Category: Uncategorized
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The Tom Watsons of Feminism
***long read for the weekend (with, as requested, apology to those who work weekends – long read for your day orf, if you’re lucky enough to get one?)*** This post is most definitely for lefties, but if you’re a feminist thinking WTF is going on with all this lefty misogyny and why are they calling…
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To speak or not to speak?
Have the May council elections given women an answer to that dilemma? Surrounded by bullies, propagandists, and comfortable males who can’t be bothered to understand, women have had a hard job working out when or whether to raise women’s issues. There was much discussion in the lead up to the May elections as to whether…
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Are we being honest, yet?
***Long read*** I have two blog posts that I shut down a few years back, because members of my Labour Party Branch were in danger of dying of apoplexy. That’s a joke okay – I know people do that in Victorian novels when they get very upset but… you know, even as a child reading…
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Useful idiots
Whatever your personal political position is, please indulge me while I set the scene with a couple of paragraphs of reminiscence. It’s 2017, and I am a lefty delegate from a lefty CLP. Lefty CLPs are in exuberant ascendancy, and we came to conference, one and all, with the intention not just of furthering our…
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The vital message hidden in those songs
Tonight you’re mine completely… Why were there so many girl groups in the 1960s singing about lost babies? It most definitely is not nostalgia for past boyfriends that makes my heart shiver when I hear those songs, and I know many women who can remember the ‘50s and ‘60s would agree. Social media brings political…
Kay Green 