MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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From strength to strength
JAN WOOLF celebrates the forward march of radical publisher Pluto Press, which is about to mark its 50th birthday
On a mission: Pluto’s managing director Veruschka Selbach
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
PUBLISHING house Pluto Press was born out of the radical consciousness brought about by the Vietnam war, the student movement and grassroots workers' organisations of the 1960s, a time of possibilities and hope for political change.
That generation was the offspring of those who fought fascism in WWII and were themselves politicised to the point of overthrowing Churchill and ushering in the welfare state of Bevan and Attlee.
They set up a momentum of change that could not be halted by what was seen as Harold Wilson’s rather weedy version of socialism that kept in place capitalist structures with its built-in inequalities. Inspired by Karl Marx, this was the youth who wanted a true egalitarianism.
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