the lack of a coherent challenge by the Labour Party. The...
01 April 2016
Socialist Review Archive

We got IDS with bold action

If the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party suggested that politics can be unpredictable, the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) in a self-proclaimed stand for disabled people proves it. Watching the former secretary of state for work and pensions tell Andrew Marr that the cuts are “hurting the most vulnerable”...
01 April 2016
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Letters

United fronts today (2)

The labour movement has revived and the time has arrived to build a front against racism, Islamophobia and all the other associated forces of repression perpetrated by this monstrous government. It was heartwarming to read Tom Kay’s thoughtful and timely article on the need for a united front. Such a body requires having sufficient organisational...
01 April 2016
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Letters

United fronts today (1)

Tom Kay’s “The united front in theory and practice” (March SR) was excellent and timely. United front work is not merely vital for revolutionaries, but equal in status to party-building. Without significant participation in left movements and campaigns, sect-like tendencies can creep in. United fronts are forums for proving, to ourselves as much as to...
01 April 2016
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Letters

Strikes stopped call-up

There was an important omission in Chris Fuller’s fascinating piece on resistance to conscription during the First World War (“Forced to fight their war”, March SR). Chris concludes by stating that the government backed off from introducing conscription in Ireland “still stunned by the Easter Rising”. In fact it was mass resistance, crucially the general...
01 April 2016
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Letters

Tantalising Egypt

Simon Assaf’s glowing review of The Egyptians by Jack Shenker (March SR) is spot on. Shenker is totally committed and reports from the thick of the struggle. He brilliantly captures the shifting moods of the masses in the words of participants and provides a comprehensive historical analysis of the crises at the heart of the...
01 April 2016