Culture
Mother country, get it right
“British racism has evolved. We no longer see gangs of racist folks roaming the streets. They now wear suits and ties Some form political parties…” Benjamin Zephaniah’s poetic analysis of institutionalised racism has particular resonance…
1968, 2015, and today’s prospects for hope and peace
‘This shared commitment is so different in character from the imposition of any neo-liberal ‘structural adjustment programme’ of the past imposed by the international financial institutions, or any diktat of the powerful emerging from the…
Another spring: poem for an elusive season
Is winter never going to end? Seeking hope in poetry, Fay Young finds a kind of answer in Christina Rossetti’s poem Another Spring, whose sad-sweet longing seems to capture the mood of the moment.
1968 and the rise of campus radicalism in Scotland
Rory Scothorne explores the emergence of student radicalism in Scotland, arguing that the politicisation of Scottish students during the “1968 era” has left a lasting impression on Scottish politics and culture rather than the prevailing…
Rite of Spring – close up and personal
‘I have loved the Rite of Spring since I first heard it, more than 30 years ago. Visceral, violent stuff. Spring, like human birth, does not deliver easily. Stravinsky delighted in the cracking ice that…
The prime that never comes: on Muriel Spark’s Miss Jean Brodie
‘School holds a fascination long after we leave it because it is so often the last time many people feel themselves emerging as individuals. By adulthood, the terms of who we are and what we…
The terrifying rise of Alt-Right fight clubs
‘They see physical fitness in a kind of racialized lens, as a way to cleanse the body and maintain this Aryan purity, but more practically: to actually be prepared for the race war, or skirmishes…
Remembering Bob Tait and the radical 60s
‘All I knew was that I was getting at least as much of an education from Bob as I was from the University. Bob was only four years older but he was a postgraduate student…
Regeneration: promise or threat to city vitality?
‘How often are citizens actively included in the decision-making? For Haringey, read those parts of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and every other vibrant city that attracts the developers’ eye’. Fay Young on the key urban question:…
Poverty Safari: growing up with ACEs and toxic stress
‘(McGarvey’s) aware that many on the left will see this as a cop out but he’s ready with his reply. Of course, the left must continue to argue and campaign for structural change, he tells…
The power of words: on and after Holocaust Memorial Day
The power of words was the theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day. Gordon Munro reports on how Jewish poets/authors and others wrote about and recorded the (hidden) atrocities occurring in 1942 onwards and asks…
Man O’ Independent Mind: Darren McGarvey’s Poverty Safari
So much of McGarvey’s analysis comes from personal experience, not from theories and books…it has a freshness which reminds me of early Enlightenment thinkers: Carol Craig reviews Poverty Safari