Television

Article by William Morris and other letters on Trainspotting, Ireland, The X Files and Immigration. Download PDF

Download PDF

The Glasgow girls, are a group of school students from Drumchapel High School in Glasgow, who in 2005 took it upon themselves to campaign for the release of their friend Agnesa Murselaj, a Roma girl from Kosovo who was detained by immigration police in a dawn raid. Agnesa’s whole family were placed in Yarls Wood detention centre and faced deportation back to a country where Roma people faced persecution. The area of Glasgow where she lived housed a large number of asylum seekers from across the globe, and many went to Drumchapel High. It was not uncommon for students at the school to disappear...

In the run up to the May European elections, UKIP have been getting a lot of attention. A new book, Revolt on the Right, by academic Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford highlighted why the interest in UKIP. The book argues, more or less convincingly, that UKIP is now similar to, and as stable as other “radical right” populist parties around Europe (such as the Freedom Party of Austria, the Swiss Peoples Party or France’s Front National). They have expanded their political base to take in older, precariously employed or unemployed working-class voters (mostly men) and broadened their appeal to...

On 10 February, Channel 4 screened a ‘Dispatches’ documentary on “bedroom tax”. Many Labour councillors appeared on the programme denouncing the Government’s measures. Some of them even detailed how they were doing the bare minimum required of them by law to implement them. Our main priority is to protect our tenants, they said. The Labour Party has pledged to scrap the tax on coming to power. The pledge has encouraged councils not to evict tenants in arrears because of the bedroom tax. Quite a few councils have said they will try to avoid evicting. Though the pledges have loopholes, in fact...

When Rana Plaza, a multistorey building housing garment factories, collapsed in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka in April 2013 the focus of the world media was on the conditions of Bangladeshi workers. It seemed that a turning point might be reached in their fight for rights. But a new investigation by ITV journalists, featuring the campaigning NGO Labour Behind the Label, has shown that little has changed for the better. In this programme two young women workers wearing hidden cameras went to work in two fairly typical garment factories, making clothes for Western companies. The women filmed...

Thom Hartmann is a prominent left-wing radio broadcaster from the USA. I first came across him when he interviewed me at a conference in Washington and was promptly told by everyone just how prominent he is. He describes himself as a “democratic socialist” and his nationally-syndicated radio show has an estimated 2.75 million listeners. George Galloway needs no introduction to a left-wing audience in the UK. What Hartmann and Galloway have in common is that they host shows on Russia Today (RT), a global satellite television channel that performs the same function for Vladimir Putin as Press TV...

In this two part documentary, Stephen Fry and the director Fergus O’Brien set out to survey what the situation is for LGBT people around the world. A laudable task, and a good way to use your celebrity. In some ways the documentary lives up to its good intentions to expose homophobia across the world; the interviews with victims and survivors of some of the most extreme consequences of homophobia moved me. Fry’s journey surveying the situation for LGBT people took him to the US, Uganda, Brazil, Russia, and India. He did not visit the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Yemen or Mauritania...

Workers’ Liberty activists Karen Waddington and Jean Lane appeared on the BBC’s Big Question debate programme on Sunday 14 April, discussing Thatcher’s death. Karen and Jean were involved in Women Against Pit Closures and other class-struggle activity during Thatcher’s government. The poet Benjamin Zephaniah also appeared on the show. Nothing changed for me the day Thatcher died. My local authority is still suffering from cuts, and people in my village are still suffering from the devastation caused by Thatcher’s pit closures. Cameron is still carrying on her policies. Before 2010, my village...

Derren Brown introduces his two-part Apocalypse program with a comment on the "youth of today". He explains that his subject, Stephen Burrell, is a typical of young men in 21st century Britain. Brown explains "he is selfish, lacks a sense of responsibility and drive, most of all he lacks a sense of compassion to his friends and family...Stephen is, in my mind, symptomatic of a general malaise where people feel, I guess, a sense of entitlement." In his mind-bogglingly brilliant way, Brown then sets up his most audacious trick yet. He convinces poor Stephen that it is the end of the world and...