To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Lessons from the global South
JOHN GRAVERSGAARD recommends a study of trade union organising that brings together exemplary lessons from the Uk and Kenya
TASKED: The newly elected National Domestic Workers Council in Nairobi, Kenya, 2015
[IDWF/Vicky Kanyoka/flickr/CC]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
Trade Union Studies in UK and Kenya,
Nigel Flanagan and Shiraz Durrani, Vita/Manifesto, £26.25
SHIRAZ DURRANI has written extensively on the class struggle in Kenya and Nigel Flanagan on organising workers in trade unions. Durrani is Kenyan and Flanagan British and in this book they bring together perspectives and analyses on barriers to trade union organising, and highlight exemplary lessons from the global South and global North.
Flanagan takes an activist perspective and makes a critique of the failures of traditional methods used by union officials. Flanagan’s message is that workers don’t need missionaries and gurus using top-down management-style leadership, with officer-controlled projects and a low level of membership engagement.
“The ideas of solidarity, unity and collective action are more easily understood than the gurus and the bureaucrats believe,” he says. The key is to see members as resources and not as passive actors. He asserts: “No sustained trade union growth has been led by officers.”
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