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GO in to any Irish pub from Aberdeen to Adelaide, Clydebank to Chicago or Dundee to Dunedin and it won’t be long before the haunting strains of Dirty Old Town waft out from the jukebox or sound system. The archetypal Irish ballad, you might think, and a hugely popular one at that, thanks to the efforts over the years of groups like the Clancy Brothers, the ­Dubliners and the Pogues. But Dirty Old Town wasn’t written about Dublin and it wasn’t written by an Irishman. It was the creation of proud and dedicated Scottish Independence supporter Ewan MacColl, who might have been born i...

Workers of the World: Growth, Change, and Rebellion The working class of the twenty-first century is a class in formation, as one would expect in a world where capitalism has only recently become universal. At the same time, Marx himself reminded us long ago, in speaking of the development of classes in England where they were “most classically developed,” that “even here, though, this class articulation does not emerge in pure form.” 1 The working class, of course, is much broader than those who are employed at any one time. Relying only on workforce figures obscures important aspec...

Born in Liverpool, England, on June 1, 1949, John joined the Merchant Navy in 1966. Arriving in Fremantle in 1969, he jumped ship and began a new life in Australia. The following year, he joined the New South Wales branch of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union. His father, too, had been a Liverpool docker and John grew up in an atmosphere of working-class militancy and socialism. He became the convener of shop stewards at the Garden Island Dockyards and was president of the NSW branch during the 11-week Garden Island strike when the union successfully defended its control of the ros...

Summary Over the past three decades, Lebanon’s ruling class—which comprises intertwined political and business elites—has run the country into the ground. To survive its ongoing accumulation of challenges, including the financial crisis that erupted in October 2019, Lebanon requires a revamped state backed by a new economic model with social justice at its core. Tax reform is central to such an endeavor—and to ensuring that the state has the means both to deliver basic services and to tackle poverty and inequality. Key Themes Since 2005, Lebanon has been characterized by extreme inequ...

Jonathan Cook Joe Biden will fail to bring back ‘normal’ politics. What’s needed now is a populism of the left Analysts are still grappling with the fallout from the US election. Trumpism proved a far more enduring and alluring phenomenon than most media pundits expected. Defying predictions, Trump improved his share of the overall vote compared to his 2016 win, and he surprised even his own team by increasing his share of minority voters and women. But most significantly, he almost held his own against Democratic challenger Joe Biden at a time when the US economy – the incumbent’s ...