A Nation of Collaborators

Adéwálé Májà-Pearce, 19 June 1997

... mainly to wealthy traditionalists with a following), who issued this statement: Since we remain peace-loving patriots, we have resolved to withdraw from politics during the current transition programme.   This principled withdrawal by the leadership is to ensure the survival and the protection of progressive ideals. We have firmly resolved to stand for ...

Our Flexible Friends

Conor Gearty, 18 April 1996

Scott Inquiry Report 
by Richard Scott.
HMSO, 2386 pp., £45, February 1996, 0 10 262796 7
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... arms-related equipment to the Gulf region in light of the changed circumstances brought about by peace. To the extent that the Howe guidelines were predicated on a continuing war they were clearly out of date, particularly if the ceasefire held. As early as 31 August, a mere 11 days after the ceasefire had come into force. Sir Geoffrey Howe was already ...

The Leopard

James Meek: A Leopard in the Family, 19 June 2014

... not the rebel as Mel-Gibson-as-William-Wallace plus army, but the rebel as Sid Vicious or David Bowie. For many Scots, self-determination, rather than nationalism, remains the cause. Now, 35 years later, were I living in Scotland, I’d vote yes to independence, despite the short-term economic problems it would bring, and despite Salmond’s ...

Diary

Rebecca Solnit: After the Oil Spill, 5 August 2010

... and roadless places, and corruption and incompetence galore. The current conservative senator, David Vitter, has been mixed up with prostitutes while preaching family values; the Democratic congressman from New Orleans had to resign after he was found to have an unexplained $90,000 in his freezer (in an interesting twist, the disarray he created in the ...

Jangling Monarchy

Tom Paulin: Milton and the Regicides, 8 August 2002

A Companion to Milton 
by Thomas N. Corns.
Blackwell, 528 pp., £80, June 2001, 0 631 21408 9
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The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography 
by Barbara K. Lewalski.
Blackwell, 816 pp., £25, December 2000, 0 631 17665 9
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... by many readers, but it was nonetheless Milton’s founding intention in composing his epic. As David Norbrook shows in his seminal study Writing the English Republic, the language of chaos and creation briefly took on optimistic overtones during the Commonwealth, but with its disintegration the images became despairing. The Grand Concernments of England ...

The Money that Prays

Jeremy Harding: Sharia Finance, 30 April 2009

... full sharia-compliance. A few years ago Sudan had a unitary sharia banking system, but since the peace deal between Khartoum and the non-Muslim SPLA in 2005, conventional banking has become the norm in southern Sudan. That leaves Iran as the only country that boasts a banking system operating fully on Islamic principles (the evils of interest, it ...

Failed Vocation

James Butler: The Corbyn Project, 3 December 2020

Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour under Corbyn 
by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire.
Bodley Head, 376 pp., £18.99, September, 978 1 84792 645 6
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This Land: The Story of a Movement 
by Owen Jones.
Allen Lane, 336 pp., £20, September, 978 0 241 47094 7
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... Retreating behind an increasingly baroque attempt to defer the question may have kept an uneasy peace in the party, but it prompted disbelief in a country rapidly evacuating the centre ground.Staffers interviewed in both books wonder if a clearer position after 2017 – accepting the referendum result, acknowledging the membership’s unease, backing a soft ...

The Bayswater Grocer

Thomas Meaney: The Singapore Formula, 18 March 2021

Singapore: A Modern History 
by Michael Barr.
Bloomsbury, 296 pp., £17.99, December 2020, 978 1 350 18566 1
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... of the territory. But his plans for the British East Indies appeared to be at an end with the peace of 1814, when Britain returned most of its gains to the Netherlands in exchange for keeping the Cape of Good Hope and some minor territories in Latin America. In 1817, his glory days seemingly over, Raffles became the lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen, a ...

Opium of the Elite

Jonathan Rée: Hayek in England, 2 February 2023

Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950 
by Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger.
Chicago, 840 pp., £35, November 2022, 978 0 226 81682 1
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... democracy, internationalism, mutuality, jobs, education, food, housing, medicine, pensions, peace, friendship and love. But there is one strand of the tradition we prefer not to think about: the idea of putting an end to the wasteful chaos of capitalism by implementing a comprehensive economic plan. Central planning is usually associated with ...

Illusions of Containment

Tom Stevenson: Versions of Hamas, 6 February 2025

Hamas: The Quest for Power 
by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell.
Polity, 331 pp., £17.99, June 2024, 978 1 5095 6493 4
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... concept of sabr, or ‘patience’. The outbreak of the second intifada, in response to failed peace talks at Camp David in 2000 and Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to Temple Mount, wrong-footed Hamas. The leadership reacted by ramping up suicide bombings, but it was being led by events rather than leading them. The ...

Issues of Truth and Invention

Colm Tóibín: Francis Stuart’s wartime broadcasts, 4 January 2001

The Wartime Broadcasts of Francis Stuart 
edited by Brendan Barrington.
Lilliput, 192 pp., £25, September 2000, 1 901866 54 8
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... Day 1943: ‘One day we will have a great hurley match, or a great race meeting to celebrate peace and we will hold it outside Belfast to celebrate the return of the Six Counties.’ Or: ‘It is of no importance at all that the Tricolour should fly from the City Hall in Belfast instead of the Union Jack if Belfast workers are to find it as hard to live ...

In the Sorting Office

James Meek, 28 April 2011

... only TNT,’ Leijten said. ‘The postal system is sick.’ On the eve of my journey to Holland, David Simpson, the earnest Ulsterman who is Royal Mail’s chief spokesman, took me to one of the facilities the company is most proud of, the Gatwick mail centre in Sussex. Despite its name, it has nothing to do with the nearby airport. It’s a giant mail ...

The End of British Farming

Andrew O’Hagan: British farming, 22 March 2001

... myself to be part of an older world, where people lived and worked in a state of sentimental peace. All rot of course. But lovely rot. Sometimes I would come downstairs in the night and shine my torch on the painting.At one time it seemed as if all the farms around our way had been abandoned or pulled down to make room for housing. Past railway lines and ...

Who Cares?

Jean McNicol, 9 February 1995

The Report of the Inquiry into the Care and Treatment of Christopher Clunis 
by Jean Ritchie, Donald Dick and Richard Lingham.
HMSO, 146 pp., £9.50, February 1994, 0 11 701798 1
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Creating Community Care: Report of the Mental Health Foundation into Community Care for People with Severe Mental Illness 
by William Utting.
Mental Health Foundation, 76 pp., £9.50, September 1994, 0 901944 17 3
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Finding a Place: A Review of Mental Health Services for Adults 
HMSO, 94 pp., £11, November 1994, 0 11 886143 3Show More
The Falling Shadow: One Patient’s Mental Health Care. Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Events Leading up to and Surrounding the Fatal Incident at the Edith Morgan Centre, Torbay, on 1 September 1993 
by Louis Blom-Cooper, Helen Hally and Elaine Murphy.
Duckworth, 230 pp., £12.99, January 1995, 0 7156 2662 0
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... he raised the knife at one of them. A magistrate bound him over for a year for breach of the peace; he was not referred to hospital. Clunis would have received more help, the Ritchie Report suggests, under a hospital order or through the Probation Services. In the Report’s view, victims should be encouraged to press charges in such situations. Having ...

Diary

Alan Bennett: What I did in 1996, 2 January 1997

... woman reading a love letter, or writing one, or just admiring herself in the glass), the inner peace of the pictures and the unassertiveness of the sitters, nearly all of them women, are so simple and direct that even two of Rembrandt’s most famous self-portraits, one at either end of his life, seem almost coarse by comparison. I’m sure it’s the ...