Magazine Issues Follow Follow

What Socialists say about free expression

Music & Audio

Culture Under Quarantine

Earlier this month Sir Patrick Coghlan’s enquiry into Northern Ireland’s Renewal Heating Initiative (RHI) scandal published its 650 page report. It took 270,000 words to effectively whitewash the role of Stormont Executive and the DUP’s Arlene Foster in particular. It concluded that ‘there was no evidence of corruption’ whilst acknowledging ‘incompetence’ and ‘wholly inappropriate behaviour’...

One of the great enigmas of working class history is how it was that so many fine working class militants, men and women, embraced Stalinism and either refused to believe in or actually helped cover up its crimes. They happily followed political strategies dictated by Moscow and aimed to further Soviet foreign policy rather than...

Do we need another book on Marx? Many recently published books deal with Marx’s approach to history, to economics, to ecology and to the family in innovative and exciting ways. Having read this book, the answer is a definite yes. We need books that present Marx and his ideas to new readers, and which remind...

Darrin Qualman was the primary researcher and writer for the National Farmers Union, a Canadian organisation of farm families promoting environmentally safe farming practices, until 2010. His work focused on food, agriculture, energy, climate change, the environment, the economy and trade. His book offers a complex analysis of civilisation today, focusing on our energy, food...

Welcome to Polly Toynbee’s unremittingly grey Britain. Of course, there are very many elements of truth to the picture she and her co-author David Walker paint in this book about a decade of Tory rule, all of which will be familiar to readers of this magazine. This is a compendium of reminders of just how...

The final book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about the sixteenth century statesman Thomas Cromwell has finally arrived. The success of the previous books—Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up The Bodies (2012)—made Mantel a superstar among authors and the publication of the final part of the story has been afforded the sort of saturation media coverage...

Why workers need to take the lead on action

The chance of a radical socialist challenge to the US establishment seemed on the cards, but as Sanders seemed set on winning, the machine came into action..

Who could have foreseen the extraordinary events of March when the Covid-19 crisis led the Tories to shred every orthodox belief of the past 45 years? Boris Johnson has been forced to subsidise the wages of millions of workers while throwing more money at business than during the 2008 bank bailout. Business has been paramount...