Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER
Senior bombing rooms: arms companies funding British universities
TOM SYKES examines the ever-expanding military-industrial-academic complex
Glasgow University currently holds £3m in BAE, Boeing (maker of Apache helicopters for such triumphs as the Iraq and Afghan wars) and Airbus (favoured customers: Saudi Arabia and US Customs and Border Protection)
A judge in a German court ruled that the ban activity imposed on renowned Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today
Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON
SINCE the murders of George Floyd and Sarah Everard, British universities have been keen to signal their support for equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI).
Slammed by 300 academics and students in an open letter last year to Gavin Williamson as “tokenistic,” such woke posturing is also hypocritical given higher education’s growing financial relationships with arms manufacturers such as BAE Systems, Boeing, Airbus and Qinetiq, which directly enable regimes across the world to persecute women and children, and ethnic, religious and sexual minorities.
As scientific research cash from the EU dries up post-Brexit and the government pledges to halve its funding for HE arts subjects, universities will court anyone who can grease their palms — and ethics seldom comes into the equation.
More from this author
TOM SYKES explores how art has critiqued politics from Aristotle to Brecht, as Portsmouth Performers for Palestine prepares to showcase poetry, fiction and music reflecting on genocide, dispossession and colonialism at the White Swan Theatre
Genocide, racism and imperialism are in the Labour Party’s DNA, argues TOM SYKES
A legal case at the ICJ has exposed the role of Indonesian arms sales that were crucial to enabling Myanmar to kill thousands of civilians, reports TOM SYKES
Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jnr has won, using a tech-savvy social media rewrite of his parents’ dictatorship and a troll army to smear his closest competitor — DR TOM SYKES reports on a society seemingly unable to leave its own dark age
