
the online magazine is 25 years old this year, and I have been writing for
it since it launched. My editors there have all been brilliant, from Mick
Hume, through Brendan O'Neill, Tom Slater, Tim Black and Fraser Myers.
The articles linked here cover many subjects, from the creative industries,
through the housing crisis, energy and green politics, imperialism and the
middle east, and the politics of commemorating the past.
These writing were driven by Spiked's humanistic and critical take on the
world and how it is run, and my own preoccupations and research.
Some of the issues have changed over time, but one thing stands out as a
frame for all of them. It is the decline of the left and the crisis of
political direction that flowed out of that are behind most of the morbid
symptoms covered here.
How the child-abuse inquiry failed grooming-gang victims 8th January
2025
David Lammy is mad to have flirted with reparations 15th October 2024
Why was Grenfell covered in cladding? Climate targets 5th September 2024
Starmer’s performative crackdown on the Corbynites 27th July 2024
Hamas is the enemy of the Palestinian People 23 June 2024
Starmer's night of the plastic knives 30 May 2024
London's Jews are fighting back agains the bigots 24 May 2024
The Truth about the Houthis 2 March 2024
No, Britain's wealth was not built on Slavery 3 January 2024
No, Israel is not a 'colonial settler state' 7 November 2023
Against reparations 8 August 2023
The taming of the Bash Street Kids 26 July 2023
The dark genius of Martin Amis 24 May 2023
The treasures of the world belong to us all 14 May 2023
The problem with apologising for slavery 18 April 2023
How Sadiq Khan is punishing Londoners 4 April 2023
No, opposing ULEZ is not 'far right' 6 March 2023
Angela Davis' ancestry reveals the folly of reparations 1 March 2023
How the press fell for the 'Russiagate' conspiracy 8 February 2023
Alan Cummings' shallow anti-imperialism 31 January 2023
A brief history of the end of the world 27 January 2023
The hidden story of the British Empire 11 December 2022
The queen and the colonies: it's complicated 14 September 2022
Why Chileans rejected a new 'progressive' constitution 9 September 2022
Keir Starmer is still no friend of Brexit 8 July 2022
Carole Cadwalladr’s fake news 22nd June 2022
How the green agenda fed the Grenfell disaster 14th June 2022
How Lutfur Rahman made his comeback 14th May 2022
A Jamaican republic is long overdue 25th March 2022
The great populist revival 9th February 2022
Remainers are still baffled by Brexit 25th October 2021
Rwanda: a dictatorship loved by the West 20th September 2021
The Covid surveillance state is no model for the future 31st August 2021
The self-defeating rage of Owen Jones 8th August 2021
The truth about historic child sex abuse 2nd August 2021
Dominic Cummings’ delusions of grandeur 21st July 2021
History shows us why vaccines must be voluntary 31st May 2021
The ugly truth about the Guardian 5th May 2021
Opposition to lockdown is on the march 26th April 2021
The British Empire betrayed those who fought for it 22nd April 2021
How Britain became institutionally anti-racist 15th April 2021
The government is glorifying slavery? Oh grow up 1st April 2021
Where are the postmodernists when you need them?
17th March 2021
Is the opposition on furlough?
5th March 2021
We must defend Piers Corbyn’s freedom of speech 4th February 2021
The Corbynite dream is in tatters 2nd December 2020
Margaret Thatcher was no friend of freedom 24th November 2020
Why Labour keeps screwing up on anti-Semitism
18th November 2020
An assault on a vindication of woman
11th November 2020
How the country house kept land from the people 23rd September 2020
The middle-class fantasy of working from home 8th September 2020
No, Putin is not a global mastermind
3rd August 2020
Labour has finally admitted it lost the working class
23rd June 2020
A healthy society does not destroy its monuments 17th June 2020
Black lives matter more than lockdown 4th June 2020
The
Mis-Anthropocene 19th May 2020
The Electoral Commission’s campaign against democracy
1st May 2020
Corbyn was stabbed in the back… but that’s not why he lost 13th April
2020
Why
Corbyn failed 27th March 2020
Coronavirus is nothing like the Second World War 19th March 2020
Why ‘Empire nostalgia’ is declining 16th March 2020
Against
eugenics 18th February 2020
Christopher Steele: MI5’s very own Walter Mitty 3rd February 2020
Debunking the ‘schools don’t teach about empire’ myth 23rd January 2020
Labour’s housing promise is hot air 26th November 2019
Stop apologising for the past 20th November 2019
The Brexit Party blinked 18th November 2019
Voter ID will damage democracy 14th October 2019
The reparations racket 25th September 2019
Who’s afraid of the ‘white working class’? 17th September 2019
What Brexit and the Olympics really have in common 29th July 2019
Tom Watson: time’s up for the paedo-finder general 25th July 2019
Voters, not quangos, should pass judgement on Corbyn’s Labour 8th March
2019
The culture war over Winston Churchill 19th February 2019
Angela Davis deserves her award 15th January 2019
War poetry matters 8th November 2018
Victim culture eats one of its own 29th August 2018
Kofi Annan: frontman for Western meddling 20th August 2018
Grenfell and the problem of carbon targets 14th June 2018
Ken Livingstone: undone by his own brand of anti-racism 22nd May 2018
How the working class was shut out 2nd February 2018
JFK and the paranoid style 1st November 2017
A
music-hall Marx 26th October 2017
Sajid Javid wants to build? He should bulldoze the Green Belt 23rd
October 2017
No, colonialism wasn’t a good thing... 17th October 2017
Should Nelson’s column come down? 24th August 2017
Dunkirk: a British myth 24th July 2017
Grenfell: clad in climate-change politics 26th June 2017
Grenfell: the lie of London’s urban renaissance 15th June 2017
Human rights don’t protect our liberty 7th June 2017
Farewell, Baxendale and his Bash St Kids 27 April 2017
30 March 2015
Give us the freedom to build our own homes
We need 260,000 new homes a
year, and officials won’t build them.
24 March 2015
The Communist who made Singapore a capitalist success
Lee Kuan Yew
transformed a small trading post – but at a cost.
9 January 2015
Ulrich Beck and the turn against modernity
The late sociologist
encapsulated the fears of our era.
17 July 2014
How the Tories ignited the paedophile panic
Revealing the right-wing
origins of today's child-abuse hysteria.
9 July 2014
The sex ring at the heart of the British establishment… 100 years ago
19 June 2014
Operation Lollipop: a useful parody
How were Twitter’s hashtag activists
so easily hoaxed by #EndFathersDay?
12 June 2014
Homeless spikes: a symptom of the housing crisis
Instead of whining about
this petty measure against rough sleepers, we should be building more houses for
all.
2 June 2014
A comically incomplete exhibition
The Beano was more rebellious than
today’s gothic graphic novels, but the British Library’s Comics Unmasked ignores
it.
23 May 2014
The left is over? I hate to say I told you so
A left-wing writer has
finally cottoned on to the decline of the labour movement – but his proposals
for a revival are deluded.
20 May 2014
The green and NIMBYist war on housebuilding
Nearly everyone recognises
that Britain needs more houses. So why won’t we build them?
25 November 2013
Why greens love high fuel bills
Ever-rising energy prices are the product
of green attacks on our consumption habits.
19 November 2013
The Gettysburg Address: a great work of humanity
150 years on, Lincoln’s
words retain their democratic power.
21 October 2013
The Newspeak of ‘human-centred’
David Chandler’s Freedom vs Necessity
dissects the way governments offer us choice today - as long as we make the
‘right’ choice.
8 October 2013
Both Labour and Tories have failed to mind the energy gap
While party
leaders bleat about rising energy bills, their policies have undermined the UK’s
capacity to generate power.
17 July 2013
Time to face the housing crisis head on
The UK housing shortage has
reached crisis proportions. Building a few thousand ‘affordable’ homes is no
solution.
11 July 2013
Domestic violence is falling. Why aren't people celebrating?
7 May
2013
UKIP’s
rise: a shortlived rebellion
The success of anti-EU parties speaks to the
decline of the old political order rather than to the rise of a new one.
22 April 2013
How to solve the housing crisis
Britain's housing stock is too old and
too expensive. The only answer is to build millions of new homes.
25
January 2013
How
to overcome racism: a hopeful subject
A new book explains how both racism
and multiculturalism have been state-led projects. The way out, the authors
argue, is to revive a sense of common, purposeful humanity.
2 January
2013
When
Lincoln and Marx were on the same side
150 years ago, Lancashire cotton
workers fought alongside Abraham Lincoln to abolish slavery in the US.
2
October 2012
Eric Hobsbawm and the tragedy of the left
Where Hobsbawm’s histories of
the 19th century were enlivened by his Marxism, his histories of the 20th
century were corrupted by his Stalinism.
29 June 2012
Seeking salvation,
behind society’s back
Reviewing Jacques Ranciere, and David Black and
Chris Ford on Chartists and Utopians in the Nineteenth Century
27 April
2012
We are not
all mentally ill now
Kenneth McLaughlin’s
Surviving Identity is
an important salvo against the mainstreaming of mental health treatment.
24 February 2012
A surreal
commitment to Stalinism
Román Gubern and Paul Hammond’s excellent new
biography of the surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel reveals the reactionary
impulses behind his anarchical facade.
27 January 2012,
Review of Lucio Magri's memoir of the Italian Communist Party
20 September 2011
On the
'Hands orf Our Land campaign
13 September 2011 In
defence of Dale Farm Gypsies
29 July 2011
On the Aborigines' Protection Society,
24 June 2011
Governing the Empire
2 March 2011
On
Education and the Working Class
25 February 2011
Review of Lizzie Collingham's book
The Taste of War
25 May 2010
'Why the EU
will thrive on Greek Troubles',
26 March 2010
Review of Ian MacEwan's
Solar
11 January 2010
On Yemen
20 April 2009
obituary
of J.G. Ballard
11 February 2009
Council
Housing plans
26 January 2009
against the
Dale Farm evictions
29 December
On Harold
Pinter, with Sandy Starr
5 December 2008
Review of Channel 4's
The Devil's
Whore
23 September 2008
Capitalising on
climate change The emergence of a market in carbon emission rights shows
that there is big money to be made from trading in hot air.
16 July 2008
'Who
demolished the housing industry?'
7 July 2008
'don't
blame bio-fuel'
3 June 2008
farmers'
protests in Perpignan
20 May 2008
Gordon
Brown at NESTA
7 April 2008
Gordon Brown's Eco Towns Con
28 January 2008
obituary
of Indonesia's Suharto
25 January 2008
Review
Lucy Robinson's Gay men and the Left
7 January 2008
on Xmas
sales and green snobs
27 December 2007
on
Putin's Time 'man of the year' award
21 December 2007
Chris Dillow's book on The End of Politics
reviewed,
18 December 2007
Eco-Imperialism at Bali
6 November 2007
Fifteen
Housing Myths,
1 October 2007
The High
Price of Britain's Housing Shortage
20 September 2007
Review of Oona King and Alastair Campbell's diaries
18 September 2007
GM: where the science does not count
11 September 2007
farewell Anita Roddick, Green Capitalist
23 July 2007
'Stop Romanticising Council Housing'
20 July 2007
review of Rick Kuhn's
biography of Henryk Grossman
11 July 2007
Who’s to blame for
crazy house prices?
With NIMBYist sentiments enshrined in policy, and
house-builders tied up by bureaucracy, it is little wonder people can’t afford
to buy a home.
27 June 2007
TV as judge and
executioner BBC2's Hunt for Britain’s Paedophiles was a sordid show.
21 June 2007
Let Technology set you Free my review of Barbrook, Edgerton, Elliott and Atkinson on technology, old and
new
20 June 2007
a rebuttal
of Tristram Hunt's Thames Gateway histrionics
22 May 2007
denouncing Margaret Hodge's
'white's first' housing policy
9 May 2007
Seeing people as a
plague on the planet
The Optimum Population Trust’s claim that having a
large family is an eco-crime exposes the anti-human streak in green politics.
8 May 2007
The road to Baghdad was paved with good intentions on Blair's Wars
26 April 2007
Review of Channel 4's "The Human Footprint"
24 April 2007
an
obituary of Boris Yeltsin
16 April 2007
on the
Moscow protests
19 Feb. 2007
Review of Lynsey Hanley's
Estates: an
intimate history
8 Feb. 2007
'Bring down
the House',
Response to reform of the Lords
23 January 2007
Not-so-positive discrimination
Richard Nixon and the Rise of Affirmative
Action, Kevin Yuill, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
17 Jan. 2007,
'A
United Kingdom of Britain and France'
on the revelation that Guy Mollet
proposed it to Anthony Eden in 1956
20 December 2006
Caught
up in a new Cold War (with Julia Svetlichnaja)
When we interviewed
Alexander Litvinenko, we had no idea we would end up being branded as Kremlin
agents.
7 December 2006
Standing up for science
Science vs Superstition: The Case for a New
Scientific Enlightenment, edited by Jim Panton and Oliver Marc Hartwich, Policy
Exchange, 2006.
30 November 2006
Putting
Russia in the frame
The response to Alexander Litvinenko’s death implies
that all Russians are collectively guilty of skulduggery.
15 Nov 2006
my
review of Bettina Aptheker's memoirs
11 October 2006
A
secular version of Kingdom Come
Environmental polemicist George Monbiot's
new book asks why people do not act on their fears of climate change. Good
question.
2 October 2006
Pervez
Musharraf: Mau-Mauing the flak-catcher
The Pakistani president exploits
Western fears of radical Islamism to boost his standing at home and abroad.
12 September 2006
Britain’s phantom housing boom
26 July 2006
Will
Self’s mockery of the mockneys
The Book of Dave envisions a
post-apocalyptic London, rebuilt along lines imagined by all those novelists
obsessed with the seamy side of life in the capital.
29 June 2006
A
miserabilist history of the twentieth century
Niall Ferguson’s War of the
World is shot through with a negative view of progress and some dubious
socio-biological thinking.
31 May 2006
Do we
need a nicer nationalism?
David Goodhart is trying to make a silk purse
out of a sow's ear with his call for 'progressive nationalism' in Britain.
27 April 2006
Interdependent we stand, divided we fall
The New Economics Foundation’s
report on 'ecological debt' is a fascinating picture of Britain's exploitation
of the world's resources. But it is frustratingly one-sided.
11 April 2006
Attacking
Berlusconi for all the wrong reasons
His bank balance, foul language,
rumoured plastic surgery: the left focused on Berlusconi's personal foibles
because politically they aren't that different to him.
4 April 2006
Farewell
to the city? Ignore the New Urbanists and 'Londonostalgics' - the end of
the boundary between town and country is a liberation, not a loss, says a writer
on urban issues.
28 March 2006
Pinochet
in Suburbia The BBC drama on Britain’s detention of Pinochet was
nostalgic for Blair's brief ‘ethical foreign policy’
7 March 2006
The
biggest scandal in Italian politics
Never mind Tessa Jowell's husband David Mills; it's the
Italian magistrates hunting him that we should be worried about.
6 January 2006
Who's
afraid of the Thames Gateway?
Why government proposals to build 200,000 new homes in
London and Kent are causing a stink in certain circles.
16 December 2005
Humanitarian
interventionists dig in
In his new book Anti-Totalitarianism, Oliver Kamm makes a
shrill and inconsistent defence of the Iraq war.
30 November 2005
City,
suburbs and snobs
Richard Rogers' warnings about middle-class flight to the
countryside are wide of the mark.

17 November 2005
Cox
Report: creative accounting
Designers and admen aren't going to save the British
economy.
8 November 2005
Who's
fanning the flames?
It is not that assimilation has failed, but that France
only pays lip service to assimilation.
2 November 2005
They
should have dropped the Code of Conduct, not the minister
The manufactured scandal over David Blunkett's earnings
shows up the problem of over-regulation.
21 October 2005
Conservation's
Conservative streak
We shouldn’t be surprised that the Green Zac Goldsmith
has turned Blue.
16 September 2005
Disability on a pedestal
Marc Quinn's sculpture of Alison Lapper in
Trafalgar Square creates a tension between what we are supposed to think, and
what we really feel.
12 September 2005
Concreting over the facts
That's enough handwringing about 'the end of
the countryside': the vast majority of Britain is greenfield, and it's likely to
stay that way.
30 August 2005
Behind
the ‘bra wars’
Making sense of the EU-China spat over textiles.
10 August 2005
Robin
Cook: from ethical imperialist to anti-war activist
3 August 2005
Don’t
protect the Green Belt - build on it
12 July 2005
Revisiting the Blitz Spirit
Myths about the Second World War won't help
us understand what is happening today.
4 July 2005
Mao: The
end of the affair A new biography by former Maoists Jung Chang and Jon
Halliday blames Mao for everything that has gone wrong in China. What are they
trying to hide?
14 June 2005
Bureaucrat of the Year
Hilary Cottam won Designer of the Year for her
work on Kingsdale School in south London, even though she didn’t design it
17 May 2005
Abolish
the DCMS
9 May 2005
Second
World War: The Battle of the Books
29 April 2005
The end
of Blairism? Personality looms large in New Labour because it is a
marketing initiative, not a movement.
15 April 2005
British
manufacturing: they think it’s all Rover
The collapse of the
Birmingham-based car company points to deep structural faults in British
industry.
26 January 2005
All Talk and No Bricks
Britain needs new homes - but the government just makes proposals.
21 January 2005
Pitting
parent against parent
The case against the Parental Separation Bill
10 December 2004
Constructing
Global Civil Society
A new book asks why, from Iraq to Ukraine, Western
politics is being played out everywhere but in the West.
11 November 2004
Arafat’s tragedy
He helped to found the idea of Palestinian
independence, but ended up as a mouthpiece of great power politics.
11 October 2004
Deconstructing Derrida
The French philosopher is dead, but his legacy
lives on in the age of unreason.
1
September 2004
Zombie
anti-imperialists vs the 'Empire'
Today's anti-war movement is motivated more by
romanticism than a serious critique of imperialism.
28 May 2004
Bonfire
of the investment opportunities
What were so many contemporary artworks doing in a
warehouse in Leyton?
26 May 2004
Euro-smugness
gets a free ride
European leaders are making the most of America's crisis
over Iraq
26 January 2004
'This
is the hangover of a major bubble' Doug Henwood discusses his new book,
After the New Economy
20 November 2003 Reviewing
After the New Economy
Doug Henwood's book
23 October 2003
Axis of influence
Asian-Pacific states signed up to Bush's war on terror - but
they're more interested in trading with China.
1 October 2003
What Edward Said
Obituary
18 September 2003
Dancing the Cancun
The third world rebellion at the WTO talks has its roots in
London and Washington
19 June 2003
Policy
has not created diversity
Contribution to a debate on culture and difference
5 June 2003
Capital of Complaints
Liverpool's unique cultural signature dwells on a sense of
victimhood.
14 May 2003
A house of cards
America's tense relations with Saudi Arabia
27 March 2003
That uprising
The wishes of the people of Basra are buried under the
myth-making of others.
27 March 2003
Rethinking Human Rights
A new book on the human rights agenda casts light on events in
Iraq.
26 November 2002
Taking Churchill at his words
One viewer's view of the 'Greatest Briton'.
21 November 2002
The French connection
In the UN debates about Iraq, French diplomacy has re-emerged.
How?
1 November 2002
Language barriers
The Chirac/Blair spat shows international personality politics at
work.
17 October 2002
Breaking
up Indonesia
The Bali terrorist attack is the latest expression of Indonesia's
destabilisation.
27 September 2002
Forgetting
the evils of Empire
The left's embrace of Europe as an alternative to America creates
illusions in a destructive elite.
24 September 2002
Germany's
Third Way win
Schröder's narrow election victory came from an appeal to
national sentiment, and caution.
6 September 2002
Trot
along, Martin
Why is Martin Amis cranking up dead Cold War controversies?
22 August 2002
Summing up our fears
Post-11 September apocalyptic thriller strikes UK cinemas.
27 June 2002
TV as judge and executioner
BBC2's Hunt for Britains Paedophiles was a sordid show.
11 June 2002
Continental drift
Why is the centre right winning elections across Europe and the
USA?
22 April 2002
Too late, the French left have a cause
Right-wing president Jaques Chirac is now embraced as the
candidate of 'human rights' against Jean-Marie Le Pen.
31 January 2002
Farmers turned park-keepers
The Curry Commission's farming policy proposes a world fit for
beetles.
16 November 2001
Friends, allies and enemies
How the West has abandoned old friends and embraced one-time
enemies since the end of the Cold War
15 March 2001
Culture vultures
How can the UK government present the creative industries as a
major money-spinner? Through some creative accounting.
Articles in the Times Educational Supplement
Humanist
pupils: the right not to pray |
They have a positive and moral belief, but
schools expect them to join hands. James Heartfield reports |
 |
Publication
day: 28 October 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Lifting
the veil on Islam |
Most British Muslims are likely to choose
faith over fanaticism, writes James Heartfield There are 1.6 million
Muslims in the UK, mostly of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin |
 |
Publication
day: 23 September 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Scatterlings
from Africa |
Work in the UK keeps most Zimbabweans from
returning, says James Heartfield Early this year, the Home Office began
deporting Zimbabweans |
 |
Publication
day: 03 June 2005 |
 |
|
 |
A
kick up the career |
Master of Teaching is a new degree. The first
group to pass believe it will inject life into work. James Heartfield
reports |
 |
Publication
day: 13 May 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Island
trouble |
Tsunamis, terrorists and gang wars have
affected many Sri Lankan Tamils, writes James Heartfield If your students'
heads are nodding to the sound of M.I.A's "Arular", they are
listening to a back-ha |
 |
Publication
day: 06 May 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Suffer
the children |
Be gentle when teaching traumatised Iraqi
pupils, writes James Heartfield Fifteen year-old Duua arrived in Britain
two and a half years ago |
 |
Publication
day: 08 April 2005 |
 |
|
 |
From
unrest to uncertainty |
Many Angolan families in the UK live in fear
of being forced to return there, writes James Heartfield. Twelve-year-old
Nsona (Natasha) Matambele of Forest Gate school in south London, was
refused permission to stay |
 |
Publication
day: 04 March 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Refuge
makes for Turkish delight |
Fleeing persecution, many Turks have prospered
in the UK. James Heartfield reports There are around 100,000 Turkish
nationals living in the UK (according to the Turkish Consulate), mostly in
London, |
 |
Publication
day: 04 February 2005 |
 |
|
 |
New
communities, same old problems |
The South East building boom should mean many
more jobs and exciting new schools. As James Heartfield found, the reality
does not match the dream |
 |
Publication
day: 14 January 2005 |
 |
|
 |
James
Heartfield detects confusing signals in the housing debate |
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is
regularly responsible for declaring that hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of new homes are to be built. |
 |
Publication
day: 14 January 2005 |
|
Seize
a hold on the pole position |
James Heartfield helps
you to give a warm welcome to pupils from Poland About 70, 000 people
living in the UK were born in Poland, and most are based in Manchester,
Sheffield, Birmingham, West Yorks |
Publication
day: 07 January 2005 |
|
 |
Fixing
a hole? |
Labour's commitment to
rebuilding schools over the next decade means familiar landmarks could
change. James Heartfield looks at architectural styles dating back to the
Victorian era |
 |
Publication
day: 07 May 2004 |
Section: |
Extras &
updates |
|
 |
Dangerous
Liaisons... |
Education is like
seduction. James Heartfield charts the history of teacher-student
relations since Socrates corrupted the youth of Athens |
 |
Publication
day: 10 January 2003 |
|