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Socialist Review 324: Content

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Judith Orr: 30 Years of Socialist Review

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When the first issue of Socialist Review rolled off the presses 30 years ago this month, Jimmy Carter was in the White House and James Callaghan was in Downing Street. The Labour government was trying to blame inflation on workers’ wages rises, and it's attempt to hold pay increases below 5 percent led famously to the Winter of Discontent later that year.

Editorial

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New Labour has made it clear – workers should pay for the economic crisis now engulfing the world economy. The crisis is rooted in the greed of big business but it is workers who are feeling the pressure. Foof, fuel and housing are more expensive and credit harder to get.

Pat Carmody: Frontlines: Shelter dispute: charity begins at home

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Oscar Wilde once wrote that "charity creates a multitude of sins".
Were he alive today, Wilde would probably have singled out charity Shelter's chief executive, Adam Sampson, as one of the sinners.

Charlie Kimber: Frontlines: Jennifer Moses, Gordon Brown and social policy: trust me, I've lost millions

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February's collapse of the London-based Peloton hedge fund was a clear indication of the scale of the banking crisis.
Next we saw the further collapse of the Bear Stearns bank, and even the Financial Times declared that "there is a whiff of 1929 about this".

Shaun Doherty: Frontlines: London elections: why the Left List

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Londoners are being given an opportunity to vote for a genuine left alternative in the elections for the mayor and assembly.
The Left List is standing leading anti-war campaigner and socialist Lindsey German for mayor and an impressively diverse range of candidates for the London Assembly.

Class size by numbers

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26 – Average primary school class size in Britain
20 – Maximum class size demanded by NUT by 2020
30 – Maximum class size by 2002 pledged in 1997 Labour manifesto
70 – “Perfectly acceptable” number of puplis per class, according to Jim Knight, minister for schools

Alex D. Lalayiannis: Frontlines: Personality Disorder: The Home Office's pre-emptive injustice programme

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Our world is one of security cameras, personal information databases and, of course, the potentially ever increasing 28 days of detention without charge under the Terrorism Act. One wonders what the next level is.

Patrick Ward: Frontlines: Muslims in Cumbria: Guilty until proven innocent

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Cumbria Police sergeant Jonathan Sizer went straight to the top with his plan to halt Al Qaida's Cumbrian terror cells.

Patrick Ward: Frontlines: Five-year olds: Innocent until deemed guilty

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It's not just Cumbrian police who are on the ball when it comes to preventative measures in the fight against crime.

Lindsey German: In my view: London mayoral elections: Vote for the Left List

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What happens when your economic policies rely on a booming City of London and you're suddenly faced with a banking crisis and a credit crunch?
That's the dilemma facing the Labour government. It is also hitting Ken Livingstone in his mayoral contest, with Boris Johnson, the right wing Tory, ahead in recent polls.

Arutchelvan Subramaniam: Letter from ...: Malaysia

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The twelfth general election in Malaysia, held last month, was a unique event in the history of the country. Unlike the elections of 2004, when the ruling National Unity government returned to office with an enormous mandate, this time around the electorate signalled their utter disillusionment with the government of prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi by supporting opposition parties in droves.

Martin Smith: Challenging the whitewash: ruling class stereotypes of workers

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The recent BBC White Season painted a bleak picture of the white working class in Britain today as bigoted and broken. Martin Smith argues that these stereotypes are encouraged by politicians and the media to divide us and are far from the experiences of working people's real lives.

Chris Harman: In Perspective: Workers' unity in the face of Enoch Powell's racism

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Socialists watched in despair when dockers and building workers marched in support of Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech. But the tide turned and a few years later dockers were marching for Grunwick strikers.

Costas Lapavitsas: Economic crisis: the new 1929 or the new Japan?

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Costas Lapavitsas is an economist at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has written extensively on Marxist theories of finance. He spoke to Socialist Review and answered questions on historical parallels with the current economic crisis and its impact.

Unjum Mirza: Public transport: how to get back on track

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Shareholders and accountancy firms are the biggest beneficiaries of the privatisation of public transport in Britain. Unjum Mirza, RMT rail union member and Left List candidate in the GLA elections, proposes a different vision of a publicly run, environmentally friendly and efficient system.

Sean Vernell: Union-made: UCU strike ballot: Time to pay up

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Some 45,000 Further and Adult Education lecturers in the University College Union (UCU) are being balloted for strike action over pay alongside teachers on 24 April.

Sarah Ensor: Interview: Sara Paretsky

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Fighting racism and injustice shaped Sara Paretsky as a crime writer. She talks to Sarah Ensor about her work, the Iraq war and the US elections.

Chanie Rosenberg: A to Z of Socialism: K is for Kollontai

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The success of the Russian Revolution of 1917 enabled the radical ideas on women's liberation that had been germinating in pre-revolutionary times to develop, and be widely discussed and materially embodied in the real world.

Hassan Mahamdallie: Islamophobia: a new strain of bigotry

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Attacks on Muslims by politicians and the media have been on the rise since the 9/11 attacks. Now, when author Martin Amis’s abusive tirades against Islam are broadcast and published without qualm, Hassan Mahamdallie asks if Islamophobia has become society’s acceptable racism.

Penny Howard: Book review: Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War

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Dustin M. Wax, Pluto Press, £18.99
At its best, anthropology is about asking the big questions. Is there such a thing as human nature? What is the difference between humans and other animals? How can we account for the myriad of ways people have developed to live on this planet?
This collection of essays, edited by Dustin M Wax, is a useful reminder of the political significance of these questions and the extent to which governments have been prepared to go to ensure that they get the "right" answers.

Clare Fermont: Book review: Carpentaria

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Alexis Wright, Constable, £16.99
This is a truly wonderful book. Written by an Australian Aboriginal woman, it tells the epic story of the inhabitants of the fictional town of Desperance, a godforsaken dusty red-earthed settlement abandoned by its river in northern Queensland.

Alan Gibson: Book review: Can We Trust the BBC?

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Robin Aitken, Continuum, £9.99
If you have just spent several minutes shouting at the television – perhaps this time over the racist filth being broadcast care of the BBC's White Season – it's difficult to comprehend how anyone could possibly claim it is biased against the right. Yet this is the basis of Robin Aitken's book, Can We Trust the BBC?

Beth Stone: Book review: One of Us

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Melissa Benn, Chatto & Windus, £12.99
It is no coincidence that One of Us begins with the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The concerns of the novel are personal and political ambition and, at its heart, the crimes of personal and political betrayal.

Martin Empson: Book review: Plan B 3.0

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Lester R Brown, WW Norton, £10.99
There is a very real threat to human civilisation if climate change is allowed to get out of control. Our planet is already experiencing significant changes that give an indication of the problems to come. Billions of people face the possibility of premature death from disease, starvation, flooding or the wars that result as nations struggle for access to limited natural resources.

Talat Ahmed: Book review: Frontline Pakistan

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Zahid Hussain, IB Tauris, £9.99
Terms such as "Talibanisation" and "failed state" are often used to describe the inevitable crisis in Pakistan. As the US pursues Islamist militants across western Asia and the Middle East, its relentless war machine has plunged Pakistan into a political nightmare.

Rachel Eborall: Book review: Mad, Bad and Sad

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Lisa Appignanesi, Virago, £20
In Mad, Bad and Sad Lisa Appignanesi sets out to describe the relationship between psychiatry and women over the last 200 years. This is no small ambition but the resulting book is serious, well researched, fascinating and above all humane.

Louis Bayman: Book review: Defiance

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Tom Behan, IB Tauris, £15.99
Few phenomena of Italian society fascinate like the Mafia, with its violent energy and romantic attachment to ancient ritual. But the defiance which gives this book its name is not the Mafia's, a deeply conservative organisation, but that of Peppino Impastato, who paid for his anti-Mafia activism with his life.

Ron Senchak: Book Review: We Will Be Heard

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Bud and Ruth Shultz, Merrell, £14.95
This book is a series of testimonies, mostly from ordinary people, about their experiences of state persecution. They have been imprisoned, had their friends murdered, and their families have been beaten, deported and threatened. We Will Be Heard covers almost 100 years of resistance in the US.

Beccy Reese: Book Review: Persepolis

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Marjane Satrapi, Vintage, £7.99
First published five years ago this reissue brings together both parts of the story of Satrapi's childhood and of her return to Iran. Satrapi's adolescence was in some ways like many other girls growing up in the early 1980s – jumping around her bedroom singing, making friends and lovers, trying to establish who she is. But for Satrapi the question of identity becomes crucial. Sent out of Iran, during the confining years of the Islamic Revolution, she arrives in Germany at the age of 14.

New in paperback & children's books

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Monbiot on global justice – Inside the US's Baghdad base – Michael Rosen's kids' football book – Hornby for young adults

Mike Gonzalez: Culture Column: Federico García Lorca: the poet at five in the afternoon

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When fascist thugs murdered the 38 year old poet Federico García Lorca in Granada in August 1936, they pinned a note to his body. It denounced the writer for his politics and for his homosexuality.

Vince Dawes: Film Review: Funny Games

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Director: Michael Haneke; Release date: 4 April
In Funny Games, Michael Haneke revisits his earlier Austrian film of the same name, but this time sets it in the US. The central characters are a family who live their lives in gated mansions (and holiday homes) and the film examines what happens when inexplicably random violence gets inside the gate.

Adrian Budd: Film Review: My Brother is an Only Child

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Director: Daniele Luchetti; Release date: 4 April
Daniele Luchetti's critically acclaimed film won five prizes in Italy's Donatello film awards in 2007. It is set in the small town of Latina, originally called Littoria, one of the new towns established when the malaria-ridden Pontine Marshes were drained by Mussolini's fascist regime in the 1930s. Latina's close association with Mussolini is central to the film.

Joseph Choonara: Film Review: I'm a Cyborg

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Director Park: Chan-wook; Release date: 4 April
An earlier film by Korean director Park Chan-wook, Oldboy, was widely (and foolishly) accused of inspiring the Virginia Tech massacre in the US last year. In that work brutal violence was the counterpart to a tender, but utterly doomed, love story.

Mary Brodbin: Film Review: Happy-Go-Lucky

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Director: Mike Leigh; Release date: 18 April
My problem with Mike Leigh is that he doesn't do subtle. In his films showing working class life, sometimes the Cockney is too Mockney and the characters are too caricature.
His latest film, Happy-Go-Lucky, has a clear message – it is better to go through life cheerful and open-minded than to rage through it, angry and suspicious. Who can disagree with that? But the two main characters he has making the point are one-dimensional and to me unconvincing.

Sian Barrett: Music Review: New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)

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Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) is without question one of the most political and complex soul albums of recent times.
Sewn into the album are echoes of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On?, Curtis Mayfield's This is America and a flavour of Funkadelic. At times you can hear an historical echo of the Black Power and consciousness raising themes of the 1970s.

Shehab Sikora: Exhibition Review: Shooting the Witness: The cartoons of Naji Al-Ali

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The Political Cartoon Gallery, London, until 12 April
As a Palestinian child growing up in Kuwait, the cartoons of Naji Al-Ali in my father's daily newspaper had a powerful effect on me. At the time I was a typical Arab kid: acutely aware of our plight yet blissfully ignorant of the endemic political issues plaguing the Palestinian struggle. I felt that these seemingly simple cartoons affected me in a personal and private way, which is exactly what every one of his millions of admirers felt too.

Five things to get or see this month

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Winter Soldier – Palestinian films – Yorkshire theatre on migrant issues – Specials – Chinese design

Chris Nineham: Exhibition Review: Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia

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Just before the First World War the cultural world was rocked by a series of dissident artists. They were self-conscious rebels out to shock. They fought convention on many fronts. They used new non-art materials, selected new subject matter, scrapped the conventions of naturalism like perspective, depth and realistic colour, and in general tried to break down the boundaries between art and everyday life.

Tim Sanders + Keith Flett: Cartoon: A People's History of the World: 11. How we got out of the first dark ages

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