Pauline Bryan looks at the implications of the outcomes of Labour’s leadership elections How has Labour’s membership shifted so quickly to the right and picked Keir Starmer to replace Jeremy Corbyn as leader? Until recently an outside observer would have thought that the left had a solid hold on the party. Three hundred and fifty […]
As Sturgeon accepted there’ll be no 2020 indyref2, Joe Middleton assesses the complicated terrain Brexit has happened and Britain has left the European Union dragging Scotland along with it, despite our overwhelming vote to remain. We still do not know what this will actually mean economically but it does mean that circumstances have changed for […]
Grahame Smith reflects on some tumultuous times as he bows out from leading the STUC Writing a reflection on over thirty-four years working at an institution such as the Scottish Trade Unions Congress (STUC), including fourteen as its the General Secretary, is a significant challenge. It is a task I embark on with a high […]
Bob Thomson recalls the life and work of ‘Bick’ following the launch of a website about his life and work ‘The true basis for any caring society must be public services provided from the public purse, staffed by men and women properly trained and decently paid.’ Rodney Bickerstaffe This website – https://rodneybickerstaffe.org.uk/ – celebrates the […]
Neil Findlay proposes a way forward for Scottish Labour on its constitutional crisis Labour cannot ignore or wish away constitutional realities a second longer. Issues of democracy, accountability, independence, devolution and regional and national identity are – whether we like it or not- the issues that dominate the Scottish and increasingly, the British, political landscape. […]
Shutting down and switching off Silicon Valley Wendy Liu’s ‘Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism (Repeater Books, 2020, £10.99) is an almost diary-like account of a young computer programmer’s slow disillusionment with the tech industry. This interview, conducted by Aidan Beatty, took place in early February 2020. It was edited down for […]
Can lefties like Wagner? Graeme Arnott previews his granddaughters’ forthcoming production of her great-grandfather’s opera ‘Lohengrin’. It’s August 1876 and Nuremberg’s hotels are full to bursting with Wagnerians attending the first Bayreuth festival. Unable to obtain a room, Marx ends up spending an uncomfortable night on a railway station bench. Aggrieved, he castigates Richard Wagner […]
Whitfield, D. Public Alternative to the Privatisation of Life, Spokesman, 2019, £25, 978085124 8837, pp580 Reviewed by Stuart Fairweather Public Alternative to The Privatisation of Life is the shortened title of Whitfield’s latest book. The notion of the privatisation of life is dramatic in language and scope. This is appropriate given the enormity of the […]
McCarraher, E. How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity, Harvard University Press, 2019, pp816, 9780674984615, £31.95 Reviewed by Sean Sheehan The Enchantments of Mammon is not so much a damming indictment of neo-liberalism – do we need another one when the truth is so ecologically obvious? – but of the religion-inspired cant that glossed it […]
This is, indeed, a strange time that we are living through. At the end of last year, when we all were making our predictions for 2020, no one would have forecast that a 99-year-old World War II veteran would become a national hero for walking around his own garden. Indeed, it’s strange to think that […]