Participants in the Revisiting Associative Democracy seminar organized last October by Andrea Westall and Stuart White in London’s Coin Street Community Centre were invited to read this usefully condensed account of Paul Hirst's normative political theory, published in 2002.
Tomorrow, grassroots activists will meet in central London for Netroots UK, an event aimed at "inspiring progressive activists working on the web". OurKingdom is taking advantage of the event to join in the debate around the impact of the internet on British grassroots politics and the future of o
The shocked faces of Camilla and Prince Charles as they are attacked by a group of student demonstrators is now an iconic image. It has come to symbolise the potential of protest to break with the illusion of the separateness of worlds upon which the structures of power are built.
Although the women’s movement in Turkey has scored major victories in the realm of legal reforms, there is a widening gap between rights in law and realities on the ground. How secure are these gains?
In writing 'The Silent State', Heather Brooke planted a giant bomb under the British parliamentary system. After years of diligent enquiry, blocked at every point by the Speaker and Commons officials, it was Brooke who forced into the open the squalid details of the systemic theft of public money
Internationally respected human rights lawyer and academic Kevin Boyle died on 25 December, 2010. Stuart Weir pays tribute to a generous man and dedicated advocate of reform.
VAT is not progressive, as claimed by UK Chancellor George Osborne in his defence of the tax rise. But it is a tax on something we should be doing less of. So shouldn't we welcome it?
As we are forced to change the way we think about energy, the energy consumer is caught between need and the increasing risks involved in securing traditional energy sources. The links between energy provision and conflict need to be better understood. The consumer, particularly in the northern he
The government has announced that its cap on migrant workers coming into Britain from outside the EU cannot be met unless a cap is also placed on flows of international students. This proposed policy risks discriminating against students on grounds of nationality and threatens the cultural richnes
The Coalition's proposed reforms of the legal system threaten to deny justice to the vulnerable. Yet the drastic cuts to legal aid are not being proposed as an austerity measure, but as a means to increase fairness in society.
The left has usually found two ways of building a good society: growth and redistribution, or the definition and articulation of a good state of affairs. A period of opposition is a time to return to the second: to win arguments rather than outcomes (This is part of the IPPR's New Era Economics se
The danger the student movement in the UK faces is of creating a new tier of leaders who, however well-intentioned, seek to manage the movement and end up sapping it of its power, radicalism and creativity.
