OK Russell, let’s get this done. I’m in Europe and the crisis is everywhere. I landed in Greece and it hit me in the face: people trying to generate an income in any way they can; road works half complete and not touched for months (if not years); teachers on strike against austerity; people sleeping […]
08 Oct
By KEVIN OVENDEN This piece is a follow-up to “Greece, the state & anti-fascism”, which was subsequently also posted at Socialist Unity in the UK and Socialist Worker in the US. The anti-fascist conference in Athens last weekend hosted by the Greek anti-fascist/anti-racist coalition KEERFA was a major step forward. About 600 people, from a broad spectrum […]
30 Aug
This piece was written for the UK Stop the War Coalition’s website. It may seem wearily familiar — a rush to war, disputed intelligence dossiers and a determined effort to proceed without even UN Security Council authorisation. There are echoes of Iraq ten years ago, and it casts a long shadow upon the mounting political […]
10 Apr
If there’s one thing the entire Australian Left agrees on right now it’s that “Thatcherism was a very bad thing”. But beyond that, it may be appropriate to ask what exactly it is that people think was a bad thing. The answer to that question rests on one’s interpretation of what exactly was going on […]
01 Mar
London-based anti-fascist activist KEVIN OVENDEN reports on two aspects of the rise of the far Right in Europe. First, he analyses the high vote for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the Eastleigh by-election, where they beat the Tories into third place. Following this, a short piece on how the mainstream Right is feeding the […]
10 Nov
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If the last week’s bizarre political contortions in Greece — first a referendum, then not, then a government of national unity, now more uncertainty — were not enough, the spread of contagion to Italy threatens even greater turmoil. As we arrived in London we were greeted by the Financial Times informing us that Silvio Berlusconi had (finally) […]
20 Sep
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Not so omnipotent anymore Cross-posted from Overland Journal‘s blog and ABC’s The Drum. The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its […]
14 Aug
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Special guest post by KEVIN OVENDEN* What did people expect? Just over a year ago, during the general election campaign in Britain, I remember George Galloway on the stump warning that the last time the Tories came in to replace an already dead Labour government and pursue full-blooded, class war policies, Britain’s cities went up […]
13 Aug
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Watts Riot of 1965 — how the rioters treated ‘their’ community then This is the original text of an article commissioned by ABC’s The Drum, which was published yesterday and can be found here. The riots in the United Kingdom, mainly involving school age and unemployed youth, have provoked a backlash that seeks to paint them […]
11 Aug
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Mark Duggan, whose killing by police sparked the riots Maybe it’s a sign of the times, but for mine the most depressing thing about the UK riots is how some on the Left feel the need to loudly proclaim their lack of solidarity with some of the poorest and most oppressed people in society, instead resorting […]
27 Oct
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