It's official. It's big. It's very exciting. Reclaim the Power, the kick-ass action camp that was to be held at West Burton power station from 16-21 August (ie next week!) is moving to Balcombe, the sleepy Sussex village currently finding itself at the centre of an anti-fracking shit-storm.
Cuadrilla, a Midlands-based fracking company targeted last week by Reclaim the Power activists, are currently muscling in their lorries, laden with drilling equipment, against the will of 85 per cent of the local community in order to begin 'exploratory drilling' for shale oil. If they find it, or shale gas, they will almost certainly start fracking. Local people, and many many more nationwide, are rightly seriously concerned about fracking, which could bring water contamination, earth tremors, and industrialisation to the picturesque rural area.
The decision was made on Sunday after much (much!) discussion, in response to calls for support from the community in Balcombe opposing fracking. I was in Balcombe myself on Saturday; the atmosphere was positive and fun, but people are getting desperate. Drilling has already started after the police helped Cuadrilla force their equipment in, to the dismay of locals. Every person I asked whether they wanted us to move the camp there had said 'YES!!' before I'd even finished my sentence. It won't be easy making such a huge change at such a late stage; we have many challenges to face in the next week, but I know that it's possible. The people involved in organising the camp are nothing short of super-heroes.
Wider picture
A challenge will be to keep fracking framed in the wider picture and avoid getting mired in a single-issue debate. Fracking is currently the most visible part of the 'dash for gas', the plans of the government and the 'big six' energy firms to build of up to 40 new gas-fired power stations to power the country over the next 30 years. Many power stations are reaching the end of their life and decisions are being made now about how to keep the lights on over the coming decades.
This fossil fuel fantasy - if allowed to play out - will crash our legally binding climate targets, push even more people into fuel poverty and keep our energy system dangerously in the hands of a few unaccountable, sociopathic corporations hell-bent on profit at all costs.
These gas-fired power stations will be pumped full of freshly fracked gas from our devastated countryside, leaving a trail of broken communities behind. But not for a while. The fracking industry is still at an exploratory stage at the moment, though inching ever closer to production as each day passes, as Osborne dishes out 50 per cent tax breaks and gushes maladroit rhetoric about shale gas bringing lower bills and job creation. Even the frackers themselves admit the notion of shale gas lowering bills is 'bullshit'. Their words. Honestly.
No, fracking isn't ready just yet. In the years it would take the industry to move to production (which will inevitably be lengthened by fierce resistance by NIMBYs and NOMPS everywhere it attempts to spread) we'll still be importing increasingly expensive gas from abroad - such as Egypt, the North Sea and elsewhere. And with business as usual the big energy companies will pass on the rising prices to customers, forcing more people to choose between heating or eating or resign themselves to go without either, while they rake in record profits.
Disenfranchisement and resistance
The situation in Balcombe demonstrates the bullying, undemocratic nature of the current fossil-fuel based energy system. With no social license whatever, the government and police are helping a corporation force themselves in against the a powerless community's wishes. Though the Tories have recently granted local communities a say in whether wind farms - clean energy production with infinitely less associated destruction - can be constructed in their area, those who oppose damaging local fossil fuel extraction are left disenfranchised and disempowered.
There is a better way. A democratically controlled, clean energy system is possible right now. Recent research has shown that the obstacles to achieving this are political, not technical.
We can stop this. We can reclaim our power. Local communities and wider society can be empowered and victorious in the fight against fracking and the dash for gas. We only need to come together in solidarity for action; small actions, mass action, superbad kick-ass awesome action that will stop fracking in its tracks and derail the undemocratic, corporate-controlled fossil fuel addiction.
Moving Reclaim the Power to Balcombe will bring mass action to the hotbed of resistance and make the camp accessible to hundreds more than West Burton was (though EDF are far from off the hook). The UK is currently having a serious debate about fossil fuels and climate change, for the first time in years. We can shape the debate. We can boot Cuadrilla out of Balcombe, boot fracking out of the UK and give the dash for gas the boot altogether. Join us.
For up to date info about the camp and the move to Balcombe, visit www.reclaimthepower.org.uk
It is often claimed that handing over public services to private companies makes them more efficient, responsive and cheaper.
For the last three decades the services upon which we all rely have been gradually sold off to the highest bidder. From the water we drink to our precious National Health Service, almost everything we once owned together has either already been hived off to the private sector or is likely to be so.
Against this backdrop of privatisation, when even the Ordnance Survey Maps and our blood banks are at risk, a new campaign is joining the movement in favour of public ownership.
It seems that despite successive governments’ slavish devotion to privatisation the British public aren’t at all convinced. A poll released today by Survation, and commissioned by We Own It, shows that it’s by no means just the radical left who believe in the public ownership of our services. Four in five people think that there should be an in-house bid when a public service is put out to tender and 60% think that local and national government should run public services in the public sector as the default option.
The fact is that this polling reflects a widespread lack of trust in the private companies who are trying to run our services. People are sick of corners being cut by companies like G4S and firms like Serco putting patients safety at risk.
And while private companies are often failing to provide a decent service a number of publicly owned services are giving us genuine success stories.
The East Coast Mainline, which for years was a failing service run by successive private companies, is now owned by the state and improving customer satisfaction at the same time as paying millions of pounds of premiums into the government coffers. Similarly Scottish Water is publicly owned and doing very well. The water provider supplies 2.4 million households with drinking water while investing heavily in reducing leakage and cutting its operating costs meaning that the average household cost is the lowest in the UK.
Public services should be accountable to the people who use them, good employers for the people who work for them and provide top quality services to the people who need them.
The privatisation-as-usual era is coming to an end. The public is getting increasingly fed up of paying dividends to shareholders while the price of services goes up and the quality goes down. Time after time private companies have proved to be inefficient and expensive while publicly owned services are making a serious comeback.
From today the fightback against privatisation is stepping up a gear. We Own It is campaigning to put people at the heart of public services through a Public Service Users Bill.
You can join the campaign at www.weownit.org.uk @We_OwnIt
Calling all young writers, activists and aspiring journalists! If you're aged between 16-25 years old then why not enter our young writer's competition? Entries will be judged by George Monbiot, author columnist for The Guardian; and Kara Moses, environment editor at Red Pepper.
The winner will get their work published in Red Pepper, receive £100 and get a one years subscription to the magazine. We will also publish some of the runner up entires on our website. Just answer the following question:
How can we make our world fairer and more sustainable at the same time?
Write up to 800 words about an inspiring project or policy which is tackling the environmental crisis and addressing social or economic injustice at the same time. Where has this initiative been discussed, developed or adopted? Could it be applied elsewhere?
Deadline: 22 November 2013
More information and competition rules
1. You must be 16-25 years of age.
2. Your article must be up to 800-words long and written in English.
3. Only one entry per person, which must be submitted electronically as a word document by 22 November 2013. Attach the document in an email, with the email subject line stating 'Red Pepper young writers' competition' to Kitty Webster at kitty@redpepper.org.uk
4. Your entry must clearly state the following:
- Your name, age, place of education/work, and a contact number (landline or mobile)
- How you heard about the competition, e.g. through which one of the supporting organisations, or through which student society
If you have any questions then email kitty@redpepper.org.uk
*** Good luck! ***
This competition is kindly supported by the following organisations:
People&Planet - the largest student network in Britain campaigning to end world poverty, defend human rights and protect the environment.
Shake! - A project that brings together young people, artists and campaigners to develop creative responses to social injustice.
Woodcraft Folk - the co-operative children and young people's movement. They run hundreds of education groups in towns and cities across the UK where young people of all ages meet to play co-operative games, make friends and learn about big ideas from social justice to climate change.
Young Greens - the youth and student branch of the Green Party. Young Greens aim to harness the energy and ideas of young people, and change the direction of our society towards a sustainable and just future.
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Photo: Tim Baster
The UGTT, Tunisia’s largest trade union went on general strike on Friday to protest at the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi, a deputy in the National Constituent Assembly. The national newspaper ‘La Presse de Tunisie’ reported demonstrations in most large cities; one demonstrator died.
Brahmi was the leader of his party, the Movement of the People, up until July, when he split from it to form another party. Movement of the People is affiliated to the Popular Front, the left wing coalition which opposes the religious Ennahda government.
On the same day, interior minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said in a press conference that Brahmi was hit by 14 bullets in front of his home the previous day. The weapon was the same used in the assassination of Chokri Belaid, another left winger murdered on 6 February. The minister accused a Salafist group of the crime. No arrests have been made for either assassination.
Demonstrators accuse the Ennahda government of assassination
But demonstrators did not accept the minister’s version of events. At the National Constituent Assembly building, a crowd gathered shouting: ‘Civil disobedience’ and ‘Assassin Ghannouchi’ (the political leader of Ennahda).
One demonstrator explained their demands: ‘resignation of the National Constituent Assembly, an end to manipulation, and a government of national safety.’ These are similar to the demands of the Popular Front and those of the Tunisian ‘Tamarod’ (rebellion) movement, which takes its name from the Egyptian movement that preceded the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s President Morsi by the army on 3 July.
Photo: Tim Baster
On Saturday a large crowd accompanied the body of Mohamed Brahmi to the Jellaz cemetery where only five months before Tunisians had buried another Popular Front leader, Chokri Belaid. The crowd chanted: ‘After the bloodbath this government has no more legitimacy.’
Later, in front of the National Assembly building, pro-Ennahda demonstrators fought with demonstrators from the Popular Front.
The demands of the revolution are not being met
Tunisia’s religious Ennadha government is a provisional one elected in October 2011 with a timetable to deliver a new constitution and fresh elections by the end of 2012. The constitution is still in draft and the elections have not been held.
Tunisian youth and poor communities are facing the same enormous economic and social difficulties they faced prior to the revolution, but the government appears unwilling to deliver the social and economic demands of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. At the same time, it is accused of stalling the political process to entrench itself in power before any elections.
In Rights of Man (1791-92) Paine describes monarchy as like ‘something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.’
For Paine, it was the institution of monarchy, rather than the character of the individual monarch, that was the source of a dysfunctional system. ‘It is wrong to reproach kings with their ferocity, their brutal indifference, the oppressions of the people, and molestations of citizens: it is hereditary succession that makes them what they are: this breeds monsters as a marsh breeds vipers.’ The institution ‘turns the progress of the human faculties upside down. It subjects age to be governed by children, and wisdom by folly.’ As a result of ‘this absurdity, man is perpetually in contradiction with himself; he accepts, for a king, or a chief magistrate, or a legislator, a person whom he would not elect for a constable.’
Crucially, he notes the deleterious effect of monarchic celebration on society as a whole:
‘It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the back-ground of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare, the puppet-show of state and aristocracy.’
Hereditary monarchy treats human beings and whole nations as forms of heritable property, as ‘mere animals without a right or will’: ‘To inherit government is to inherit peoples, as if they were herds. It is the basest, the most shameful fantasy that ever degraded mankind.’
Reading Paine it becomes clear that he experiences monarchy and all that goes with it as a standing affront to his own dignity, intelligence and self-respect. ‘An hereditary crown! A transmissible throne! What a notion! With even a little reflexion, can any one tolerate it?’ This was ‘the most base and humiliating idea that ever degraded the human species.’ ‘It is time that nations should be rational, and not be governed like animals, for the pleasure of their riders.’
In his Letter to Abbe Sieyes, written in mid-1791, Paine explained the all-encompassing and at the same time piquantly personal nature of his rage against monarchy:
‘I am the avowed, open, and intrepid enemy of what is called Monarchy; and I am such by principles which nothing can either alter or corrupt—by my attachment to humanity; by the anxiety which I feel within myself, for the dignity and the honour of the human race; by the disgust which I experience, when I observe men directed by children, and governed by brutes; by the horror which all the evils that Monarchy has spread over the earth excite within my breast; and by those sentiments which make me shudder at the calamities, the exactions, the wars, and the massacres with which Monarchy has crushed mankind: in short, it is against all the hell of monarchy that I have declared war.’
We need fossil fuels to fuel the world. We don't have the technology available now to meet the energy demands of the world with clean energy. We need to 'bridge the gap' between now and the time when these technologies are fully developed, with things like shale gas and new nuclear. Don't we? This familiar rhetoric is challenged by an innovative interactive infographic and website launched today by the UK Tar Sands Network. Based on the latest research, the online resource demonstrates that everyone on the planet can have a high-quality lifestyle, completely fuelled by existing clean energy technologies.
'We're constantly told by governments and industry that we need fossil fuels to power the world,' says Danny Chivers, the researcher behind the infographic. 'This simply isn't true. Here, for the first time we've brought together research to show that a cleaner, fairer energy future is possible, and presented it in a publicly accessible way.'
Two Energy Futures lays out two possible future scenarios. The 'Fossil-Fuelled Future' is based on recent predictions by the International Energy Agency (IEA). This is the future the IEA believe we are heading for if governments and industry continue with their current energy development paths and commitments on energy and climate change. In other words, this future is not a worst-case scenario – it’s the best that politicians and businesses are currently offering us.
In this scenario we’d almost certainly be locked into disastrous runaway climate change and experiencing far more of its consequences such as serious floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts, extinctions, collapsing food supplies and the loss of millions of people’s homes, lives and livelihoods by as early as 2035.
Brighter future
The alternative scenario – the 'Cleaner Fairer Future' – is much brighter. In this future, there is a decent chance of avoiding runaway climate change and all of the devastating effects it would bring, by relying entirely on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar (both of which are supported by more than 90 per cent of the world’s population). Rather than basing the model on current wasteful and inequitable energy use figures, as others have done previously, they instead asked how much energy was actually needed for a decent quality of life, using estimates taken from the Centre for Alternative Technology's Zero Carbon Britain: Rethinking the Future report, and started from there.
The figure used is 13,000 KWh of energy per person per year, which includes all the energy used on people’s behalf for public services, manufacturing, etc. In order to achieve this, the rich minority would need to reduce their energy use to allow access to this amount for everyone else. For most people, 13,000 KWh is much more than they currently use (the average current energy use per person in the developing world is 5,500 Kwh/year). This is enough for a high quality of life by global Northern standards, but only if we are living less wastefully and more efficiently. This means good public transport and reduced flying, energy efficient homes, more local food and manufacturing, and reduced consumerism would all be necessary.
The amount of energy it is possible to generate from renewable sources was based on figures from Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by respected energy expert Dr David MacKay. This is perhaps the most surprising, and reassuring, finding of the research: that everyone on the planet can have a high-quality lifestyle, fuelled by existing clean energy technologies and in an environmentally sustainable way – even taking predicted population growth into account.
Different economies
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this world is only possible with some hefty political and economic changes; a future where energy is fairly shared out and tight controls on energy crops are possible would require a very different kind of economic system to the one currently in place, the report says. As long as GDP growth is used as our main measure of 'progress', reducing industrialised nations’ energy use to a sensible and fair level would be extremely difficult if not impossible. But different kinds of economies are possible and are starting to enter mainstream debate, as we saw at the Rio+20 UN Sustainability Conference in 2012.
'We face a disastrous future if we accept our governments' inadequate emissions reduction policies and the fossil fuel industry’s terrifying expansion plans,' says Chivers. 'It doesn't have to be this way. An alternative energy mix, without fossil fuels or nuclear power, is perfectly possible. The barriers are not technological, but political.'
The developers of Two Energy Futures hope that it will provide an invaluable resource for those supporting and fighting for clean energy and challenge the rhetoric that we don't have the technology to go fossil fuel-free at the moment.
'There are people all over the planet taking action to ensure a cleaner, fairer world,' says Jess Worth of the UK Tar Sands Network. 'We hope that this website will arm them with the information they need to help bring about a fossil-free energy future.'
Explore the infographic: www.twoenergyfutures.org
Mitt Romney and the Bain Capital partners pose with dollar bills
The Tory government has just sold off state-owned NHS blood supplier Plasma Resources UK to US private equity company Bain Capital for £230 million. Hang on – Bain, that name rings a bell…
Bain Capital is perhaps best known for having been set up by former US presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 1984, as a spin off from management consultants Bain & Company. It became infamous for taking over companies, saddling them with large amounts of ‘leveraged’ debt and forcing them to make big payments back to Bain. When Romney ran for president last year, horror stories came spilling out about the firm’s practices.
One such story was the fate of American Pad & Paper—known as ‘Ampad’—which Bain bought in 1992, planning to make it ‘leaner’ to extract profits. When the Bain-run firm bought up an Indiana paper plant in 1994, within hours it laid off 250 workers and cut wages and pensions, sparking a bitter strike. As Randy Johnson, a former worker at the plant, remembered last year, ‘They came in and said, “You’re all fired. If you want to work for us, here’s an application.”’
Another former employee, Mike Earnest, said that out of the blue one day the workers there were told to construct a 30 foot stage, not knowing what it was for. ‘Just days later, all three shifts were told to assemble in the warehouse,’ he said. ‘A group of people walked out on that stage, and told us that the plant is now closed, and all of you are fired. Turns out that when we built that stage, it was like building my own coffin.’
Profiting from sackings
Romney and partners squeezed out more than £60 million from the firm, much of it in hefty ‘management fees’. It was unable to keep up interest payments on its debts, started sacking workers and eventually collapsed in 2000. 1,500 jobs were lost in all. In 2007, when he was asked about the layoffs, Romney replied, ‘Sometimes the medicine is a little bitter but it is necessary.’ As he later slipped up and said during the presidential campaign, ‘I like being able to fire people.’
This was a consistent pattern. At GST Steel, Bain made £5 million and 750 jobs were lost. At medical equipment company Dade Behring it was £150 million and almost 3,000 jobs. And at clothing firm Stage Stores they pocketed £100 million at the cost of nearly 6,000 jobs.
Marc Wolpow, a former managing director at Bain, thinks Romney tried to ‘whitewash’ his career to run for president. ‘We had a scheme where the rich got richer,’ says Wolpow. ‘I did it, and I feel good about it. But I’m not planning to run for office.’
Though Romney left Bain in 1999, he has continued to receive big payments from it, including £1.25 million last year. He paid just 15 percent tax on that cash. Today it is unclear just how much money Bain has made for Romney and co, but his fortune is widely thought to top £150 million. According to Nicholas Shaxson, the author of tax havens book Treasure Islands, Romney has up to £18 million stashed in the Cayman Islands alone.
What might Bain have in store for our plasma? If its track record is anything to go by, there’s going to be blood on the carpet.
Energy company EDF have invited campaign group 'No Dash for Gas' to take part in a Stakeholder Advisory Panel.
The company claims to be concerned about the environmental and climate change challenges that have been highlighted through recent ‘disruptive protest'. They seek to 'address these issues and develop protocols which will guide its response to such demonstrations in the future'.
No Dash for Gas, however, see this as an attempt to prevent protest and allow the company to operate business as usual, with no real regard for their social and environmental impact.
The invitation, described by No Dash for Gas as absurd, was dispatched by Will Hutton, former adviser to David Cameron and an Editor of the Observer Newspaper. Hutton is now Chair of EDF’s Energy Stakeholder Advisory Panel.
No Dash for Gas insist that stakeholder panels serve to maintain ‘protest groups’ on the periphery, intermittently including them to appease voices that become too obvious to ignore. They agree to meet Hutton on their own terms at the upcoming ‘Reclaim the Power’ action camp, taking place between 17-21 August at EDF’s West Burton power station.
Their written response:
Dear Mr Hutton and EDF,
Thanks for your invitation to input into the discussions of the EDF Stakeholder Panel. Let’s get this straight: EDF is trying to figure out how to deal with future protests, and you want our thoughts on how the company should proceed.
This seems a bit odd, really. I mean, just a few months ago your colleagues at EDF were suing us for £5 million, and now they’re asking for our opinion on dealing with protest? It feels a bit like being punched in the face and then offered a nice cup of tea.
All the same, seeing as you ask so politely we’ll be happy to share our thoughts on how EDF can avoid problems with protest in the future.
First things first – and this should be obvious by now – DON’T sue people who protest at your power stations. A giant utility company that makes £5million of profit every two hours launching a lawsuit designed to financially cripple 21 members of the public was never going to go down well. It was a crude attempt to silence legitimate criticism of your company’s practices and once the public backlash against the lawsuit got going, you very sensibly backed down. So piece of advice number one: don’t do that again.
Now let’s look at your specific questions:
1) What protocols should guide EDF Energy’s response to such situations in the future?
OK, this one’s pretty easy. There’s a reason why people are protesting against new gas power stations – it’s because building a new wave of the things would make it impossible for the UK to meet its (already inadequate) carbon reduction targets, and would thus make a future of unstoppable climate change much more likely.
In addition, a greater reliance on gas power – a fuel source that every serious energy analyst tells us is going to become much more expensive – would plunge thousands more UK families into fuel poverty.
So next time someone protests at one of your gas power stations, all EDF needs to do is look at the basic climate science, do a few sums, realise that new gas power stations are a terrible idea and start decommissioning the plant immediately.
2) Are there practical steps that can be taken that would help to minimise the risk of protest, or protest that is disruptive or dangerous?
Yes. The best thing to do is to leave the protesters well alone and let them get on with it. The 21 who entered West Burton in October 2012 were all trained in the necessary safety skills and took great care to ensure that no protesters, staff or onlookers were put in any danger. The only source of risk was the fact that a new gas power station was being built, thus putting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the planet at risk from dangerous climate change. The protesters were doing their best to minimise this risk too.
3) How can EDF Energy better develop an open dialogue with objectors? Are there actions or forms of communication that could ameliorate concerns or the likelihood of disruptive and dangerous protest?
Absolutely. The first rule of dialogue is to listen to and understand the other side’s position. EDF clearly hasn’t done this. Objectors like ourselves have gone to great lengths to point out some crucial facts to EDF: for example, that the CO2 from EDF’s UK coal and gas plants cause £5 million of climate change damage every day; that EDF’s attempts to get a guaranteed price for its nuclear electricity represents a massive multi-billion rip-off public subsidy that could be better spent on energy efficiency and renewables or that EDF’s decision to use its huge wealth and power to lobby against Government renewables targets and in favour of more nuclear power and fossil fuels is anti-democratic and completely disgraceful.
The best way for EDF to “ameliorate concerns” and reduce the likelihood of future protest is to take all the above points into account, reduce its prices to a level that people can afford, set a timetable for the closure of all its fossil and nuclear power stations, and release its lobbying stranglehold on Government so that energy efficiency and renewables can be expanded to take their place.
4) Even if conflict and protest are inevitable, are there rules that should inform or change EDF Energy’s responses? What actions would you recommend the company take?
On the contrary, conflict and protest are completely avoidable. All EDF Energy needs to do is dissolve itself as a company, liquidate its assets and hand the money over as seed funds for community renewable energy projects across the UK. Sadly, we’ve got the impression that EDF isn’t very keen to do this for some reason.
Let’s get real here. There is a growing body of research that shows that a 100% renewably-powered UK is perfectly possible and potentially very popular, especially if local communities are given greater control over their (renewable, affordable) energy sources, and workers in polluting industries are able to retrain for the clean energy sector. Unfortunately the Big Six – including EDF – are making so much money out of the status quo that they’re determined to stand in the way of these real solutions and keep the country locked into using fossil fuels. We won’t get that cleaner, fairer energy future unless we, the public, stand up and demand it – and that means that we need more protest, not less.
EDF’s latest consultation process is an attempt to try to deter that vitally-needed protest by presenting itself as a caring, listening company. But a consultation of this kind cannot come to a fair conclusion, because the wrong people are sitting on the panel and writing up the results. If EDF are willing to convene a panel consisting exclusively of communities suffering from the effects of climate change around the world, plus victims of fuel poverty in the UK, and were to give them free rein to speak their minds on the issues of EDF and protest, then we might be interested in what that panel had to say. Until then, EDF can best avoid future protest by following our other suggestions, above.
Yours sincerely,
No Dash For Gas
There is a buzz around the latest edition of Beyond the Fragments that has sparked discussion events around the UK. On feminism and the making of socialism, the three authors Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright write:
'A generation ago we wrote Beyond the Fragments. Inspired by the activism of the 1970s, and facing the imminent triumph of the right under Margaret Thatcher, we sought to apply our experiences as feminists to creating stronger bonds of solidarity in a new kind of movement.
Since then the obstacles facing us have grown formidably; deepening recession, environmental pollution, falling real wages and savage welfare cuts.
New forms of resistance have appeared, but how are they to coalesce? In our three new essays to this new edition we return to the fraught question of how to consolidate diverse upsurges of rebellion into effective, open democratic left coalitions.'
Read more:
Beyond the Fragments is more than a history, writes Alice Robson
Back to the Fragments, Lynne Segal reflects on its lessons for today
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