Category: activism
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A wonderful opportunity
There are so many reasons to be interested in Marilyn Garson’s writing. She has worked in Afghanistan and Palestine, and has written a book about her experiences in Gaza during the 2014 bombardment. She describes the mission she gave herself as aiming to ‘rehumanize’ the people of Gaza. I love that focus. It brings strong…
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Knowing is believing
People need their hope back. Here it is… The reasons why it’s so hard for ‘the left’ to re-group and push back into party politics are many but the main one is that getting back into party politics may not be what we need. The real tragedy is that many who have lost faith in…
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When the war is lost and won
An ode to Hampden Park The spuggies were singing at Hampden Park this morning. They were called sparrows when I was a kid, and they were everywhere. Every bush and tree went cheep! cheep! Every sudden movement by humans was answered by the whir of a hundred sparrows taking flight. A generation ago But my…
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Congratulations sisters!
[The header pic is a screenshot from a 2018 article in the National Scot, published during the #NoDebate years] This week, Woman’s Place UK closed up shop, and the women who founded it are now resting on their laurels amidst cheers and tears from women all over the country. Well if I know them, they’re…
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An open letter to Sir Keir Starmer
Dear Prime Minister, This is probably the one and only time I will send you a genuinely well meant message of encouragement, so I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that it is sincere, and is the heart-felt opinion of many Labour supporters and members, past and present. Yesterday saw the issuing…
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Thinking about faces I didn’t see at Conway Hall
I was musing with a friend about the variety of things each of us had seen and done at Conway Hall over the years – from TU campaign meetings through poetry society gatherings to arts and academic lectures. It was at Conway Hall that I first met John McDonnell, and got myself sufficiently embroiled in…
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Message from the margins
I read ‘Apology’ from Another Angry Voice’ today, because I have a desktop covered in blogs I started writing in the last few weeks and lost faith in along the way, and it set me wondering — whatever the personal circumstances around it — just how many lefty bloggers must be embroiled in doubts and…
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Keep and Eye on Cooper
Those of us who were chased out of the Labour Party so Starmer and Co would not be troubled by any vestiges of socialism or any variety of that “better, kinder politics” Corbyn offered have no illusions about the foul culture of Westminster. We see team Starmer, bank accounts sloshing with hedge-fund donors’ money, nevertheless…
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It’s hard
It’s hard to write about anything except Palestine now. The two topics on my agenda now are categorized as Palestine and everything else. And I’m beginning to feel that the deeply dysfunctional, worse than useless people that we have instead of politicians and journalists, nationally, regionally and locally, are quite happy that most of our…
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Forced back into the closet, after all we’ve been through
*** Guest post by Paula Boulton*** Introduction by Kay Green I’ve written a lot in recent years about the extent and the consequences of attacks on women’s rights, attacks usually presented under the banner of “trans activism”. The same, perhaps worse, is happening when lesbian and/or gay groups attempt to organize. The terrible thing is,…
Kay Green 