Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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Hope lies with the grassroots
GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds a timely reminder of a past victory, and its clear message that leadership is not to be found among the Labour right
More than 300 protesters demonstrate against the poll tax outside the magistrates' court in Warrington, Cheshire where the first of 5,000 people charged with non-payment of the tax was appearing.
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: A Short History of the Anti-Poll Tax Struggle 1987–1993
Chris Robinson, Thinkwell Books, £10
A LESSON for the Labour leadership lurks at the moral core of this timely history of the poll tax and the juggernaut of rebellion against it by working people.
Chris Robinson’s book reminds today’s leaders — and the wider labour movement — that the unjust, cynical “community charge” as it was euphemistically called was defeated on the streets, in parlours and in pubs, and not in Parliament.
The abject failure of the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and his party’s cowardly siege of its own left wing in the miserably deluded hope that this would reward them at the ballot box comes across on every page.
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