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
Violent and harmful: legally tackling online pornography
Mountains of research show that hardcore material harms children, yet there are still no simple measures in place
PULLING NO PUNCHES: Activists from the feminist campaign group Not Buying It at the Liberal Democrat Conference in Brighton in 2018
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
WHEN I was a teenager, the only generally available pornography or erotica was surreptitiously traded postcards of coyly posed, naked women or under-the-counter magazines with innocuous titles like Health and Beauty. Not exactly uplifting visual material, but hardly damaging.
Today, we are living in a world where access to extremist material of all kinds of sexual depravity is readily available on the internet. Pornography has taken on a new and frightening significance. It is also a perfect paradigm of capitalism in that it exploits the poorest and most vulnerable in our societies, engenders huge profits and cultivates urges and desires no-one knew they had.
As a recent article by Harriet Grant in the Guardian showed, many of the men convicted of online child abuse say that they began by logging on to one of the many “mainstream” porn sites, but were, over time, taken to increasingly more abhorrent material, involving violence and child abuse by the inbuilt algorithms and without their conscious desire for such material.
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’
