At a time of a growing school funding crisis the recent victory at Southampton’s Valentine Primary, which won a two-year freeze on budget cuts through an injection of £1.6 million by Southampton council, is an important example of what can be achieved.
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Socialist Party reaffirms support for CWI’s historic ideas
On Sunday 21 July over 200 delegates at a special conference of the Socialist Party in England and Wales voted overwhelmingly, 83.2% to 16.8%, (173-35), to sponsor an international conference to reconstitute the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI – the international organisation of which the Socialist Party is part).
Read moreA graphic depiction of Peterloo
Peterloo: witnesses to a massacre
By Polyp, Eva Schlunke and Robert Poole
Published by New Internationalist, 2019, £11.99
Reviewed by Kevin Parslow
When peaceful protesters were slain in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, on 16 August 1819, the first media reports were articles in The Times and then the radical Manchester Observer, which gave the massacre its name, ‘Peter-loo’ – to echo the battle of Waterloo. Major Dyneley of the 15th Hussars Regiment dubbed it the ‘battle of Manchester’. Later accounts were accompanied by illustrations, notably those of cartoonist George Cruikshank. He illustrated The Political House that Jack Built, by satirist William Hone, and depicted the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry’s brutal assault on the crowd.
Read moreWomen: justice denied
The systemic discrimination women face is clearly exposed in the justice system, with record levels of women prisoners, reactionary, sexist judges, and victim blaming – the subject of a recent book, reviewed by SARAH SACHS-ELDRIDGE.
Read moreEve Was Shamed: how British justice is failing women
By Helena Kennedy
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2018, £20
Class and gender war story
Common Cause
By Kate Hunter
Published by Fledgling Press, 2019, £9.99
Reviewed by Heather Rawling
Set during the first world war, Common Cause continues the story of Iza, a skilled compositor in Edinburgh (see Women in the Workplace 1910, a review of The Caseroom, in Socialism Today 218, May 2018). Kate Hunter has placed the story around real events and trade union struggles with her in-depth knowledge of the print industry. As with her first novel, there are graphic descriptions of working-class life – the poverty, overcrowding and disease, as well as the feeling of community and common cause. The characters are sketchy as the author prioritises recounting the events.
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