Part Four of ten articles exploring the history of the grass-roots movement against Thatcher’s infamous poll tax. CHRIS ROBINSON looks at the beginning of the fight back. Thatcher’s Tory government introduced the poll tax a year earlier in Scotland following their rejection of ‘Thatcherism’ in the 1987 elections. An acknowledged ‘Labour stronghold’, yet […]

Continuing with his series on the historic ‘Anti-Poll Tax Campaign’ that brought down Margaret Thatcher, CHRIS ROBINSON looks at how the political left were on the defensive in the face of the 1980s Tory government onslaught to end the post-war social consensus. With the Labour Party moving to the right, only the […]

‘We now have the moral authority of the world.’ When Aneurin Bevan made this declaration at the inauguration of the NHS in 1948, he clearly believed that a system of universal healthcare was testament to the evolution of a civilised nation. He must also have believed that such a system […]

‘A week is a long time in politics,’ former PM Harold Wilson once said. He wasn’t kidding. Three weeks is even longer, especially when you have three wings of the same party doing battle in the dire hope of winning the ‘centre ground’.  For that is what our mainstream politics has […]

Aw. Don’t blame Ed Miliband. After all, he’s done NOTHING. That is, he’s done nothing all summer to the point that various Labour luminaries were starting to get the pre-election jitters that, if he doesn’t pull his finger out soon, they fear, and present us with some policies, Labour is about […]

To paraphrase that other disastrous Labour Party ‘leader’, Neil (now Lord) Kinnock: ‘Now we have the grotesque chaos of a Labour leader – a Labour leader! – scuttling around trying to pander to a rightwing press agenda and falling flat on his face!’ Less than two years from the next general […]

Settle down there at the back. No sniggering. Yes, it’s THAT time of year again when our political parties get together for their conferences. First up among the three main parties are the Liberal Democrats – or, as many people refer to them these days, ‘the FibDems’.  You remember why they got […]

Italy. Let’s do a little Brainstorming: Pizza, spaghetti, Florence, the Pope, Dante, Pavarotti, Roman Empire, Berlusconi. Let’s stop here: Silvio Berlusconi. For the ones that ignore his existence, he was the former italian Prime minister, known mostly for his scandals than for his government policy, for his vices rather than […]