Twilight in Brexitland
- September 18, 2017
- by
- Matt
Yesterday evening I shared a horrific post on Facebook about a tetraplegic woman whose disability benefits have just been cancelled, and has just been summoned to a job interview by her local job centre. As shocking as it was, this dreadful decision was a fairly typical example of the cruelty and incompetence that has been repeated again and again under the brutal sanctions regime introduced by successive Coalition and Tory governments. Most of the commenters were as outraged as I was, but there were also messages like this:
No shame when it comes...
One Day Without Us 2018
- September 04, 2017
- by
- Matt
It’s just under a year since I was part of a Facebook discussion about the alarmingly xenophobic drift of post-referendum UK society. We were people from many different nationalities, backgrounds and political persuasions. Some of us were migrants, others the descendants of migrants or British nationals who know migrants as our friends,...
Defending Free Movement
- March 02, 2017
- by
- Matt
Last night I spoke at the launch meeting of the Alliance for Free Movement, hosted by Caroline Lucas at the Houses of Parliament. The alliance is a broad-based movement of organisations, politicians, unions and NGOS, whose aim is to defend, uphold and extend the EU’s free movement rules at a time when the...
Imagine a Country Without Migrants
- December 23, 2016
- by
- Matt
It’s nearly three months since the idea of a national protest by and in support of migrants in the UK on Feb 20 next year went viral on social media. In that time what began as a Facebook discussion has morphed into the national campaign One Day Without Us. We now have more than two...
One Day Without Us
- October 15, 2016
- by
- Matt
Being a writer isn’t always the most dramatic kind of life. Unless you’re out researching in the field, most of the drama takes place inside your head, and most of your day is spent looking at a computer. This is pretty much how it was for me until the last day of the...
Oscar Martinez: A History of Violence
- July 28, 2016
- by
- Matt
Many years ago, in 1993 I visited the bombed out ruins of the town of Aguacayo, the former ‘capital’ of the FMLN-held liberated zone in Guazapa Province during much of El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. It was just only one year after the guerrillas had disarmed in the town as...
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