Phipps, Mike

I first worked with Mike on Labour Briefing in the late 1980s. For those who don’t know, Briefing was – and still is – a magazine for socialist activists in the Labour Party that began life in the early 1980s, when it played a key role in the election of Ken Livingstone as the left-wing leader of the Greater London Council. By the late 1980s, those heady days seemed far behind us, following the catastrophic defeats of the movement under Thatcher’s government. Many at this time…

Central America is currently the most violent region on the planet. Some of that is attributable to the drugs trade, which itself feeds on the atomisation and insecurity produced by global neoliberalism. Some of it stems from the region’s brutal and traumatic past, when state forces could commit atrocities with total impunity. But much of it is due to the attitude of the United States, which continues to look for military solutions to social issues.

As a result, the Obama…