Book review: ‘Gorgeous George’ by David Morley
Attitudes to George Galloway have consistently polarised the British far left since 2003, of course. The leitmotiv of David Morley’s new biography of the man is that he has been a force for polarisation for a lot, lot, longer than that. From Galloway’s time as an operator behind the scenes in Dundee municipal Labour politics [...]
The class politics of manslaughter
In case you missed them, here are two news in brief items, reported back-to-back on last night’s edition of Radio Four’s The World Tonight programme without further comment. Two employees of Network Rail – the company that maintains Britain’s network of railway tracks – have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the [...]
Of human rights and homeland security
Former home secretary John Reid once famously remarked that those who insist on raising human rights considerations at times when New Labour wants to railroad through anti-terrorism legislation ‘still don’t get the point’. The underlying contention here is that human rights are somehow like speed limits. They can be set high when the risks are [...]
Terrorism: getting the balance right
The Irish Republican Army’s bombing of two Birmingham pubs in 1974 – a horrible crime that took the lives of 21 people and injured 184 more – led directly to the Labour government of the period introducing the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act that same year. Home secretary Roy Jenkins was well aware – [...]
Citizens’ Juries: what’s the point?
Gordon Brown likes to style the government’s various taxpayer-funded ‘listening events’ and ‘citizen’s juries’ as genuine consultation exercises, designed to give the public a real input into major policy decisions. Yeah, right. What’s more, this sort of thing does not come cheap. Some £2.9m has been spent on various events of this type so far [...]
Respect chooses parliamentary candidates
Press release just in from Rifondazione Respectista: George Galloway has been declared the Respect candidate for Poplar and Limehouse at the next general election, being the only nomination. No shocks there, then. But slightly more surprising is the statement that ‘[a]t the same meeting four candidates were shortlisted for selection for Bethnal Green and Bow [...]
Jonathan Aitken, the Tories and prison reform
There is something rather distasteful about New Labour’s attack on the Tories’ appointment of Jonathan Aitken as head of an inquiry into prison reform. Yes, the former cabinet minister is a convicted perjurer. But his is a spent conviction within the meaning of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Unnamed Labour sources claim that giving him [...]
Marxist theory question of the week
Here’s one for all you Marxist theory buffs out there. I’m currently reading Doug Henwood’s 1997 book ‘Wall Street; how it works and for whom’. It’s a little out of date, naturally, but still head and shoulders above the two bourgeois textbooks on finance I am forced to plough through for academic reasons. On page [...]
Reflections on Remembrance Sunday
If Private George Osler had not been one of the 900,000 British soldiers killed in World War One, I might just have met my great uncle. It would have been a meeting between an old man and a young boy, at some point in the 1960s. He’d be dead by now, of course. But I [...]
Respect: what next?
Rifondazione Respectista and 32 County Respect face off against each other with rival conferences in London a week tomorrow. So this is a suitable juncture for socialists involved with either project to ask themselves what happens next. The Socialist Workers’ Party are only carrying on with the charade of running a ‘coalition’ that doesn’t actually [...]
