Freedom News

Obituary: Dave Cunliffe

The poet, publisher and activist Dave Cunliffe passed away aged 80 on Friday 16th April. He made significant contributions to the British Poetry Revival and the development of the 1960s counterculture through his small press output and his tireless anti-racism, environmentalist and anti-war campaigning over several decades. An anarchist who believed in the power of

Incompetence, Cronyism, Repression: One Year On, What is the Covid State?

Last year, I wrote in this blog that the UK government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis was one of ‘callous incompetence’.[1] In hindsight, that was no surprise: their incompetence stemmed from the deliberate underfunding and privatisation of public health services; their callousness was baked-in to the structurally violent principles of Tory ‘austerity’. That analysis

Interview with the team behind antijob.net

We have to work most of our lives. Our efforts, time, ideas, successes and failures are compressed into rubles, dollars and euros – impersonal banknotes, which are constantly lacking to fulfill our desires and needs. Typically, work is fraught with wage delays, employers’ machinations, nervousness and humiliation from idiotic rules and bosses fooling around. (https://antijob.net/manifest)

“Now and then the flame dies down, but solidarity is a stream of sparks”: interview with antifascist political prisoner Ilya Shakursky

Ilya Shakursky, an antifascist political prisoner in Russia, appeals to you in this interview to write to him, and to others imprisoned in the infamous “Network” case. Please see a note at the end about where to send messages. Tomorrow, Tuesday 19 January, is the anniversary of the assassination of antifascists Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav

Book review: Too Much and Never Enough

Taking a deep dive into Mary Trump’s recent work on the political psychopathology of her US President uncle. by Mary TrumpSimon & Schuster, Jul 2020ISBN 978-1982141462240ppReview by Wayne Price, first published at Anarkismo When I worked for the New York City school system as a school psychologist, I occasionally sat on panels to interview people

Notes from the US

Freedom’s long-running US correspondent Louis Further does his monthly roundup of some of the lesser-known stories that have emerged over the last few weeks. Last month’s ‘Notes’ were long and depressing.   So let’s make this month’s shorter. But – alas – depressing.   It’s harder and harder to escape the conclusion that – because

Wartime economics and post-pandemic battles

The relentless recourse to the language of war to describe the public health emergency seems to signal a shift in mainstream economic debate. In this interregnum, current and future battles could play a decisive role. In the midst of the COVID crisis, nothing seems as pervasive as the language of war; military rhetoric unites economists

Syndicalist unions and Covid-era resistance: A CIT roundup

The anarcho-syndicalist international, founded in 2018, looks at workplace struggle in its branches worldwide and calls for the building of new forms of solidarity amid the lockdowns. With the corona crisis, the world has suddenly entered a new phase of intense class struggle. This is impressively documented by a map of (for the most part) wildcat strikes