Category: Contributions

Trump takes hostility toward Cuba to new heights

Washington’s current foreign policy toward Cuba, following a script of more than six decades of aggression, is part of the reactionary global projection of a desperate government writes Francisco Arias Fernández.

How Cold War socialist space cooperation broke new ground

In contrast with the commercial, militarist and billionaire-dominated nature of much current space exploration, Sean Meleady celebrates the important achievements of the Soviet led ‘Interkosmos’ programme, not just for the socialist countries, but for all humanity.

Poetry Corner: Communism is the Middle Term by Bertolt Brecht

Communism is the Middle Term by Bertolt Brecht.

Bertolt Brecht was a German Marxist poet, playwright and theatre director. Brecht lived through a turbulent era. Narrowly avoiding conscription at 16 during World War One, he worked prodigiously through throughout the period of the Weimar Republic. Brecht was forced to flee with the rise of the Nazis in 1933. He left the USA during the McCarthyite “Red Scare” returning to what was then the German Democratic Republic. He died on the 14th of August 1956.

Foodbanks & the Covid Crisis

Daniel Lambe talks about his experience volunteering with his local foodbank and makes the case for all socialists to be active in their community, their tenants union and their trade union branch.

We can’t wish away the National Question

Zoe McKeown provides a rounded view on the questions facing the left in Scotland – and across Britain – and the considers the potential of a campaign to achieve real Home Rule.

Poetry Corner: ‘Du Ydwyf, ond Prydferth’/‘Black am I, but Beautiful’ by TE Nicholas/’Niclas y Glais’

‘Du Ydwyf, ond Prydferth’ (Negro a fu’n cydweithio â ni am wythnos yn y carchar) ‘Niclas y Glais’ (1879-1971)

‘Black am I, but Beautiful’ (A Negro who worked with us in prison for a week) by TE Nicholas (1879-1971).

TE Nicholas ‘Niclas y Glais’, congregational minister, pacifist, champion of the disadvantaged, initially a member of the Independent Labour Party and then a founder member of the Communist Party, remaining in it till his death. Niclas was an internationalist who loved the Welsh language and the culture of the Welsh people. Writing almost entirely in Welsh, he won 17 eisteddfod chairs. In July 1940, during the Second World War, he and his son Islwyn were arrested on trumped-up charges of fascism during his 4-month imprisonment in Brixton, he wrote 150 sonnets, from which the following are selected. aWe present here the original Welsh and the English translation of his work side by side; the latter of course cannot capture the full expression of the former.