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 concept of free movement tends to be depicted more often than not as another of the many evils inflicted on the nation by the ‘dictatorship of Brussels.’
The initiative came out of a joint letter to the Guardian last month,...
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...
Freaky Friday
- June 25, 2016
- by
- Matt
In the Jamie Lee Curtis comedy Freaky Friday, a mother and teenage daughter wake up to find themselves trapped in each other’s bodies as a result of a magic spell. Yesterday I underwent a similar but even more disturbing transformation. On Thursday night I dreamt that Remain had won the referendum....
Murder in Farageland
- June 19, 2016
- by
- Matt
The brutal murder of Jo Cox has added a seemingly random note of tragedy and horror to this appalling, dispiriting and utterly venal Referendum campaign. And the brave and dignified words of Cox’s husband and sister have only shown us how low we have allowed ourselves to sink during this wretched process.
Anti-intellectualism; complete disregard...
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