Raphael De Santos dissects GERS, arguing for managed expectations as the first steps on a longer path. Once we get past the arguments on a second Scottish referendum and the infighting within the independence movement, unionists’ focus will shift to the economy and finances. This was the Achilles’ Heel of the ‘Yes’ movement in 2014. […]
Chris McGachy recalls a time when music was a political force to be reckoned within workers’ struggles. Fifty years ago in the summer of 1971, John Lennon was putting the finishing touches to his global anthem, Imagine. At the same time, Heath’s Tory government announced the imminent end of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS). Within […]
John Bratton and David Erdal argue for one specific method for ‘building back better’. The global Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused unprecedented job losses in Scotland, has highlighted just how out of kilter our current arrangements are for providing well-being, security and prosperity for individuals, businesses and society. Here, we explore what a reimagined system […]
Mick Rice argues workers have potential power in another arena under global corporate capitalism. It has always galled me that unions do all in their power to organise in the workplace but then carelessly allow their members to go back home and spend their wages on products made by anti-union employers. General secretaries and other […]
Ravenscraig by Robert Graham Before the steel mill shut the kids had toys and bikes, their brothers bought old banger cars they’d tinker with and polish till they shone. After the steel mill shut, the toys were gone. Before the steel mill shut the streets felt safe to stroll, to meet with friends and share […]
Robin Bissell, director, The Best of Enemies (2019) Reviewed by Jackie Bergson Durham, North Carolina, 1971. A school which educates black pupils only is on fire. This catalytic scene follows the film’s opening images, of a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) initiation, which are accompanied by a voice-over of real-life antagonist, C P Ellis, talking about […]
Hall, E. (ed.) New Light on Tony Harrison, Oxford University Press/British Academy, 2019, pp246, £45 (hb), 978-0197266519, and Hall, E. Tony Harrison: Poet of Radical Classicism, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, pp248, £45 (hb), 978-1474299336. Reviewed by Sean Sheehan Edith Hall is at the heart of two books about the aesthetics of resistance in the […]
Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen, Finntopia: What we can learn from the world’s happiest country, Agenda Publishing, £18.99, 9781788212151 Reviewed by Mike Danson This book is barely ‘okay’. To anyone accessing Nordic Horizons online, on Facebook or Twitter there is nothing surprising nor new in this publication and they will probably find the massive data […]
So, it would appear that Boris Johnson may have finally got his moment to be compared to Churchill. As the withdrawal from Afghanistan resembles Dunkirk without boats, the PM had to face an emergency session in Parliament, where he was roasted by Theresa May for his shambolic reaction to events. Phrases like ‘make a sentence […]
Non-death of neo-liberalism and ‘new’ Labour returns This is an editorial of two parts. The first parts deals with the strange non-death of neo-liberalism and the second with the changing class alignments and voting patterns, especially in terms of Labour. So, nothing much about the new SNP Scottish Government or independence as nothing much has […]