Socialist Review issue

October 2016 #417

Review cover
Black lives matter

News

by Shaun Doherty
Jeremy Corbyn’s keynote speech to the Labour Party conference was a defiant response to his critics in the parliamentary party who have been doing...
by Kevin Devine
The news that the Irish government is to appeal the European Commission’s ruling that it must collect €13 billion in unpaid back taxes from Apple...

Features

Feature
Brian Richardson

The rise of Black Lives Matter in the US marks an end to the Civil Rights movement's claim that black people in high places could be the solution for all, writes Brian Richardson

Feature
Harold Wilson

Inspired by the US, the Black Lives Matter movement took off in Britain over the summer. Harold Wilson looks at the issues that sparked the protests and at the activists who found themselves...

Feature
Julie Sherry

The low level of industrial struggle is in contrast to the huge political earthquake of Corbynism. How can socialists work within this contradiction, asks Julie Sherry

Feature
Ken Loach

Socialist Review spoke to film maker Ken Loach about the benefits system, Jeremy Corbyn and where socialists should put their energies.

Feature
Sarah Ensor

There has long been an argument over the EU's role in the fishing industry, exemplified by Nigel Farage's flotilla down the River Thames. But whose side should socialists take in an industry that...

Feature
Simon Shaw

This October it is eighty years since working class people came together to stop Oswald Mosley's fascists marching along Cable Street in east London. Simon Shaw looks at the heroic actions of that...

Opinion

Opinion
by Charlotte Ahmed
It is two years since the inspiring Yes campaign for Scottish independence ended in defeat. Things have moved on, and how. The SNP won all but two of the Scottish constituencies in the general...
Opinion
by Michael Lavalette

Trade unions and political parties are discussing the concept of a universal basic income (UBI) to replace the welfare system. Should socialists support the idea? Michael Lavalette looks at the...

Protesters on steps at St Paul's cathedral
Opinion
by John Sinha

Five years ago a global movement propelled a new generation of people into activity. John Sinha salutes them, but stresses the key debate remains over the type of political organisation that we...

Opinion
by John Newsinger

In a new ten-part column John Newsinger tells the the remarkable story of US revolutionary trade unionists the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies

Letters

by Chris Newlove
The term “cultural appropriation” (“Who decides if culture is authentic?”, April SR) commonly refers to the use of an oppressed group’s culture by members of the dominant culture of a society. It...
by Sabby Sagall
Following on from my article on anti-Semitism in September’s SR, a few words on Ken Livingstone. The Independent of 6 September quotes him as saying, “It’s now four months since I’ve been suspended...
by John Newsinger
There is indeed a record of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party but it is firmly located on the right of the party. It was Sidney Webb, for example, one of the party’s leading intellectuals, who...
by Frank Stone
The Chakrabarti report failed to expose the extent to which the Israel lobby manufactured Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis. I recommend an article by Asa Winstanley (electronicintifada.net/content/...
by David Gilchrist
Much as I enjoyed Bob Light’s invective in his review of The Entertainer (September SR), I have to disagree with him. Osborne was part of the post-war generation that had had hopes in the 1945...

Reviews

Books
by Sheila McGregor

This biography of Karl Marx represents an enormous undertaking. “My aim in this book is like that of a restorer,” Stedman Jones writes, “to remove the later retouching and its alteration contained...

Books
by Kevin McCaighy

The social and political turmoil of the Thatcher/Major era and the cultural responses to these challenges lie at the heart of this oral history of three interlocking periods of recent British...

Books
by Rebecca Townesend

The Spirit of Marikana is about strikes in three platinum mines across South Africa from 2012 to 2014, including the massacre of 34 striking black mineworkers at Marikana in August 2012. It is an...

Books
by Alan Gibson

There can be few more important journeys than the one Vladimir Lenin took when he embarked from his exile in Zurich on the “sealed” train that took him and an assortment of fellow comrades to...

Books
by Kevin Mottram

It has become fashionable in academia recently to see the Russian Revolution as only one part of a “continuum of crises” that engulfed the Tsarist Empire and the early years of the Soviet Union....

Books
by John Rose

Barbara C Allen’s important biography has opened an exciting, and long overdue, new line of enquiry into the dynamics of the Russian Revolution, well-timed for its centenary in 2017.

...

Books
by Mark Farmer

The best part of this year’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics took place several days before the opening ceremony. On 27 July the Olympic torch relay was held up by a demonstration at Angra dos Reis, near...

Books
by John Newsinger

Nothing demonstrates the importance of Ian Cobain’s new book better than the secrecy that surrounds British involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen today. Not only will we never be told the...

Books
by Tony Phillips

W E B Du Bois was a pioneer of the civil rights movement in the US and helped to found the National Association for the Advancement Colored People. He was the author of many works on the real...

Books
by Jenny Leow

John Parrington’s engaging and thoughtful book explains the science behind recent rapid advances in genetic engineering that mean it is increasingly possible to enact precise changes at a...

Art / Exhibitions
by Ellen Clifford

The Wellcome Collection’s new exhibition, “Bedlam: the asylum and beyond” asserts a particular take on a central question, the significance of which is easy to overlook due to the sheer volume of...

Art / Exhibitions
by Peter Robinson

At the close of the Second World War, the Western art world pivoted from Europe to the United States. The great wave of artists influenced by the Russian and German revolutionary movements had...

Film
by Gareth Jenkins

This film is quite unlike other recent movies about the American Civil War. It’s not about heroes and victims. It’s the true-life story of poor whites and black slaves coming together to fight a...

Film
by Francesca Manning

Ken Loach’s new film is an unflinching exploration of the reality of government welfare reforms. The powerful performances illustrate the effects on people at the receiving end of this Orwellian...

TV / DVD
by Kevin McCaighy

Masaki Kobayashi’s epic trilogy, made between 1959 and 1961, is one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all-time, but it has been rarely screened in the UK. This dual disc box set release by...

Music
AIM
by Saba Shiraz

MIA’s fifth album is fresh, vibrant and bold, encapsulating everything that is unique about her as an artist. Her songs are infused with politics and are as relevant as ever.

Throughout...

Five Things Listing

“We Are the Lions”
19 October 2016-26 March 2017, Brent Museum and Archives, London
An exhibition commemorating the Grunwick Strike of 1976 to 1978. Forty years ago a...