I liked this, from an old campaigning friend:
Council of Europe TV asked me where, as we see inequality breaking our democracies and our societies, can we find hope. My answer: In ordinary people's organising. We are the people we've been waiting for. pic.twitter.com/Kfq5KX5gC2
— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) August 27, 2023
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This is reinforced by a review of the book “The Richer, The Poorer: How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed The Poor — A 200-Year History” by Stewart Lansley (reviewed by John Booth), that appears in Lobster Magazine. The review begins:
“When the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times sees Britain
with its lifeless economy sliding towards authoritarianism, we should be afraid
of something rather more serious than the rising cost of bananas.”
Full review: https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/article/issue/86/the-richer-the-poorer-by-stewart-lansley/
Disclosure: I am the webmaster for the website.
Surely that should be “The Richer, The Poorer: How Britain Enriched the Few at the Expense of The Poor and the Colonised — A 500-Year History”
Thankyou Ian Tresman.
That 4 page review gives an illuminating summary of the main points of Stewart Lansleys book.
I see he has a long pedigree of such socially aware works:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/517634.Stewart_Lansley
https://stewartlansley.co.uk/
And to Hannah V’s point regarding the timescale and geographical reach of How ‘Britain’ Enriched the Few and empoverished the subjugated many, well that would have made a much much thicker book!
The choice of title does strike me as quite odd, and the more I think about that, the more those reasons crystalise.
“How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed The Poor – A 200-Year History”
This implies that ‘Britain’ somehow did the enriching, but obviously it is People that do actions. In this case a wealthy ruling elite.
The British state was founded in 1707. The enriching has been going on for more than 200 years.
Does it mean ‘Britain’ somehow geographically as in the British Isles: an archipeligo of Islands in the North Atlantic?
One might have expected an author based in Bristol would chose a title which demonstrated some awareness of the history of Englands ‘Conquest of Wales’ and ‘Conquest of Ireland’ long before the ‘British’ state expanded its exploitative reach across the worlds oceans.
Maybe that is just me interpreting the title too literally !!!
Perhaps his next book will be the prequel filling in the gaps left by this one? 😉
Joking aside, if my reading list wasn’t already overfull, this book might be going on it.
Stewart is good
I have this book – bit admit I only read the intro – like too many books because there are too many to read
Inequality – from what I’ve seen with my eyes in social housing – pits different groups against each other for scarce resources.
It’s socially divisive and why I have no time really for identity politics that just plays into capital’s hands and prevents the focus on the real problem of inequality.
The interviewee is spot on.
Mr Phillips is a socialist. He barely hides it when he says the solutions to inequality are already known and worked in the post-war period and in Latin America in the 2000s.
I think he would call h9mself a social democrat.
And what he says has worked – so what is your problem with that? Neoliberalism has failed, after all. Social demoracy never has.