There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Don’t put them on a pedestal
Monuments to collective struggle can teach us more than idolising ‘the great and the good,’ says DAVID ROSENBERG
The Cable Street mural commemorates collective struggle rather than an individual
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
ON JUNE 7, slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol was daubed with paint, pulled to the ground, jumped on by joyful protesters, rolled along to the harbour and dumped in the River Avon.
The events caused quite a splash. As Colston sunk ignominiously to the bottom, what rose to the surface was a long overdue national debate about statues that grace or rather disgrace our towns and cities, and reinforce a dominant history.
Here is someone writing on this issue five years ago with some comments that are very pertinent for this moment: it’s Billy Bragg, in his foreword to the first edition of my book Rebel Footprints, which I had conceived of as a memorialisation of past struggles, in order to allow them to live and breathe in the present.
More from this author
DAVID ROSENBERG assesses the far-right threat in the wake of the summer's Islamophobic pogroms and asks what lessons we can learn from the 1930s
DAVID ROSENBERG takes a look back to the days when the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism stood against against the thugs of the National Front, and sees some important differences to the anti-racism battles of today, which call for fresh thinking rather than transplanting the tactics of the ’70s
The large demonstrations against the war in Gaza saw a participation of progressive young Jews. DAVID ROSENBERG welcomes the renewed interest in the traditions of Jewish socialist internationalism
DAVID ROSENBERG recalls the Islington North MP’s record as an ever-present fighter against division, xenophobia and hate
