The sound of a brass band greeted me as I walked into Queen Mary University’s Library Square for the Anarchist Book Fair. This is the  fifth year running that this event has been held at the campus in Bethnal Green.
The book fair was started in 1983 by a group of organisers who were involved in the Socialist book fair, which no longer exists, and as anarchists they felt that they wanted their own event that represented them. Like all book fairs, this was to be a place where likeminded people …

A thousand people gathered on the red carpet to protest against the projection of Outside The Law, Rachid Bouchareb’s second movie about the French (de)colonisation. Among the demonstrators, far-right and right-wing elected representatives tossed off many recriminations against the movie, calling it: a “revisionist work of propaganda” and an “insult to the Republic”. In 2006, however, Days of Glory [Bouchareb’s previous movie] had a warmer welcome. On the day of its release, the French prime minister announced his good deed: he promised to surviving veterans from ex-colonies that their pensions would be aligned with …

As Western nations learn more about Burma, modern technology is making it easier for the Burmese people to learn about their nation.The future of Burma is uncertain. The country has been under the intense watch of the international media of late, with their controversial elections and the release of the dissident National League for Democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from her latest spell of house detention.
Eighteen months ago, before Aung San Suu Kyi’s latest period of house arrest, mobile phones were uncommon and she has not yet used the …

 
Jack wears a poppy on his jacket and Doc Martens on his feet. “It’s the first time I have worn them” he says, proudly showing-off his brand new boots on the way to the demo. Until September 2010, Jack was living in Loughborough and never had the opportunity to raise his voice on the streets. But Jack is not only here to satisfy his curiosity, if he is protesting today, it’s against the rise of the tuition fees: “It’s wrong to encourage people to get into that much debt”.
Raised by …

Crowded together in the dark top floor of The Barfly in Camden, the audience had not been especially turned on by the warm up band, but when lead singer David Boyd entered with a half somersault as the smoke machines exploded, the crowd went wild as well.
Never steaming down and at some points almost defying gravity, David set a chaotic and non-stop pace for the band, only stopping his singing to break-dance to the guitar solos. The gig in Barfly was their second of three in London in the bands UK …

I met Mikaela, 20, an International Relations student, on my way back from marching the streets of London towards parliament in protest of the tripled caps on student fees Nick Clegg had promised not to touch, but back tracked on with nothing more than a vague apology. She was sitting, chatting and relaxing with other students on the side of the road as the last wave of banners headed past us to join the main crowd. She didn’t look like your average anarchistic protester that the media has painted us a …

Streets full of noise and faces full of smiles – that was the picture that was apparent in London at the student protests on the 10th November. Even the sun was out to illuminate the way.
The feel was like every other march that makes this revolutionary city such a special place: camaraderie, unity. It was apparent that a lot of young hopefuls for university who looked old enough to be finishing their A-Levels were out there due to sheer survival for the outcome of their future.
Since the Coalition government has …

18-year-old, Tamara London was one of nearly 50,000 people who attended the boisterous march past the Houses of Parliament.
A gap year student from Barnet in north London she  expressed her concern at the government’s planned raise of tuition fees: “They should be encouraging people to go into education, instead they are putting people off university. It’s unfair.” She shouted against the backdrop of the roaring crowd.“They should be putting more money into our education and future”.
The proposed increase in fees will not be implemented until 2012. Tamara is especially anxious for her friends, who, …

“The Call” was the national anthem and the voice of the orange, white and blue the colours of the oppressive regime that was South Africa. The masses beaten into submission by the nightstick known as apartheid.
I was very young in the 1980s when I saw the photographs in the papers showing protesters in the streets of Cape Town being pushed back with water cannons, rubber bullets. The Afrikaner and his regime: their distorted dream of “Separate but equal”, indeed, for whom?
I was younger when my parents told me about the exile …

“Traces is an investigation of the spaces that lie in the interstices of the modern world. In three poetic pictures the dancers are reclaiming a space to exist, struggling to leave traces in the nothingness that surrounds them.”
Traces, an expressionistic approach to the human experience, from birth to death, took up the battle against the “official theatre world” of the West end by performing at a dance school in Greenwich, London.
Shown at the Bonnie Bird Theatre, Traces featured three dancers – Sarah Armstrong (German), Wei-Shan Lai (Chinese), Elisabeth Schilling (Danish) …