A class half full

John Medhurst Re-examining the books I have written for Zero and Repeater – the first one on Britain in the 1970s, the second on the Russian Revolution – it struck me that their underlying theme was an engagement with issues of class, specifically issues of working class identity and working class politics. As those issues

Why Solidarity with Ukraine and Poland.

In the 1990s I worked for the International Branch of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), where one of my jobs was to assist with “Know How Fund” projects funded by the FCO to help ex-Soviet Bloc countries establish more democratic, decentralised and flexible institutional forms. HSE used KHF money to help countries like Ukraine,

Ukraine and Russian Imperialism

John Medhurst Shared with Public As Kyiv comes under rocket fire, there is only one position to take on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and it shouldn’t take any agonising or hand-wringing to take it. ABSOLUTE SOLIDARITY WITH KYIV AND UKRAINE. Russia’s expansionist attack on Ukraine follows from three hundred years of Great Russian Chauvinism against

The Met Police’s noble history

The Met Police distinguished itself last night in its policing of the Sarah Everard vigil, but it was not a departure from its long and noble history. In 1955 the Daily Mail reported that an unusually honest detective superintendent had sent a report to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner detailing systemic corruption amongst the police officers

On calling out Trump as a fascist

You can’t help but notice that having spent much of their political lives analysing historic and contemporary fascism; warning of how easily it can and does emerge from right-wing, racist and nationalist politics; labelling many right-wing but still constitutional politicians such as Thatcher or Reagan fascist or neo-fascist; that most of the the supposedly “radical”,

Red London and Blue Walls.

Owen Hatherley’s fascinating new book “Red London: Socialism and the Government of London” has a lot of valid things to say on how London strongly went Labour in both 2017 and 2019, and how if London actually did represent the rest of the country Labour would have won the 2019 election by a crushing landslide.

The 1st Presidential Debate 2020

If after Trump pointedly refused to condemn white supremacist Nazi thugs the Proud Boys – instead deliberately using their own slogan to stand back and “stand by”, to be ready to annihilate the left in circumstances yet undefined – and refused to commit to a transfer of power if he lost; if after that and

“The Menshevik” by Merryn Williams

THE MENSHEVIK I used to hear him coughing every night –it shook our house, I couldn’t get to sleepon the top storey where the poorest gohe lodged, an exile, but I didn’t know where from or why. His eyes grew huge, his coatlet in each draught. I understand he wrotesome pamphlet, ‘Down with the Death

Tenet / teneT

Saw Christopher Nolan’s Tenet at a reasonably Covid-secure Brighton Odeon. Now I admit I am an unabashed Nolan fanboy. In my opinion he is our Stanley Kubrick, pushing the boundaries of cinema both technically and conceptionally, and offering genuinely intellectual films to large mainstream audiences. For me, that is so much more admirable than producing

1933 and 2020

Like Trump’s America, Johnson’s Britain has a real “last years of the Weimar Republic” feel about it, replete with far-right populists, toxic nationalism, cultural backlash and parts of the left and trade union movement so compromised by these things that they offer no firm resistance. In 1930s Germany, the left constantly under-estimated Hitler and failed