Aug 1, 2010
CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING Red Pepper, August-September 2010 In Act IV Scene i of King Lear, the blinded, humbled, suicidal Earl of Gloucester hands his purse to the naked madman, ‘Poor Tom’ (actually Gloucester’s ill-used son, Edgar) and as he does so observes, “So distribution should undo excess, / And each man have enough.” Shakespeare’s… Read more
Apr 1, 2009
CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING Red Pepper, April-May 2009 [‘Contending for the Living’ is Mike’s new column for Red Pepper.] Something special took place in Durban in February and though the media have rushed past, we should pause. In solidarity with the people of Gaza, dockworker members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union… Read more
Apr 1, 2008
Red Pepper, April-May 2008 The Mysterious Chemistry of Social Change: the USA 1968 in Retrospect The last thing the legacy of 1968 needs is nostalgic commemoration. Even as it was happening, it was being packaged for consumption. Nor should we celebrate it in the name of some abstract spirit of resistance. It was a year… Read more
Nov 1, 2006
Red Pepper, November 2006 Open hostility to multi-culturalism used to be the preserve of the nationalist right, but since 9/11, it’s flooded the mainstream and bamboozled more than a few who proudly declare themselves liberals. In recent months, it’s been noisily blamed for homegrown terrorism and the alleged “self-segregation” of minority groups, damned as a… Read more
Oct 1, 2005
Red Pepper, October 2005 It’s strange that a media obsessed with Brit winners managed to overlook a major success by a British filmmaker at this year’s Cannes festival: Kim Longinotto’s prize-winning documentary, Sisters in Law. Perhaps it’s because Longinotto’s quietly unsensational portrait of African women struggling for self-determination defies received notions about both women and… Read more
Jul 1, 2005
Red Pepper, July 2005 Book Review Stop the War: The Story of Britain’s Biggest Mass Movement by Andrew Murray and Lindsey German (Bookmarks) The strengths of this publication are Noel Douglas’s vibrant design and its generous helpings of fiery, stylish anti-war visuals – including montages by Peter Kennard and Leon Kuhn, photos by Jess Hurd… Read more
Jul 1, 2004
Red Pepper, July 2004 “I didn’t plan to make the film. I’m not a director, I’m an actor,” says Mohammad Bakri, describing the genesis of Jenin Jenin. “The story was like this. I was standing with a colleague of mine, an actress, with a group of Arab and Jewish demonstrators at Jenin checkpoint. It was… Read more
May 20, 2004
Keynote for Red Pepper, June 2004 The images of occupying troops torturing and abusing Iraqi detainees are a challenge to every British and US citizen. These horrors are being perpetrated in our name, and unless we act to stop them, we are culpable. But to stop them, we have to understand them, along with the… Read more
Apr 1, 2004
Mike Marqusee talks to novelist David Peace Red Pepper, April 2004 What does the left want from its artists? To be told what we already know? To have our sense of mission confirmed, to be reassured that our struggles will be vindicated? Or to have our assumptions and emotional habits challenged and our perceptions altered?… Read more
Nov 20, 2001
Red Pepper, December 2001 It’s been widely observed that the US-led global alliance ‘against terrorism’ is a motley assemblage, bound together by expedience rather than principle. Some would say the same about the global anti-war alliance now being constructed to oppose it. Diversity is certainly the hallmark of this emergent movement, but it is both… Read more
