Category: Neo-liberalism
-
Policing club culture in the UK and the neoliberal city
This week, famous London club Fabric was permanently closed down after its liquor license was taken revoked, allegedly after police raised concerns for the safety of clubgoers following the deaths of two people this year inside the club. Others have suggested that the Islington Council sought the closure of the club because it was too…
-
July 3, 1981: The beginning of Britain’s summer on fire
On Friday July 3, 1981 (less than three months after the Brixton riots of April the same year), riots broke out in Toxteth, an inner-city part of Liverpool. Lasting over the weekend, these riots coincided with unrest occurring in Southall in London where large scale fighting broke out between local Asian youth and the police. Over…
-
Phillips on the modern immigration control system
Hello everybody. I’m massively busy working towards a deadline, getting the book on the body and border control ready for submission this week. But rather than not post anything, I thought I’d post this quote that we use in the introduction to our book. It is from Kristen Phillips’ 2009 PhD thesis, ‘Immigration Detention, Containment…
-
Thatcher and the ANC as ‘terrorists’
In the many reflections on the life of Nelson Mandela, several commentators have pointed out that both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan opposed sanctions being placed upon South Africa and that these neo-liberal warriors both regarded Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) as ‘terrorists’. Some of Thatcher’s defenders have questioned this and using this…
-
“I like your old stuff better than your new stuff”: Marxism Today’s ‘New Times’ is 25 years old
25 years ago this month, the Communist Party of Great Britain’s journal Marxism Today published its ‘new times’ issue. Under the editorship of Martin Jacques, and with significant input from Stuart Hall, the concept of Britain (and the rest of the Western world) entering ‘new times’ had been developing in the journal for most of the…
-
The ‘Smethwick Problem’ in 2010: Labour, Immigration and Responding to Electoral Defeat
This is a draft paper that I wrote in early 2012 for a proposed collection on social democracy and labour politics in Australia and Britain in the 21st century. However this proposed collection seems not to have taken off and I thought I’d post it here, partially in response to Ed Miliband’s comments last week…
-
Waking up to a LNP victory
Here’s hoping that the Senate preferences don’t allow a Coalition majority in both houses. And hands off the ARC! Btw, Tanya Plibersek should be new Labor leader. Now I’m off to read issues of Labour Monthly from the 1950s…
-
Liberals question relevancy of academic research
I just thought I’d mention this. A day after I wrote this post about questions of relevancy for academic research, the Liberals have announced that they would cut ARC funding for ‘wasteful’ projects. They identified several current ARC projects that they indicate would not attract similar funding if sought under an Abbott government. Both the…
-
“What relevance is your research to anything?”: When academic disciplines collide
The Times Higher Education Supplement included an article today on the six questions all academics face at conferences and they are pretty spot on. But there is one question that wasn’t included in their article that I think would have been worth mentioning, particularly when academics present at interdisciplinary conferences or present at a conference outside…
New Historical Express 