Emma Sangster
Living in an area being ravaged by development in the name of the Olympics, in a London changing fast with the influx of foreign capital, I recognised a lot in this study of the experience of seeing much of the heart and soul removed from your community.
Written from within, and at the height of, “the siege”, this book reads as a call to action to those whose lives will be fundamentally affected to take control over the forces of change.
Solnit mixes anecdote, research and a…
These two books are moving and compelling explorations of the lives of Iraqi women. One is a work of fiction; the other an oral history. While the narrative forms allow an intimate and detailed view of individual lives, both books are suffused with an understanding of how the political situation of Iraq has always gone to the core of how life is experienced.
Haifa Zangana weaves together the stories of five women exiled in London during the late 1990s. Despite differences of politics…
The week of anti-Trident demonstrations in mid-March saw arrests made under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) both outside parliament and at Aldermaston.
Campaigners from Aldermaston Womens Peace Camp (AWPC) and Block the Builders brought Parliament Square to a halt on the day of the Trident debate (see story in news section). After four hours the last was released and then arrested - with eight others - for obstructing the highway and participating in an…
Nearly a year after Maya Evans became the first person to be criminalised under Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 for demonstrating without authorisation the “designated area” around Parliament, she and three others appealed against their convictions at the High Court on 16 November.
Lawyers for the four argued that the enforcement of SOCPA was disproportionate in the, very peaceful, circumstances in which they were demonstrating. If they lose their…
On 8 May, Brian Haw's exemption from the ban on unauthorised protest under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) came to an end.
The Home Office won an appeal against last year's High Court decision that the Act could not be applied retrospectively and Brian's protest has, in theory, been brought under police control.
Attempts at controlDespite media headlines to the effect that this would be the end of Brian's epic stand against this government's foreign…
In the early afternoon of Sunday 26 March, Brian Haw was standing with fellow campaigner Barbara Tucker when the police came by and decided that a crime was being committed. Barbara was wearing a pink sparkly banner that read “Bliar, war criminal” and was not keen to give her name and address for no good reason. This was enough to get her arrested under the new law banning unauthorised protest near parliament.
Brian Haw was then arrested on “suspicion of obstructing police” for…
You could be forgiven for thinking that the new Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the result of an almost unprecedented to and fro between the Commons and Lords, is a much-watered down version of the Government's proposals for the replacement of the heavily criticised detention powers in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act.
But the parliamentary tussles perhaps tell us more about the shortcomings of most Westminster debates than about any actual gains made by defenders of…
If it weren't for the generous injection of black humour, this book would feel almost unbearable. There's no doubting it's a great read, full of revelatory investigation into a huge array of issues, but it's enough to bring you out in a sweat every time you pick it up, with its extensive evidence on how every corner of corporate life is riddled with systemic abuse, and every self-declaring bastion of democracy is hiding some big secrets.
Few of the bigger stories are new in…
