The Orchids That Bloom in the Dark

The migrant domestic workers of the U.K. organization Waling Waling are fighting for their dignity and human rights

On a warm, wet London Saturday, a group of Filipina women meet in Regent’s Park. They are joined by a few friends from North and West Africa, several small children, and a couple of men recording the event on camera. They spread blankets on the grass which they quickly cover ...
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The Orchids That Bloom in the Dark

Is Social Democracy Viable?

If it is, it will need better arguments, organization, and leadership, according to a U.K. Labour Party post-mortem

The U.K. Labour party recently released a report that analyses their defeat in the 2019 election. The results should alarm anyone interested in the future of social democracy. The report concludes that the crushing failure of the 2019 Corbyn campaign had been years in the making. Shifting electoral demographics, organizational dysfunction, ...
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Is Social Democracy Viable?

First as Tragedy…?

The Labour Party’s sense of itself and its relationship to its own past has fractured and splintered

The defections of eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives (numbers accurate at the time of writing!) from their parties to an as yet undefined ‘Independent Group’ has inevitably drawn comparison with the foundation of the SDP in 1981. The backdrop of divisions over Europe, intra-party democracy and ideological polarization seemed very familiar. ...
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First as Tragedy…?

Was it all futile?

Review: John Kelly’s ‘Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain’

Among the many moral panics aroused by Jeremy Corbyn's accession to the Labour leadership has been the return of the spectre of Trotskyism. Lord Hattersley has warned that ‘the old gang is back’, referring explicitly to the Militant grouping of the 1980s; Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson has produced ‘evidence’ ...
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Was it all futile?