Hong Kong: Silence is not an option
When the question of trade unions in China would come up, some of us were fond of saying that there is an independent, democratic trade union movement in the country. It is called the Hong…
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Review: Workers resistance against Nazi Germany at the International Labour Conference 1933, by Reiner Tosstorff
Every year in June, representatives of the world’s governments, employers and workers come together for the International Labour Conference in Geneva. This has been happening more or less since the founding of the International Labour…
In 1933, the world’s trade unions forced Germany out of the ILO – let’s do the same today to Iran
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a clerical fascist regime. It is essentially no different from the fascist regimes we know from history – Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain and most infamously, Hitler’s Germany. It is…
Beyond refugees: What the Left needs to say and do about Afghanistan
Pictured: The German language version of the newsletter Fascism, published to fight against the Nazi and Fascist regimes by the International Transport Workers Federation. Calls on Britain and other wealthy countries to take in Afghan…
Review: A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins
I really liked The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins’ first best-selling thriller, and approached this book with caution. One should always be prepared for disappointment following blockbuster books and their Hollywood adaptations. But I…
Review: The Invisible Land, by Hubert Mingarelli
Hubert Mingarelli was a brilliant writer of short fiction and this is the third novel of his I read this year. His previous books, set during the Russian Civil War and the Second World War,…
Socialists in the age of Scylla and Charybdis
You will no doubt be familiar with the expression ‘between a rock and a hard place’. That phrase, apparently, has its origins in labour history. According to one online source, ‘the phrase originated in America…
Review: Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever, by Dave Asprey
Dave Asprey is famous (in some circles) as the guy who invented Bulletproof Coffee, which is both a concept and a business. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Asprey seems to be one of the first —…
Review: Leopoldstadt, by Tom Stoppard
The problem with seeing Leopoldstadt – Tom Stoppard’s most recent and probably last play – is that so much is going on, there are so many characters on stage all at once, so many words…
Review: The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz, by Erik Larson
There are literally thousands of books about Churchill. Erik Larson’s unique selling point seems to be his focus on Churchill’s family life, and in particular his weekends away from London during the Blitz. For me,…