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If the headlines are to be believed, new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been rude to the Queen and snubbed the veterans involved in the Battle of Britain – all without saying a single word. When it came time to sing the national anthem at a commemorative service, Corbyn stood in what his defenders described as “respectful silence” throughoutContinue reading “Why Corbyn’s Silent Stand Through the Anthem is a Matter of National Importance”

As soon as Philip Hammond, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, announced an extra £2 billion for social care in his first budget in March, jostling began on how the money would be spent.  Care providers suggested that the money could be held back by local authorities and might fail to make its way to frontline services. But care servicesContinue reading “Here is What’s Needed to Kickstart a Fairer Social Care System”

The tapestry and the murals are part of the complex and multi-layered ‘archi-texture’ of the parliamentary buildings, which continue to echo with older articulations of power and what the nation is and should be. In India the moment of independence in 1947 and in South Africa the 1994 ‘transition to democracy’ witnessed new sets ofContinue reading “Imagining pasts and futures: the Indian Parliament Murals and South Africa’s Keiskamma Tapestry”

An exhibition of powerful photographs brings home the real costs of illness and incapacitation for miners and their families. Nosipho Eunice Dala, widow of Zwelakhe Dala who worked in the mines for 28 years and contracted silicosis. Credit and copyright:Thom Pierce. All rights reserved. In May 2016 the South African High Court (Gauteng Local Division) grantedContinue reading “Visualising the human price of gold”

A visit to Shaheen Bagh, in south east Delhi, reveals the surprising emergence of new shades of citizenship. As COVID-19 sweeps all before it, injustices of another time are being further entrenched by populist regimes, which affects the governance and everyday outcomes of this pandemic and the politics of holding the state accountable. The urgencyContinue reading “India: from populist nationalism to popular constitutionalism”

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. –Waiting for the Barbarians, C.P.Cavafy I came to Delhi on aContinue reading “Barbarians at the Gate: Bearing witness to the attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University”