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
An eloquent lesson in classroom resistance
JOHN GREEN remembers the moment when Stepney Words, a book of poetry by working-class schoolchildren, rocked the East End of London
FIGHTING FOR THEIR RIGHTS: Pupils of the Sir John Cass Foundation and Red Coat Church of England Secondary School demand the reinstatement of Christopher Searle
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
THIS month marks 50 years since Chris Searle, a young English teacher at the Sir John Cass school in London’s East End, hit the headlines after being sacked for encouraging his pupils to write poetry about their own lives and neighbourhoods.
The school’s pupils came from a variety of cultural backgrounds, black and white, virtually all working class and very often poor. From the word go, these children had been treated as incapable of going far in life, as barely educable and told repeatedly that they were thick, so any hopes or ambitions they might have had for their lives was stymied before they had a chance.
Searle refused to accept this view, knew that these children had more to offer and could be enormously creative if they were given the chance.
More from this author
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation
JOHN GREEN applauds an excellent and accessible demonstration that the capitalist economy is the biggest threat to our existence
JOHN GREEN isn’t helped by the utopian fantasy of a New York Times bestseller that ignores class struggle and blames the so-called ’progressives’
