Loughinisland massacre: journalists arrested, killers remain free

The Northern Irish police told grieving families of the victims of the Loughinisland massacre that there would be “no stone unturned” in their pursuit of the paramilitary killers who gunned down six innocent men in 1994. The police lied. What followed was a cruel charade of an investigation, characterised by police collusion with paramilitary informers, […]

For the many, not the few: Manchester’s Gaiety Theatre

Today theatre in Manchester, apart from exceptions such as Three Minute Theatre, is increasingly for the well-heeled, speaking to their agenda and excluding many working-class people and their hopes and dreams. But it was not always thus. In his new book Staging Life: The Story of the Manchester Playwrights, John Harding explores an era that […]

Manchester 1, Tories 0: Take Back Manchester Festival outperforms conference in the rainy city

“Get off your arse and do something..” sang the Commoners Choir on Saturday night, at a Partisan pre-protest party entitled ‘Fuck the Tories’. The following day, an estimated 50,000 people got off their collective arse to demonstrate outside the 2017 Conservative Party Conference, under shared slogans of ‘No More Austerity’, ‘Scrap the Pay Cap’ and […]

Government support for hard working families leaves record levels in poverty

Despite a government that continually expresses its support for hard working families, a recent report on poverty shows that a record 55% of people in poverty are from working households. The report also highlights the disproportionately high level of disabled people living in poverty and the increasingly severe effects of the housing crisis on poverty […]