Leftist direct action thrillers: a new genre?
I’m a Virgo, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Black 47 and Codename Jenny
This is no time to stay silent
The Depp v Heard trial has unleashed a torrent of misogyny that feminists cannot ignore.
Review | It’s a sin
It’s a Sin is a compelling account of the human suffering of the AIDS epidemic and homophobia in the 80s, but the show sometimes seems to be dodging the big political questions.
Mobilise for trans equality now
A planned reform that simplifies how trans people gain recognition of their gender has sparked a wave of attacks on trans people, and not only from the right.
Paul Foot: a rediscovered interview
Paul Foot was a prominent journalist, writer and revolutionary socialist. Here we present an interview with him conducted in 1996.
Don’t let Israel hide Ahed’s trial
Israel’s apartheid regime is trying to hide its mistreatment of Ahed Tamimi, the teenage Palestinian political prisoner.
The Daily Mail and sexual harassment: a statement
Today the Mail on Sunday published an article about sexist remarks made to Kate Bradley by a Unite staff member and her complaint about them.
Reviewing BBC Radio 4’s coverage of the Russian revolution
Martin Crook analyses the presentation of the Russian revolution by the BBC, questioning the accuracy of a review that blames the revolution for the sins of Stalinism.
revolutionary reflections | You can’t stop Wapping by marching past it: An Interview with Sherrl Yanowitz
Sherrl Yanowitz, who sadly died in June last year – Obituary Sherrl Yanowitz 1942-2016 – played an active role in the dispute at Wapping in 1986-87 when workers fought against Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to smash the print unions. As part of a research project, rs21 interviewed Sherrl a few months before she died about her […]
TV Review: Happy Valley
Violence against women is central to this popular quality crime series says Seb Cooke. Happy Valley burst onto the scene a couple of years ago. At the time, British crime drama was caught napping, largely unaware of what was going on in other parts of the world. Without the series, the genre would probably be […]
Chanting crowds and flying shrapnel – The Night Manager reviewed
Radical former-spy John Le Carre’s The Night Manager started this week on BBC 1. Tony Aldis took a look. From its opening credits those responsible for The Night Manager seem determined to ditch much of the image of George Smiley, his huge glasses and smoke clouded, rain drizzled world. Slick CGI images of weapons mixed with the […]
Understanding Syria: resource page
Mark Boothroyd has gathered together news sites, analysis, cultural archives and links to a number of the best short films and documentaries to help in understanding the situation in Syria. The Syrian revolution has generated an immense amount of written coverage, analysis and culture. It can be hard to separate truth from propaganda given the competing world […]
“Disruptive technologies”: lessons from Wapping
The idea that new technologies will replace the need for human labour is not a new one. However, it is currently receiving a lot of attention, following a recent Panorama documentary, and arguments made by figures on the left such as Paul Mason and Yanis Varoufakis. Sherrl Yanowitz remembers when Rupert Murdoch began his campaign to […]
Why was Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon siegheiling?
…And were ‘we’ really so unaware of what it meant in 1933? Michael Rosen writes. The real problem posed by the photos of the future queen siegheiling is not whether she was too young to know what she was doing but why her mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, was doing it too. I’ve noticed on twitter, and indeed […]
Saying OXI to the bogeymen
In the face of relentless blackmail from international institutions and the Greek establishment, Greece’s NO vote to austerity has sent shock-waves through Europe and the wider world. Vanessa Patta, a member of DEA, a revolutionary socialist group in SYRIZA, writes on fear, defiance, and what comes next. In times of intense struggle, when there […]
We must fight domestic violence, but not with the hypocritical help of the Sun
Last week the Sun launched its “Give Me Shelter” campaign in defence of women’s refuges. A member of campaign group Sisters Uncut speaks out against the paper’s hypocrisy. Spread across the Sun’s front page last Monday were images of murdered women. The newspaper was right to report the shame of refuge closures and called on the UK […]
Book review: Radio Benjamin
Andrew Neeson reviews a collection of Walter Benjamin’s radio scripts Radio Benjamin This review first appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of the rs21 magazine In the early days of radio, Marxist critic Walter Benjamin wrote and presented 80 plus broadcasts on German radio. For the first time in English, Radio Benjamin is the full […]
Scaffolding struggle: what is a revolutionary media?
Why do we write? And what for? Amy Gilligan thinks through why we use publications, and what a ‘revolutionary’ media could mean. Where there are people calling themselves revolutionaries, you can be reasonably sure that there’ll be some kind of publication. It might be a newspaper, magazine, journal, pamphlet, or these days a website. And […]
Real free speech is subversive, not about defending the status quo
Colin Wilson discusses recent controversies about freedom of speech. The last few months have seen a number of discussions about “free speech”. After the Charlie Hebdo killings, the magazine’s supporters frequently justified its publication of Islamophobic and racist cartoons by reference to free speech. When protesters in January opposed Marine Le Pen speaking at the […]
The toxic hate behind the Chapel Hill murders
Nicole Colson looks at the background of bigotry behind the killing of three Muslims. This article was originally posted on the US website socialistworker.org. On the evening of 10 February, Craig Stephen Hicks murdered three of his neighbours in Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Yusor’s sister, Razan Mohammad […]
The politics behind the ice bucket challenge
The ice bucket challenge has gripped people across the world and apparently raised more than $80 million for motor neurone disease, but asks Dominic Jones, what does it say about the state of medical research that it relies on people emptying water over their heads for funding The past few weeks has seen the ice bucket […]
Solidarity movement continues to grow – #GazaA9 protest round up
Yesterday once again saw a massive turn out at demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine. In London, Stop the War report that 150,000 people marched in the biggest ever UK protest for Gaza. Shanice McBean took part in the demonstration as it made its way from BBC Broadcasting House to Hyde Park. “The movement is growing, and […]
Anger spills out onto London’s streets in run up to Saturday’s Palestine solidarity demo
Ahead of Saturday’s demo, thousands gathered outside the BBC in London to protest against the BBC systematically ignoring and downplaying Palestinian suffering in the name of being ‘neutral’.
Panic on the streets of Birmingham?
Andrew N, Birmingham NUT executive member (personal capacity), argues that the left needs to stand against Islamophobes and reject media scapegoating Photo: Paul Clarke If you were to believe the headlines in certain Tory papers recently, you would think that schools in Birmingham were being seized by Muslim radicals on a daily basis.”Gove declares war […]
Constructing Lads mags – Playboy to Nuts
Estelle Cooch looks at the demise of Nuts and asks what the competition of original porn mags Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, can tell us about lads mags today. A decade on from its launch, the owners of sexist “lads mag” Nuts announced this week it was due to close, after sales plummeted from 300,000 at […]