Ian Birchall on Internationalism

Ian Birchall’s talk for North London RS21 on why socialists must be internationalists (23 minutes)

Watch with Caution

Channel Four’s ‘Confessions of a Copper’, to be shown tonight at 10pm, is being advertised with an image of former Inspector Alan Murray once of the Metropolitan police’s Special Patrol Group, who was identified by Commander Cass in his report 1979 as a suspect for the killing of Blair Peach.

The OED gives several definitions of confession including, “The disclosing of something the knowledge of which by others is considered humiliating or prejudicial to the person confessing; a making known or acknowledging of one’s fault, wrong, crime, weakness, etc”.

Murray has spoken to the press before, and has always maintained his innocence. It will be interesting to see if he does use this occasion to say anything amounting to a confession.

Ian Birchall, on Internationalism, this Wednesday

Interntionaism: What does it mean today?

19 November 2014 – 19.30-21.00

Kurdish Community Centre 11 Portland Gardens London N4 1HU. All welcome

Sarah Grey, The US war against women

Sarah Grey’s talk for N London RS21 on the US war against women, with her thoughts on abortion rights, sexual violence and the relationships between Marxism and feminism (39 minutes)

‘CLR James: Cricket’s Philosopher King’ reviewed

CLR James: Cricket’s Philosopher King reviewed in Caribbean Beat, September-October 2014

Dave Renton avoids easy hagiography in his examination of the Trinidadian thinker James in his Cricketing Marxist aspect, with results that make for lucid, sympathetic reading. Cricket’s Philosopher King is, in the sum of its parts, a working sociology of the rules (and accompanying uncertainties) governing what is arguable the Caribbean’s most beautiful, historically knotty sport. The biographer judiciously and generously outfits his text with direct quotes from James’ own writings, largely from the famed 1963 Beyond a Boundary. Everything returns, much like a wicket-seeking wind ball, to James’ equalising passion in cricket, in his faith that the game could be the ultimate social leveller. “If Resistance”, opines Renton, “can be found in two batsmen dressed in whites, then truly, joyfully, it must be everywhere.”