Jan 11, 2013
“Dare to fail, dare to win” Spanish translation (for Rebelion) of Red Pepper column on “Success, failure…” En la lucha por el cambio social, el éxito y el fracaso son a veces difíciles de determinar. Sólo si aceptamos que podemos fracasar asumiremos los riesgos que podrían conducir a un mundo mejor. Traducido para Rebelión por… Read more
Jan 10, 2013
The recent conflict within the Socialist Workers Party over allegations of serious personal misconduct by a leading member has brought back sharply my own rupture with the (then) SWP leadership, ten years ago, and how this was handled by the party (of which I’ve never been a member). To explain. After twenty years hard graft… Read more
Dec 11, 2012
The Guardian, 11 December Figures released by the Office for National Statistics confirm that more people are recovering from, or living longer with, cancer. Welcoming the news, Mike Hobday of Macmillan Cancer Support observed that for many patients, “cancer is now a long-term condition rather than an acute disease”. And there’s the rub. Surviving, it… Read more
Dec 1, 2012
CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING Red Pepper, December-January 2012-2013 As we approach the tenth anniversary of the global anti-war protest of February 15th, 2003, people are bound to ask what it actually achieved. Certainly it failed to stop the war, a failure for which Iraqis paid and are paying an exorbitant price. So was it a… Read more
Oct 1, 2012
Contending for the living Red Pepper, October-November 2012 In France, 1792 was the year of “the second revolution.” On 10 August, the King was overthrown, bringing to an end three years of uneasy “constitutional monarchy”. For months the Legislative Assembly had been locked in conflict with Louis XVI, while at the same time fighting a… Read more
Sep 25, 2012
[This is a companion piece to my upcoming column in Red Pepper, which chronicles the hopes and frustrations of the revolutionary year of 1792.] In the voluminous writings he composed during his eleven years imprisonment under the fascist regime, Antonio Gramsci repeatedly cites the aphorism, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” (which he… Read more
Aug 26, 2012
For a long time I was perplexed by the phenomenon of “survivor’s guilt”. While I recognised it as a reality, a terrible affliction, and I could see its logic, to me that logic seemed perverse and alien. I couldn’t get inside it. Now five years after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma (cancer of the bone… Read more
Aug 1, 2012
Contending for the Living Red Pepper, August-September 2012 The word comes down to us from ancient Greece, where polis was used to describe the city-states that emerged in the sixth century BC. This polis was more than a community or concentration of individuals. It was a self-conscious unit of self-administration (independent of empires) and from… Read more
Apr 1, 2012
CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING Red Pepper, April-May 2012 When a High Court judge ruled against Bideford Town Council’s inclusion of prayers in its formal agenda, Tory Communities Secretary Eric Pickles acted quickly, fast-tracking a parliamentary order “effectively reversing” the Court’s decision. By doing so, he crowed, “we are striking a blow for localism over central… Read more
