BEN TURLEY reports on the implications of a House of Lords’ ruling in the school uniform court case
In my article, ‘Beggars Belief’, in the last edition of Democratic Socialist, I reported on the Court of Appeal case of Begum v Denbridge High School.
The court decided that the school had infringed the right of Ms Begum [...]

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS explains why the latest pronouncements from Francis Fukuyama miss the mark
I have a feeling that it must have been a disappointing week for Francis Fukuyama, whose essay ‘After Neoconservatism’ (adapted from his upcoming book America at the Crossroads) was awarded seven pages in the 19 February 2006 New York Times Magazine. The anti-Danish mayhem [...]

IVAN BRISCOE listens to the voices of Venezuela’s unemployed, its mobilised, its empowered and its disillusioned to portray the hopes and paradoxes of Hugo Chávez’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’
He has lived on his homestead for only a year since staging a ‘sort of invasion’, but Jovito González is already enjoying the fruits of the Caribbean. Beside a [...]

GARY KENT reports on a nine day fact-finding trip to meet trade unionists in Iraq
It rarely makes the news here but a million trade unionists are on the march in Iraq. A new network of non-sectarian union federations, professional associations and civil society groups has emerged in Iraq, having been brutally repressed by Saddam Hussein’s [...]

WILL BROWN examines two welcome contributions to debates on democratic renewal and progressive social change
The need to extend democratic practices within society, beyond the confines of the parliamentary system, has been widely recognised on the political left for some time. However, in a context of rising political apathy and a perceived ‘crisis’ of democracy, the [...]

JONATHAN TIMBERS appreciates a useful contribution to the left’s developing approach to the pensions debate
Anyone who believes that we can continue to exist as we do now with our current pension system is living in a dream world. In 2002, there were 3.35 working people for every person of pensionable age. By 2050 the ratio [...]

The education bill is a wasted opportunity, say its critics. MATTHEW BROWN looks at a comprehensive alternative
It ought to be the thing that unites us. Comprehensive education seems such a straight-forwardly progressive idea that you’d think it’d be the one area of policy the left could agree on. The notion that all children – regardless [...]

ANDY HANSFORD wonders whether foundation hospitals will be a fig leaf for privatisation of the NHS.
The Tories tried to reform the National Health Service by setting up an ‘internal market’. The result was a failure, with a massive increase in accountants to count debits and credits in a whole new layer of contracts. Services were [...]

The headlong rush towards social enterprise could undermine any prospects of a genuine social economy, says STEVE SCHOFIELD
Social enterprise is very much the flavour of the month, or even, possibly, the next big thing. Its proponents put forward an ambitious agenda of creating jobs, providing training and developing local services in areas of serious and [...]

DEXTER WHITFIELD argues that by marketising our public services Labour is eroding democratic accountability
The Labour government has launched a series of ‘reforms’, which place a new emphasis on market-based modernisation of public services. Democratic accountability and transparency will be further eroded. Although there is euphoria for ‘citizen engagement’ this is participation limited to the empowerment [...]