Latest editorial
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
Joseph Arch, a rural rebel
We have a lot to honour and much to learn from the giants of the historical 'class struggle in the fields,' writes NICK MATTHEWS
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 week marks some significant celebrations of rural class struggle. The wonderful rally at Burston marking “the longest strike in history” — the astonishing Burston School Strike from 1914 to 1939 — is to be followed by the Joseph Arch Walk in Warwickshire.
The Burston strike was led by the wonderful Kitty and Tom Higdon. Perhaps less well-known than the strike is Tom’s role as secretary of the Norfolk County Agricultural Workers Union up until 1938.
Nowadays our image of rural Britain is largely one of Countryfile and bucolic TV advertisements. It was Raymond Williams in his marvellous book The Country and the City who debunked the notion of rural life as simple, natural, and unadulterated, leaving us with an image of country life as if living in some kind of golden age.
This is, according to Williams, “a myth functioning as a memory” that dissimulates class conflict, enmity, and animosity that had been present in rural Britain since the 16th century.
Higdon was in the front rank of this rural class struggle. The NUAW (motto: “We sow the seed that feeds the world”) was the successor to Joseph Arch’s National Agricultural Labourers’ Union, and it principally fought for improved wages for agricultural workers — most notably, in the great strike of 1923 which reversed the decline in agricultural wages after the first world war. The union was based in Norfolk but attracted support from around the country.
More from this author
NICK MATTHEWS welcomes the return of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s music to the repertoire of this years’ Three Choirs Festival
From sexual innuendo about Blackpool Rock to Bob Dylan’s ‘God-almighty world,’ the corporation’s classist moral custodianship of pop music has created a roll call of censored artists anyone would feel honoured to join, writes NICK MATTHEWS
NICK MATTHEWS previews a landmark book launch taking place in Leicester next weekend
As new wind, solar and nuclear capacity have displaced coal generation, China has been able to drastically lower its CO2 emissions even as demand for power has increased — the world must take note and get ready to follow, writes NICK MATTHEWS
