lockdown Follow

By forcing students back to college, the government and university authorities have abandoned them to an ill thought out strategy of ‘herd immunity’, and the consequences are a wildfire of infections, writes Carlo Morelli.

Socialist Review spoke to activists about organising under lockdown

Since 2009, pay in the Further and Higher Education sector has been effectively cut by nearly 20 percent in real terms, while staff are being asked to work harder and longer than ever before. The employers’ own analysis highlights that women and black and minority ethnic staff experience significant pay discrimination. Casual contracts remain entrenched. Yet university employers are refusing to commit themselves to meaningful action on any of these appalling conditions. This has meant that members of the University and College Union (UCU) are currently taking strike action over falling pay, the gender and ethnic pay gap, precarious employment practices, and unsafe workloads in what has become known as the “Four Fights” dispute.Socialist Review spoke to activists in the University and College Union (UCU), and members of the UCU Left network, about the escalating crisis in Higher Education and the Four Fights dispute.

An African proverb says, ‘until the lion learns how to write, the story will always glorify the hunter’. Thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, BAME people have a chance to realise its truth, writes Julie Mukajee

“I now believe that there is an absolute incompatibility between art and private property or between art and state property… Property must be destroyed before imagination can develop any further… I find the function of art criticism…serves to uphold the art market… Thus, today I am more tolerant of those artists who are reduced to...

Since the lockdown and consequent closure of theatres, many theatre makers and theatre lovers have been trying to make a virtue out of a necessity of “online theatre”. One piece of onscreen theatre I was pleased to discover was Spike Lee’s film of Antoinette Nwandu’s play Pass Over, built around a recording of a performance...

There are three things to say about the government announcement of £1.8 billion for the Culture, Arts and Heritage sector announced in early July. First, for those who work in a sector of the economy that employs about 270,000 people this is potentially a lifeline. Second, compared to the funding provided by other (mostly European)...