Radicals in Conversation

RIC in-haus: Reclaiming Antiracism

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a new podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and Bookhaus, an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop’s ‘in-haus’ events programme features authors of some of the most exciting radical nonfiction being published today.

Episode two features Azfar Shafi and Ilyas Nagdee, co-authors of Race to the Bottom: Reclaiming Antiracism, which was published last month in our Outspoken by Pluto series. Chairing the conversation is Nayya Raza from Bookhaus. They discuss the history of antiracist organising in Britain, from the Black Power movement and the 1981 uprisings, to the emergence of an ‘antiracism from above’ orientated around issues of visibility and inclusion. They also talk about theorising race and racism, the history of policing, and the challenges and opportunities the antiracist movement faces today.

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Buy the book: bookhausbristol.com/shop

From Carcerality to Abolitionism

This month we are joined on the panel by Françoise Vergès, author of A Feminist Theory of Violence and A Decolonial Feminism, and Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean, co-authors of the forthcoming book, Abolition Revolution. 

Our discussion focuses on the connections between carceral feminism, racial capitalism and the structural violence perpetrated by the state. We also talk about the political journey of Sisters Uncut, abolitionism, and formulating alternative approaches to questions of protection and justice that reject the logic and infrastructure of carcerality.

RIC in-haus: The Ethical Stripper

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a new podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and Bookhaus, an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop's 'in-haus' events programme features authors of some of the most exciting political nonfiction currently being published.

In episode 1, Stacey Clare, author of The Ethical Stripper, is in conversation with Amélie from the Bristol Sex Workers Collective. They talk about why many strippers are identifying with the sex worker label; how workers in the industry are organising through the United Voices of the World (UVW) union; and the challenges they face, from both the mainstream feminist movement, and workplace closures in the wake of the pandemic.

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Buy the book: bookhausbristol.com/shop

Find out more about the Bristol Sex Workers Collective: bristolswc.com

United Sex Workers crowdfunder: gofundme.com/f/urgent-save-our-strip-clubs-our-workplaces?qid=86f5dfe976298d7352f579429c37af7a

Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia

Islamophobia is everywhere. It is a narrative and history woven so deeply into our everyday lives that we don't even notice it – in our education, how we travel, our healthcare, legal system and at work. Behind the scenes it affects the most vulnerable, at the border and in prisons. Despite this, the conversation about Islamophobia is relegated to microaggressions and slurs. At best, we see it as an individual moral failing to be condemned – though amongst the political elite, Islamophobia is more likely to enhance, than hinder careers...

In Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan scrutinises not just what Islamophobia is, but what it does. Islamophobia not only lives under the skin of those who it marks, but is an international political project designed to divide people in the name of security, in order to materially benefit global stakeholders.

We're joined on the show by Suhaiymah to talk about a number of the issues covered in the new book, and to get her thoughts as well on the popular podcast, The Trojan Horse Affair, and the discourse that has emerged around the refugee crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Trespass, the Commons and the Right to Roam

In England today there exist nearly 120,000 miles of public footpath - half what it was 100 years ago and amounting to just 8% of the land in the country. Of England’s 42,000 miles of rivers, we have access to just 3%.

The enclosure of common land, and the exclusion of the people who lived upon it, was a violent process that began almost a thousand years ago, and reached its zenith in the 18th and 19th centuries. This ‘accumulation by dispossession', as David Harvey has put it, was frequently met with rebellion, but nonetheless continues to shape the landscape around us today.

The story of the loss of the commons and the emergence of private property is not just of historical interest. Today a third of Britain is still owned by the aristocracy, and the rights of the land owner to do what they please with their land are paramount. Property remains inextricably linked to power.

We're joined on the show this month by Nick Hayes, author of The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us (2020), and a co-founder of the Right to Roam campaign. We discuss the history of the commons and enclosure, and delve into the power of trespassing as a form of direct action.

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Find out more about the campaign: righttoroam.org.uk

Black History Month: Curated Highlights

To celebrate Black History Month in the US, we've gone through the Radicals in Conversation archive and curated a series of extracts in which our panellists discuss different aspects of Black history in America.

Extract 1: Episode 26 (December 2019) - Bill Mullen and Megan Williams discuss the evolution of the radical politics of James Baldwin, as it was expressed in his writing and in his activism as a public intellectual.

Extract 2: Episode 45 (August 2021) - Farah Thompson and Jules Joanne Gleeson talk about transgender experiences, race and organising in contemporary America.

Extract 3: Episode 49 (December 2021) - Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin and William C. Anderson speak to JoNina Ervin about Black Anarchism in a collaboration with the Black Autonomy Podcast.

Extract 4: The New Intellectuals Episode 1 (April 2020) - Jordan Camp interviews Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor for The New Intellectuals - a series produced in collaboration with The People’s Forum. They talk about the history of Black home ownership in the twentieth century.

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30% off our Black Reading List for Black History Month: plutobooks.com/black-history-month-reading-list/

Public Health After Covid: A New Radical Blueprint

Almost two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, and the limits of a neoliberal public health orthodoxy have been well and truly exposed. But instead of pushing for radical change, the left in Britain finds itself stuck in a rearguard action focused on defending the National Health Service (NHS) from the wrecking ball of privatisation.

In January 2022, Pluto published The Five Health Frontiers: A New Radical Blueprint, in which public health expert Christopher Thomas argues that we must emerge from the pandemic on the offensive - with a bold, new vision for our health and social care. He maps out five new frontiers for public health and imagines how we can move beyond safeguarding what we have, towards a revitalisation and radical expansion of the principles put forward by Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, over 70 years ago.

Beyond recalibrating our approach to healthcare, this radical blueprint calls for a fundamental redesign of our economy through 'Public Health Net Zero'; a bold new universal public health service that is fit to address the real causes of ill health; and a major recalibration in the efforts against the epidemiological reality of an era of pandemics.

Joining us on the panel are:

Christopher Thomas, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and author of The Five Health Frontiers;
Dr Sonia Adesara, an NHS doctor and campaigner

Black Anarchism Across the Generations

In October 2021, Pluto published the definitive edition of Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. The book first connected Black radical thought to anarchist theory in 1979, and now amidst a rising tide of Black political organising, this foundational classic has been republished with a wealth of original material, including forewords by William C. Anderson and Joy James.

This month’s episode of Radicals in Conversation is brought to you in collaboration with the Black Autonomy Podcast, in which JoNina Ervin hosts a discussion between Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and William C. Anderson about Black anarchism across the generations.

Ervin and Anderson discuss the reasons for the continued relevance and increasing popularity of Black anarchism today, what an ‘ungovernable’ radical movement might look like, and the contradictions inherent to single-issue and state-orientated political projects from the left. They also discuss Black nationalism, and put Anderson's recent book The Nation on No Map in conversation with Anarchism and the Black Revolution.

 

Find out more about the Black Autonomy Podcast:

blackautonomy.libsyn.com

patreon.com/blackautonomy

 

The Nation on No Map by William C. Anderson:

akpress.org/nationonnomap.html

 

Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin:

www.plutobooks.com/9780745345819/anarchism-and-the-black-revolution/

Repealed: Ireland‘s Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights

Content warning: rape, suicide

On 25 May 2018, the Irish people voted to remove the Eighth Amendment from the constitution. This amendment, which had been introduced in 1983, not only made abortion illegal in Ireland, but equated the life of a pregnant woman to the life of a fertilised embryo. Despite this criminalisation, the ban on abortion was always resisted and circumvented. In the years leading up to the 2018 referendum, a grassroots movement pushing for repeal emerged on an unprecedented scale, sending tens of thousands of people out canvassing in villages, towns and cities around the country. 

This victory for the Irish Repeal movement set the country alight with euphoria. But, for some, the celebrations were short-lived – the new legislation turned out to be one of the most conservative in Europe. People still travel overseas for abortions and services are not yet commissioned in Northern Ireland.

This month Pluto published a new book, Repealed: Ireland's Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights, by Camilla Fitzsimons, with Sinéad Kennedy, and a foreword by Ruth Coppinger. We are joined on the show by Camilla, Sinéad and Ruth to discuss the history of the Catholic Church and women’s oppression in Ireland, the introduction of the Eighth amendment in 1983, and the qualitative turning points in the long road to repeal. We also consider the lessons from the campaign, and the challenges that still remain, more than three years later.

Join the Union!

The trade union movement in Britain has existed for nearly two centuries: from the Tolpuddle Martyrs, to the 1888 Matchgirls’ strike, to the militant action of Women machinists at the Ford plant in Dagenham in 1968 - organised labour has a rich, if complicated, history. But in the ebb and flow and workers’ power over the decades, we find ourselves at a historic low point. Union membership is declining, with young workers in particular less likely to be part of a trade union than ever. In every year since 1991 the number of strikes has been lower than in any year prior to that point.

Much of this decline can be laid at the door of successive rafts of anti-union legislation brought in by Margaret Thatcher, and more recently by David Cameron, raising the legal bar for strike ballots and outlawing secondary action.

But as our guests on this month's show argue, reports of the trade union movement’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Not only is the need for unions more urgent than ever as we face our second winter of the Covid-19 Pandemic, but workers are taking action across the economy and winning. And it is women, young people and migrant workers who are leading the charge.

We are joined on the panel by:

Eve Livingston, author of Make Bosses Pay: Why We Need Unions; Jane Hardy, author of Nothing to Lose But Our Chains: Work and Resistance in 21st Century Britain; and Henry Chango Lopez, General Secretary of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB).

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Find out more about the IWGB: iwgb.org.uk