Radicals in Conversation

We are in a moment of profound overlapping crises. The landscape of politics and entitlement is being rapidly remade. As movements against colonial legacies and state violence coincide with the rise of authoritarian regimes, it is the lens of racism, and the politics of race, that offers the sharpest focus. The 'hostile environment' and the fallout from Brexit have, over the last few years, thrown...

In the early hours of the morning of the 12th October 1984, a bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Five people were killed and many more were injured. The bombing was an attempt by the Provisional IRA to kill the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and her cabinet. Patrick Magee, the man responsible for planting the bomb, was eventually apprehended, put on trial and imprisoned. He was rele...

In 2019, over 10,000 possible victims of slavery were found in the UK. From men working in Sports Direct warehouses for barely any pay, to teenaged Vietnamese girls trafficked into small town nail bars, we're told that modern slavery is all around us, operating in plain sight. But is this really slavery, and is it even a new phenomenon? Why has the British Conservative Party called it 'one of the...

For decades we have spoken of the 'Israel-Palestine conflict', but what if our understanding and framing of the issue has been wrong all along?  That’s the argument of a new book published in January 2021, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine. Joining us in conversation this month is the author, Jeff Halper, former Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a foun...

Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of brass...

Amazon is the most powerful corporation on the planet. Now with a net worth in excess of $200 billion dollars, its CEO, Jeff Bezos, has become the richest person in history, and one of the few people to profit from the global pandemic. Amazon’s dominance is so profound that it has reshaped the global economy itself: we now live in the age of 'Amazon Capitalism'. Servicing the expansion of its e-co...

A global pandemic; the onset of a massive economic crisis; and the reinvigoration of a powerful social movement for racial justice - these are just some of the seismic events that have defined 2020, a year that still has several months to run, and yet already has few historical parallels. In July, Pluto launched a new series of short books, ' Vagabonds '. Intended as radical pamphlets to fan the f...

Pristine lawns, tennis whites, strawberries and cream - tennis is synonymous with the upper echelons of society, but scratch beneath the surface and you'll quickly discover a different history, one of untold struggles on and off the courts. From the birth of modern tennis in Victorian Britain to the present day, A People's History of Tennis lays bear struggles around sexuality, gender, race and cl...

In this episode, Jordan T. Camp speaks with popular educator Stephanie Weatherbee Brito about the rightwing turn in Latin America and its connection to U.S. and imperial interests in the region.

'Mutual aid, solidarity and commoning become most visible during periods of deep crisis. This is when the structures of the state and of capitalist markets not only fail to address the emergency situation, but they often show their complicity in making it worse. When solidarity is revealed to the majority as the practice that makes a difference, it is as if society en masse were to whisper in our...

This month Jordan T. Camp talks to actor and director Sudhanva Deshpande about his new book, Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi (LeftWord Books).

This month we join San Francisco-based historian, tour guide and author Chris Carlsson in a discussion centered around his new book, Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes and Radical Histories (Pluto, 2020). Chris is in conversation with fellow historians Nicole Meldahl, Liam O'Donoghue and LisaRuth Elliott. They discuss the genesis of the Shaping San Francisco project in...

Jordan T. Camp is joined by historian Andrew Zimmerman to discuss his edited volume of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' writings, The Civil War in the United States (International Publishers).  

Covid-19 has thrown the idea of class, and class society, into sharp relief, ridiculing many of our economic system’s foundational premises - for one, the idea that as a worker, your pay cheque is a reflection of your value to society. Facing the possibility of economic collapse and a new great recession, the overton window has shifted dramatically on state intervention in the economy, the value o...

In the first episode of The New Intellectuals, Jordan T. Camp's guest is scholar-activist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who discusses her new book, Race for Profit: How Banks and Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). --- The New Intellectuals is a monthly interview podcast produced for Pluto Press and The People’s Forum. Hosted by author, editor...

Celebrating the launch of her new book, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power , Lola Olufemi guest hosts this month's episode of Radicals in Conversation. She is joined on the panel by Jade Bentil, a black feminist historian and PhD researcher at the University of Oxford, and author of the forthcoming book, Rebel Citizen: A History of Black Women Living, Loving and Resisting (2021); and Gail Lew...

The more radical orientation of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership attracted many activists back to the party in 2015. Nearly five years later, with 580,000 registered members, it has become the largest political party in Europe. Yet in spite of this groundswell of grassroots support, the 2019 General Election handed Labour its worst defeat since 1935. Dogged by accusations of antis...

The ‘hostile environment’  - the anti-migrant policy announced by then-Home Secretary Theresa May in 2012 - has extended border policing into universities, healthcare, schools, and other sectors, forcing workers in those sectors to enforce immigration policy. Within higher education, international students and staff now face regular passport checks, and an obligation to report their exact whereabo...

James Baldwin left an indelible mark on the face of Western politics and culture. Novels like Go Tell it on a Mountain, Giovanni’s Room and Another Country were groundbreaking when they were first published in the 1950s and '60s, and Baldwin’s work continues to resonate. The 2018 cinematic release of If Beale Street Could Talk, based on Baldwin's novel of the same name, is the latest testament to...

Few political projects in recent years have been a source of greater hope and inspiration than Rojava - the Kurdish region of north-eastern Syria. Inspired by the political philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Rojava embodies a radical ecology, direct democracy and a deep commitment to gender equality. Although always threatened by a hosti...

There are few subjects more personal, and more political, than sex. Sex education, as it’s taught in school, has always been a source of controversy, and amongst the pupils subjected to it, a great deal of embarrassment as well.  But while national contexts may differ, it is perhaps the inadequacy of sex education that emerges as its most defining trait. It is often heteronormative in its assumpti...

On 10th September one of the world’s largest arms fairs returns to London. The Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) will feature hundreds of exhibitors, including many of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers - BAE systems, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and many more besides. Also attending, at the invitation of the UK government, will be countless national delegation...

History can often feel remote - its subjects separated from us by the barriers of time and geography. And more often than not, those of class, gender, sexuality and race as well. But history doesn’t exist in a silo, and it is hardly remote, if you know where to look. With the prevalence now of People’s History or history-from-below, we have a subject that lives and breathes. And not just in books,...

The last 12 months has seen the unprecedented resurgence of public engagement with green politics. Climate Change - although of course it never actually went away - is back. Extinction Rebellion; Greta Thunberg; the Green New Deal - words that would have failed to register only a year ago have become household names.  The urgency with which we need to act in order to prevent the worst effects of r...

In the early hours of the morning on 14th June, 2017, a faulty refrigerator on the 4th floor of Grenfell Tower, situated in the North Kensington area of West London, sparked a fire that quickly grew into an inferno, engulfing the whole building. At least 72 people died - though the number may be higher - and 70 more were injured, as fire fighters attempted to extinguish what was soon to become the...