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NO MORE AUSTERITY. DEMAND THE ALTERNATIVE ON JUNE 21ST

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by David Peel

For many millions of us in Britain and across Europe, austerity is not an economic response to a capitalist crisis. It is a full blown transformation of our way of living where the vast majority share – albeit in a limited way – in the benefits of the wealth we created. It is a shift to a way of living that makes us all poorer, not just financially, but culturally, politically and socially, where much more of the wealth we create is handed to the very few richest and most powerful.

We all know capitalism is crisis. Adam Smith knew it. Ricardo knew it. Marx knew it. Ups and downs. Booms and slumps. The rich cannot make their millions out of economic stability. For them to rise to riches, millions of us must fall to poverty.

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A DOG, CROMWELL AND POSSESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM

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by Anthony Moore

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

(St. Peter and St. Paul from the South-East; Anthony Moore)

Why would an atheist radical historian go to church? My answer would be that history is an attempt to find out who we are. Churches are, invariably, the oldest surviving buildings in European cities, towns and villages and by closely reading them we can discover how class, status and power shaped the lives of the people through, sometimes, over a thousand years of time. The ‘we’ is everyone coming to the Radical site; whether Norfolk is home or a new place and from whatever ‘faith’ or ‘non-faith’ background you come from.

This is the story of a journey to one remarkable Norfolk church; a journey passing through the suburban necropolis of Toftwood to what Tourism Norfolk would, no doubt, call the ‘market town’ of Swaffham, although many years have passed since the market destroyed the ‘market’.

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I’M A WOMAN: MAYA ANGELOU (1928-2014)

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by Cadi Cliff.

‘I’m a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
That’s me.’
Phenomenal Woman (1978)

On May 28th the voice of the six-foot-tall 86 year old, Maya Angelou, hailed as a Renaissance woman and one of the great voices of contemporary literature, fell silent. With a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood’s first female black director, she’s most famous as a writer, essayist, playwright, poet and civil-rights activist – she was, and will continue to be, formidable. Continue Reading

WHY IT’S A SIN TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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by Cadi Cliff.

The reality of UKIP topping the polls in the UK European election with 4,352,051 votes still stings and outrages. Over at Westminster a nationalist Union Flag appears to be flying from our education department as the Tory education secretary Michael Gove proposes a GCSE English Literature syllabus out of the 1940s. We’ve somehow just painted ourselves as purple, nationalistic, and self-important. What happened to looking outward?Continue Reading

THE FLAG OF HATE RISES OVER EUROPE

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by Chris Jarvis.

With results from all countries except Ireland, the European elections depict a bleak picture. Across the continent, an array of hard right parties has seen electoral success as the vote has swung in their direction. Ranging from the latent, little Englander racism of UKIP, to the Muslim hating nationalism of the Front Nationale and the openly fascistic Golden Dawn, they all, at root, have a core based in the politics of division, the politics of fear and the politics of hate.

Of course, they are not all the same. UKIP are not wholly comparable to Golden Dawn, whose representatives have holocaust deniers among their ranks or Hungary’s Jobbik, whose Deputy Parliamentary leader has referred to those with Jewish ancestry as a threat to their nation’s security. To claim them as the same would be to downplay the truly repugnant and terrifying anti-Semitism of some of the parties who will be taking seats in the new European parliament.

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