Category: activism
-
Four Long Years
It feels like about 200 years ago I stepped down as a Labour Party CLP officer, and got stuck into the women’s rights campaign. Initially, I didn’t have a particularly articulate view of the conflict between women’s legal rights and Stonewall et al’s demands under the title ‘trans rights’, but I did have a very…
-
Dear Morrisons, Customers do not ‘have to’ anything.
Dear Morrisons, This morning, as I walked away from your unstaffed kiosk to find somewhere I could actually do what I wanted to do, I stopped to ask the man on the door to please tell the manager they are losing customers. I told him it was around the third time I’ve done that in…
-
Excluded by inclusion
Or: who will save us from nice blokes? Mark Drakeford tramples on women’s rights Mark Drakeford is a nice bloke. He was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and, from his comfortable position as a white male with a successful political career, has a firm grasp on the idea that inclusion is always a good thing.…
-
We have got what we need
We wanted a Corbyn government. The others wanted a ‘more electable leader’. No matter. Meanwhile, the Tories wanted to stay in charge, despite not having anyone remotely suitable, so the nation got Boris the Liar, Boris the evil clown who let his friends run away with anything that wasn’t nailed down, then literally sat there…
-
Train cleaners deserve better
Last week, I went to the Hastings Demands Better TUC meeting, and learned a lot about what various local community groups and industrial unions were doing about the cost-of-living crisis. One of the speakers, Bella Fashola, told us about the Churchill train cleaners’ dispute. The overarching issue is clear: how are people who clean trains,…
-
The original mistake?
Has it ever occurred to anyone that the founding of the Labour Party might have been a mistake from the start? I have spent a large part of my political time over the last decade on campaigns arguing for workers’ rights and women’s rights. The Labour Party has been, to put it generously, a fair-weather…
-
This is what we’ve been waiting for
Hastings Demands Better is one of a series of meetings being held in the region by the South Eastern TUC, leading up to the big demo against the cost-of-living crisis, to be held in London on 18th June. Yes, we gather to tell the government we cannot and will not put up with any more…
-
Left again…
The young Eleanor Marx persuaded her whole family to join her in attending the huge and enthusiastic demo in London in support of the Fenians. ‘Disobedience to tyrants is a duty to God’ said one of the placards. The Marx family sang the Marseillaise. They all ‘danced with joy’ when they heard of the election…
-
Terrible Fish
My blog ‘About’ Page descriptor says that I intend to write about ‘books, politics and the terrible fish.’ When I was setting up the blog site, and came to the box that said something like ‘summarise what this site is about’ I gave it about ten seconds thought. For those in the dark, Sylvia Plath…
-
Owen Jones and the Venerable Beard
In which Owen Jones struggles with a difficult idea: Chomsky reminds Jones of the hard road women have had to get their basic rights acknowledged. As you can see from the eyebrows, this is hard going for Jones, who still hasn’t grasped even the precariousness of his own history, let alone women’s – and has…
Kay Green 