For many, the long history of people in Britain resisting the greed and corruption of the ruling classes, from Kings to lords to tycoons and politicians, isn’t really spoken about. In the following article, Rambling Rose picks out some gems. There’s a reason most of us pass through school without a single lesson on the
Tag: Working Class
Mainstream publishers are vampires
Mainstream publishers are vampires. From 19th century collectors of folk verse who butchered working class prose to suit their own idea of the English vernacular (more cottages, more geese, no swearing, no sex), to the megaliths of modern corporate publishing, Penguin and Harper Collins; who, opening the rusty gates to cultural legitimacy, make a nice
The Doncaster Heads. From the Perspective of One of the Heads.
In 2017 a famous artist called Laurence Edwards was commissioned to create an artwork dedicated to the miners’ and their families in Doncaster. This was a well-intentioned project set-out by our local Mayor Ros Jones, whose own family worked in coal mining. Ros put 30K of her own cash into this project. The commission was
Mutual Aid: It’s a class sabotage!
When I first saw this article from Freedom News about Labour sabotage of Mutual Aid groups I literally screamed “who from our group leaked this!”. I didn’t realise it was a London group who wrote it – that’s how common this issue is. For us locally, it’s awful. Sure, we have 550+ volunteers, do about
“All we have is each other”: Working class solidarity in the face of a Tory future
D. Hunter looks at the difficult but necessary task of building working class solidarity in the aftermath of the general election
Interview with Lumpen: a new journal for poor and working class writing
Can you introduce yourself? We are the editors of Lumpen, a Journal for poor and working class writing. We ourselves are working class writers and editors, and at least one of us likes making things look nice. One of us is D. Hunter, who wrote Chav Solidarity. During the recent book tour that followed the
Working class kids and the professional brick wall
Holly-Rae Smith writes on the barriers, structural and social, which she had to get past to get professional third-sector work, stressing the importance of working-class mentors — and a paid internship from Campaign Against The Arms Trade. This article first appeared in the February-March issue of Peace News as part of their working-class interviews series. Growing
A divided Kingdom: Thoughts on Brexit
The not so United Kingdom has voted to leave the EU. It honestly doesn’t matter what individuals did with their ballots, or why. On a purely intellectual level each of the three options (to leave, remain or abstain) were valid. However we do not live on a purely intellectual plane and this result has very tangible
‘North of the Watford Gap’: Resistance beyond Central London
You are holding a black-and-white photograph. It shows a woman holding a union placard. It shows a picket line, scab vans, Labour politicos, a man dirty and tired from his work. You are holding the narrative of industrial working-class struggle. You put down the photograph and pick another history. The struggles of non-London working-class communities
Class Conscious? The Gentrification of Revolution and the Silencing of the Working Class
You’re sitting in a bar. You are surrounded. A man is talking. Do you know what he is saying? Does he want you to know what he is saying or does he just enjoy saying it? You pick up on words you’ve heard in passing, skimmed over in books, spent hours trying to grapple with,