Walking on the Far Left

With four hours a week of lectures on a drastically reduced timetable (thus making my undergraduate course seem more like a postgraduate course, limited communication and shortened office hours for lectures, spending cut on resources, 60% of cleaning staff fired, and disability support for students being painfully low at the University of Portsmouth, we realise cuts quickly arriving and controlling every aspect of our educational lives, something which even the university's clever marketing strategies and attempts to obscure systemic corruption for fear of their reputation (about which they could do with learning a thing or two from Joan Jett) fail to obscure. As such, student action and active on campus mobilisation is paramount. It is in this post that I will observe the sheer breadth of unionisation its many forms, its evolution, and how this can effectively be linked back to our ever expanding revolutionary movements on campus, becoming increasingly important in this current ec...

A conservatively coloured two piece tailored suit of knee-length pencil skirt and fitted blazer, leather loafers or heels, briefcase, all paired carefully with perfectly cut and styled hair subtle but effective makeup, and above all, a straight posture and orderly evenly paced gait when walking to signify coolness and confidence at the same time as power, authority and gravitas. This is the appearance and presence adopted by many women in positions of power, be that through being CEOs of companies, business owners, political leaders, members of royal families, or anything else in between. This is the basis that "girl boss feminism" is built upon. While some see this as empowering towards women and a display of transcendence of gender roles, I see it as alienating, exploitative, and a sure fire means of effectively preserving the patriarchal norms of which our current hierarchical capitalist society is ruled by. These characteristics continue to be present within so much media...

In a society led by rising affluence and disparity between the wealthy and the poor, consumption had sky rocketed, and methods of industrial and agricultural production advanced and adjusted to this change through heavy mechanisation and using more efficient and less labour intensive means of production, tenant farming and individual small scale agriculture has become comparatively rare. It is because of this that one can question whether peasant labourers on land as considered as the proletariat by Marx and Engels prior to and during the Industrial Revolution can be seen to likely be dying out and making way for other occupations forming the livelihoods of this class. This, along with growing consumption of more internationally produced and exported foods featuring within the typical diet of the UK's population, has led to individual farm labourers beginning to struggle more, thus most often featuring the country's farmers becoming easier to divide into two extremes: either we...

Radical feminism is not feminism. This is a statement I stand by and will continue to stand by as a young AFAB gender non-conforming individual who advocates for a redefinition and diversification of feminist theory, yet also frequently feels somewhat excluded and alienated from such discussions on the matter.  This can be largely attributed to the constant sense that misandry is being used by many women to give off a false sense of empowerment and seemingly strength in fighting misogyny, as opposed to what it is in actual fact: a more socially accepted form of sexism which is seen by women to make their preconceived fears and prejudices justified, and that preserves and acts mutually exclusively to misogyny other forms of sexism, while also appearing to belittle the non-gendered struggles many face with regard to their sexual vulnerability, and also have very clearly transphobic undertones. All of these only serve to further alienate and isolate people within their struggle, thus ...

As I watch my years spent studying at university gradually eat away at my income like a Pac Man navigating its way through the maze of a costly student life in Portsmouth (each dot in the maze being a fraction of my tuition fees, a fine for an overdue library book, a replacement of a missing student ID, or a repair to a maintenance issue in my student accommodation, haunted by the ever present ghosts of failing economic prospects yet to come), I question the fairness of this system. I wonder if a system free of class and where income doesn't control every aspect of our lives can ever be possible. Since Tony Blair's proposal for tuition fees, this level of socioeconomic disparity with regard to education has become yet more apparent especially throughout a period of constant fluctuation and mass stagnation of economic growth during continued recovery from financial crises, especially given the many unnecessary cuts to welfare and education spending, two things that are paramount...

It is on this day 90 years ago that the British Union of Fascists, an extreme right fascist group led by Oswald Mosley (and reminiscent of Daniel Thomas' far right rioters) were chased off the streets by a strong working class opposition taking to the streets of East London, eventually successfully causing the police to stop the fascists marching any further, to show that racial hate and discrimination were not welcome in society, for London and beyond, and ultimately for 1936 and for the future. We are still a long way off from reaching the shift to a truly tolerant society, with Jews still no longer accepted for their culture and religious beliefs after being targeted in the horrific Golders Green attacks in May, and Muslims continue to face widespread Islamophobia such as with the unjustifiably brutal and violent treatment by the police received by a Muslim individual present there, and with both Muslims and pro-Palestine Jews being unfairly labelled as terrorists, along with bl...

Sylvia Plath When reflecting on Sylvia Plath's experiences of repression, exploitation and hyper-sexualisation in the capitalist and financially orientated metropolis of 1960s New York, redefined and reshaped by race, riots and mass unrest and opposition during the era of the civil rights movement, through the eyes of Esther Greenwood's character in her 1963 work, the Bell Jar, one can clearly notice the alienation and isolation of working women from society, and the profound impact this has on them physically and mentally in many ways. While somewhat appearing to be a fictional work and created with poetic licence to represent an individual perspective, as opposed to acting as a record and factual representation of the US healthcare system of the 1960s, and the support provided for women suffering from mental health issues during this period, referring to works such as the Bell Jar can prove to be important in humanising and relating back to the issues posed by a perpetually f...

Pub. Kebab shop. Burger restaurant. Theatre. Pub. Pharmacy. Supermarket. Pub. Coffee shop chain. Pub. Convenience store. Nightclub. Kebab shop. Nightclub. These are the fourteen buildings that occupy a lively commercial street in Portsmouth city centre, and the noticeable thing about this selection is that more than half of them sell alcohol, this making it all the more easy for local people young and old to grab some alcohol to satisfy their vice. Be that groups of students off for a night out, couples young and old out on date nights, working aged men downing post-work pints of kidney failure coloured ale at the Wetherspoons on the corner, gangs of youths congregating in the square sharing vapes and cans of cheap cider, and middle aged women dressed up for a theatre trip and sipping prosecco, alcohol remains a common means of bringing people together, and allowing them to find pleasure and enjoyment away from the struggles and alienation within their working lives. However, amidst th...

Sixty years ago was the first time the streets of Notting Hill got transformed into the bold and vibrant cultural buzz for which they continue to be known for worldwide. While the appearance and environmental and demographic characteristics of this part of London have all changed over time, from a small working class migrant community amidst the broad metropolis to a stylish heavily gentrified area sought out by wealthy young international professionals, its heritage and true spirit always remain a constant and ever changing milestone in the celebration of unity, diversity and the shared fight against racism.  This fight, in the light of Professor Jason Arday's tragic death, the war and conflict within the Middle East, and the continual racial hatred and division within society through mass anger against immigration, continues to be ever more important. It is in times like these that, as the people united in hope for a fairer society and sharing in our common humanity, that we shou...

Me wearing a very punk sleeveless leather jacket covered in pin badges Characterised by its vast and broad public image, and its followers taking on their trademark alternative image and way of presenting, one may view the influence of the punk movement as being merely cultural, and lifestyle based, or use the term as an all-encompassing means of describing anything vaguely alternative, individual and outside of social norms, or that would be countering existing fashionable and cultural conformity. While this is largely accurate, there is way more to punk than just a style clothing and music, and, indeed, it would be wrong to consider oneself as punk without taking into account the political dimension of the movement, the ideology adopted by individuals involved within it, and ultimately the overlaps and clear presence of similar ideals for punk movements on both sides of the political spectrum, those movements on the right arguably having become hugely over-ruled by punk movements on ...

Flowers laid at a memorial after a Professor Jason Arday vigil I attended In the light of the tragic death of Professor Jason Arday, an academic at Cambridge University for merely existing as who he was (however the media and the establishment wants to hide this and sanitise this to normalise and make institutional racism seem more palatable), one must reflect not only on the huge loss to the university his many students he inspired and helped out on their academic journeys, but why people continue to shy away from recognising racism, slavery and Western colonialism for what they are, as opposed to glossing over and sugar coating these with falsified bias on modernisation and the influential power of the West. It is through observing this tragedy through this lens that one can further realise more clearly that the decolonisation process in regard to societies attitudes on the legacy of these aforementioned events needs to extend to education, particularly with regard to the teaching of...

In our present post-consumerist society ruled by fear of scarcity, resource disparity and the overruling interests of the elite, desperation, crisis and shocks to the global environmental and financial systems in operation are central to redefining the interests of society. These issues have come about through continual failings of economic growth and environmental destruction, the rise of capitalism and western interests, and the growth in affluence for the wealthy, and in spite of solutions to reverse these having been proposed, the urgency of the situation, as well as the fear of losing income gained to the wealthy through capitalism thus failing to support their vested interests, these have been backtracked on, with immediate and unsustainable fixes having been put into place.  development globally. For many geostrategically important nations within the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, the reasons in which they are so popular for investment in by influential Western neo-colo...

  "If Truman's broadcast turns out to be true, then I think this is the time that all of us [working on the atomic bomb] should literally cut our stomachs... the Americans have achieved a great victory over us" These were the words of Nishio Yoshio, the leader of the Imperial Japanese Army's atomic bomb project said after Harry Truman announced the dropping of a bomb on Hiroshima. While security and status within global systems of power on a military level are frequently adopted as means of furthering nations' influence as sovereign nation states and seen as means by which to preserve diplomacy and relations with other powers, through this further ability to effectively maintain control of geo-strategically important regions. However, this authoritarian and war-mongering mentality only proves to have hindered these outcomes, and only serves the interests of the already influential colonial and neo-colonial superpowers who thrive off of the abuse and exploitation o...