rae-hart

3626 Articles by:

Rae Hart

Rae Deer is an economist and freelance writer.

Keeping Christmas On the Picket Line

By December 1984, Britain’s miners had been on strike for nine months – but local and international solidarity brought them everything from turkeys to children’s toys, and stopped even Thatcher from crushing their festive spirit.

No Firefighters in Foodbanks

They were hospitalised fighting wildfires in summer. They drove ambulances and moved the bodies of the deceased during Covid. Now they’re being offered yet another real-terms pay cut. That’s why the FBU is balloting on strike action.

Don’t Let Royal Mail Die

Postal workers have played a vital role in communities for centuries – but now that’s under existential threat from a corporate leadership hell-bent on turning Royal Mail into another Uber. We can’t let that happen.

Forwards, Not Forgetting

Newly reissued, Bertolt Brecht and Slatan Dudow’s 1932 film Kuhle Wampe is one of the true classics of socialist cinema, offering a glimpse of the last moment before the German left were crushed by Nazism.

Let’s Not Cancel Tolstoy

Not for the first time, Russian imperialism is casting a shadow over the country’s literature. But the last work of Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad, provided both a mirror and an indictment.

The War Against Noise

Despite doomed patrician attempts to shut it out, noise can never entirely be avoided — and a level of ‘social noise’ is part of convivial life.

To Infinity and Beyond

A new film depicts the story of a Soviet architectural ‘UFO’ in Kyiv, which still stands as both a resistance to Stalinist philistinism and wild capitalism.

Coming Up For Air

A new speculative fiction about a revolutionary near future takes the form of an oral history project with inhabitants of the New York Commune, and imagines how abolitionist theories might play out in practice.

A Workers’ Hero: Avtar Singh Jouhl

Avtar Singh Jouhl, the former president of the Indian Workers’ Association, passed away in October. He was a committed anti-racist and trade unionist, inviting Malcolm X to Britain and sending coaches of IWA members to support the miners’ strike in 1984.

East London for the People

The divide between rich and poor in the London borough of Newham illustrates the grotesque inequalities of the city – but long-neglected residents are organising against corporate takeover.

The Trickle-Down Ruse

For decades, politicians justified funnelling money to the rich by arguing it produces more wealth for everyone else. The evidence is now overwhelming – we were scammed.