Sofia Akel is an award-winning cultural historian, creative consultant, writer, host and lecturer specialising in Black British history. She is also the founder of the non-profit, Free Books Campaign. Her work has been featured in national and international press, including BBC 1Xtra, Channel 4 News and ITV News. Sofia also lends her talent to documentary film, TV, audio and music videos with credits including; Creative Archival Consultant (Dirt in the Diamond by Jords, Tribeca Film Festival 2023 select), Race Equity Specialist (Teardrops by Kano, nominated for a UKMVA), Researcher and Casting Consultant. Her debut book exploring Black British history will be released in 2025.
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Workshops mixing politics and play, community and craft, are revitalising democratic participation in a more direct way than a distant parliament ever could.
Dr Malaika Cunningham is Artistic Director of The Bare Project, a theatre practitioner and a democratic theorist. Her research explores the role of participatory theatre spaces for political discourse, exchange between strangers and imagination. She has also written on political engagement, participatory arts, and co-productive policy-making. In her research, she brings together her practice as a theatre maker and her academic background in political theory. She completed her PhD in summer 2020 at the University of Leeds as part of Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity.
Franklyn Addo is a community activist and writer based in Hackney. He is the author of A Quick Ting On Grime. He also writes on issues including police brutality and the criminalisation of culture in many publications, from The Guardian to Cambridge University Press. Beyond writing, Frankly manages violence reduction programmes and is frequently instructed as an expert defence witness in court cases concerning ‘gangs’, technology and social media, and youth culture.
From pirate radio to Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, journalist and rapper Franklyn Addo pens an extraordinary narrative of the history, present and future of grime music in his new book.
In his new book, Ben Judah attempts to tell the inner stories of contemporary Europe as lived by the people who inhabit it - but can never seem to get close enough.
Garvan Walshe is an entrepreneur and democracy activist. He is founder of Article7 Strategies and Chair of Unhack Democracy. In Brussels he’s a research associate at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies and Head of Communications at the European Policy Centre.
Since Brexit, hundreds of thousands of Brits living abroad have struggled with everything from access to pensions to getting official documents for emigrating. After years of feeling out of sight, out of mind, some are calling for a new approach: overseas constituencies.
Jack McGovan is a freelance journalist and writer based in Berlin, focusing on climate, politics and animals. His work has appeared in a range of mainstream and independent outlets, including The Guardian, WIRED and Sentient Media.
Tom Copley is London's Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development, and oversees the Mayor’s two affordable homes programmes, including ‘Building Council Homes for Londoners’ – the first City Hall initiative dedicated to council homebuilding.
There’s no contradiction between being pro-new homes, and pro-rent control. If London is to tackle the housing crisis, it desperately needs both.
Megan Warren-Lister is a freelance reporter. She covers social justice and has a particular interest in women's health.
Exclusive analysis of NHS data shows 30% of sickness absence among midwives was for mental health reasons - the highest in the NHS. The profession is plagued by a vicious circle of understaffing and excessive workloads, and both veteran and newly qualified staff are dropping out.
Digitising railway stations and removing staff will make them less accessible - not more.
Findings shared with The Lead show as many as 194 housing association properties being put up by auction houses in a single month. The real figures could be much higher.
Farage and Fox attacking celebrations of Black culture shows why they’re needed: we’re not remotely “postracial” yet.
Naomi Evans is an author, teacher, speaker and activist. In 2020 she founded the anti-racism platform Everyday Racism alongside her sister Natalie which has accrued over 200k followers. In July 2022 Penguin published their first book “The Mixed Race Experience” and in July 2023 a children’s book entitled “Everyday Action, Everyday Change” was published by Hachette. Naomi’s work has been featured in Red Magazine, the I newspaper, BBC news and Grazia. She currently works part time as a DEI lead in a large secondary school and is writing her first fiction book.
Ghanian artist and poet Kwame Aidoo reports his impressions from the climate change Biennale that is bringing African voices into the heart of the architectural mainstream - despite obstruction from Italy's own government.
Training about racism and anti-racism should be a statutory part of the mandatory safety training that all teachers have to go through.
Kwame's work explores decolonial, environmental and societal conversations and texts and he has exhibited, published and performed at institutions and DIY spaces across Europe, Africa and Latin America. He founded Inkfluent (a multidisciplinary cultural project invested in Pan-Africanism), the Nkabom Festival, Kpaluhi Weaving Village, Portals of Ghana Architecture Research Archives and the Buzanga Books Library. Also a prolific author and poet, Aidoo lives and works in Ghana.
We can't let cynical, negative framing of the annual Caribbean celebration take away from the beauty and brilliance of Carnival.
Just when momentum in the writer’s strike began to wane, actors joined the picket line. This unprecedented solidarity has re-energised the movement.
Richard Smyth is a writer and critic. His work has been published in The New Statesman, The TLS, Prospect, Aeon, Literary Review, New Scientist, The Guardian and The Fence, and his recent books include The Woodcock (2021) and The Jay, The Beech And The Limpetshell (2023).
From Hackney in East London, Franklyn is a social commentator, journalist, youth worker and rapper whose work revolves around the promotion of social justice and understanding the causes of issues like serious youth violence and the criminalisation of young people. He has written articles for The Guardian, The Independent and Sky News, and has been featured in The New Yorker. His productions include a short documentary on crime-induced trauma for BBC3 and a narrative about the human consequences of inequality for BBC Radio 4's 'Four Thought' programme.
British democracy is on trial. We can no longer hold our leaders to account; the state has too much power; and the truth doesn’t matter at all. A new book by barrister Dr Sam Fowles unpacks how those we voted into government have nothing but contempt for the democratic system that got them there.
Dr Sam Fowles is a barrister specialising in public and constitutional law, with experience of law in the UK, US, Australia, and at the Council of Europe. He has worked on many of the most significant political cases of recent years. He regularly appears in the media including on the BBC, Sky and Al Jazeera.
When journalist Katharine Quarmby was visiting her parents in the Waveney Valley, she encountered a story about the murder of woman who was staked through the heart and buried at the edge of town. What transpired when Katharine unravelled the story unpacks histories of women who faced poverty and exile.
As a new exhibition celebrating Fuji music opens in London, Bobo Omotayo explores the unsung legacy of Nigeria's indigenous music genre.
A new Deaf-led initiative to design more inclusive buildings and address systemic inequities has launched this summer.
Dr Natasha Hirst is a deaf freelance photographer and journalist, specialising in social justice and disability equality. She was a co-researcher on the groundbreaking "Legally Disabled" project with Cardiff Business School. English is her first language and she also uses British Sign Language. She is also president of the National Union of Journalists.
We need to accept that humans are part of the rewilding process - and that we won't always tread carefully and "leave no trace". We are all part of the habitat.
Renuka Odedra is a freelance writer from Leicester, who specialises in football. She has written for The Guardian, VICE, Resurgence & Ecologist, Eurosport, Stylist and more. She is also an author who has contributed to Football She Wrote: A Women’s Football Writing Anthology. Her writing can be found on her website.
Of more than 700 players at the FIFA Women's World Cup, only one has South Asian heritage. This needs to change.
Exclusive analysis by The Lead has found far-right groups have conducted at least 66 hotel ‘visits’, protests, and banner drops – filming and intimidating migrant people, sharing disinformation about refugee rights, and demonising children.
Bridgetown, where the British once forged the transatlantic slavery model, is making a bid to unify reparation struggles from Africa to the Caribbean and beyond - and to put the demand on the global political agenda.
The victory of common sense and communal rights over Alexander Darwall deserves to be celebrated - but it needs to become a turning point, not just an exception.
From a Nobel laureate to young journalists, Ukrainian women are documenting Russia's war crimes in exhaustive, exhausting detail - aiming to set a new bar for holding perpetrators accountable.
Katharine is an investigative journalist and editor, focussing on climate reporting and environmental injustice, racism, disability rights, the care system and violence against marginalised groups. She is part of a European collaboration on environmental journalism, most recently co-editing a nine country investigation into the harms and risks of asbestos. Katharine also writes fiction and non-fiction. Her debut novel, The Low Road (Unbound, 2023) follows the real life and the lost history of Hannah Tyrell, born in her Norfolk hometown, in the early 19th century to an unmarried mother. She was later transported to 'Botany Bay' in 1828.
The days of being caned at school are long behind us. But one form of coercive, often painful, physical contact from teacher to pupil survives.
Both the subject and Christopher Nolan's craft would have been better served by a miniseries - or by expanding one of this film's dazzling array of cinematic styles into a standalone film.
Count Binface is an intergalactic space warrior, leader of the Recyclons from Sigma IX and a part-time politician on Earth. His hobbies include invading planets, dominating inferior species, and Lovejoy. He is officially London's 9th choice to be mayor.
The planet’s leading force in ‘novelty politics’ on his Uxbridge by-election triumph, on how he'd fix ULEZ, and on his plans for next year's mayoral, general and the US presidential elections.
Nels Abbey is a British-Nigerian writer, broadcaster, media executive and satirist. Before moving into media, he worked in financial services for the US investment mammoth BlackRock. His first book Think Like a White Man (Canongate, 2019) is a widely praised eviscerating satire of modern racial discourse and politics in the corporate world. His upcoming book The Hip-Hop MBA (2024) explores what the world can learn about cut-throat capitalism from the business of Hip-Hop. Nels is a regular contributor across the spectrum of major news and media organisations including the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, The Metro, The Independent, Channel 4 News, CBC News(Canada) and several flagship BBC shows including Newsnight and Question Time. In 2020 Nels co-founded the Black Writers Guild.
After a video of a young London mother being handcuffed in front of her kid went viral, police issued a statement trying to paint their victim as the villain. This ritual needs to stop.
Greta Gerwig's latest box office smash doesn't provide a polemic on how to finally destabilise the scourge of misogyny once and for all. But that isn’t Barbie’s job.
From GB News and TalkTV to the Uxbridge byelection, a far-right climate populism is taking hold - with a clear agenda.
The 18th Venice Architecture Biennale was derided by conservatives for not having enough buildings. But as climate change finally hits Europe head on, the Biennale offers glimpses of a green, non-colonial, riotously imaginative global future - and lets you experience it in real time.
The pastor and campaigner was best known as the interviewee who helped Tammy Faye break the stigma over HIV patients and gay people. There was more to that interview than meets the eye.
Faiza is an economist, writer, and commentator. She is the author of a range of materials and publications covering the most salient social and economic debates of our times, including inequality, austerity, immigration, youth unemployment and social mobility. Faiza has over 15 years of experience researching the trends and consequences of inequality, as well as designing policies and campaigns to address the causes of inequality and exclusion.
The Lead's Reading Room: Read an extract of Dr Faiza Shaheen's debut book, a personal and statistical look at how society and the economy are structured, what really defines your life chances and how our current system keeps us locked into an ugly hierarchy.
Faced with the spiralling climate crisis, we simply can't afford to have economic planning geared exclusively towards maximising profits. But this doesn't mean going back to the top-down, technocratic, centralised planning of the past.
People of colour in the UK are more likely to enter the mental health system through police intervention or forcible sectioning - and even when in therapy, they face obstacles ranging from racist tropes to cultural misunderstandings. New treatment approaches are seeking to change that.
The bill that just passed its second reading is ostensibly aimed "only" at boycotts of Israel. But here in the U.S., anti-BDS bills are already being rapidly and effectively cloned to clamp down on boycotts of fossil fuels, firearms manufacturers, and more.
Ellie Broughton has over 12 years' experience writing about mental health and wellbeing for titles including The Guardian, the i paper, the Huffington Post, Lifehacker, patient.info, Stylist, The Independent, Refinery29 UK and Vice UK.
She specialises in topics including emerging modalities, depression in chronic conditions, therapy efficacy, bias and psychoanalytic ideas.
Alan Leveritt is founder and publisher of the Arkansas Times, published in Little Rock, Arkansas, since 1974. He is a native Arkansan and lives and farms on his great-grandparents' farmstead outside of Little Rock. He dropped out of college in 1974 and started the Times on $200.
We can't hope to compete with AI on speed and volume of technical tasks. But AI can never compete with us in the truly creative thinking - from music, to philosophy, to the kind of inspired science fiction that guides actual technological progress. As humans, this is our natural advantage, and it needs to be shored up.
Hannah Fearn is a freelance journalist specialising in social affairs. She was comment editor of The Independent for seven years, and has previously worked for The Guardian, Times Higher Education and Inside Housing. She has a special interest in inequality, poverty, housing, education and life chances.
Shared owners face a triple whammy: rising mortgage payments, rises in the rental charge on the portion of the property they don’t own, and ever-rising service charges. And worst of all? They virtually can't get out.
Naila Aroni is an artist and writer from Nairobi, Kenya. She is really excited about cultivating and advocating for Black joy through her work. She likes to write about Africa's creative economy and African diasporas and migration.
Daniel Harper is British-Iranian multimedia journalist and photographer, specialising in topics such as migration, human rights, LGBT+, geo-politics, climate change and community. Since graduating form City, University of London with an MA in International Journalism Daniel has written for and published by outlets such as Euronews, Mailonline, Insider, Are We Europe and JSTOR among others.
On the face of it, a new category exclusively reserved for African music could end the drought of African winners. However, this move is risky precisely because it is exclusive - and so generic.
Even as some young Polish LGBTQ+ people settle in exile, others are pushing back against new homophobic legislation - and old prejudice.
Dean Wilson has been the Daily Mirror Cricket Correspondent since 2006, covering England teams at home and abroad. He is an experienced broadcaster who regularly contributes to the BBC and was a producer on the Sky Sports documentary on England’s Black cricketers “You guys are history”. Dean lives in London with his wife and two daughters.
The new report is a welcome admission of what those of us who follow the game closely have known for years. The true test of the England and Wales Cricket Board will be action.
Manasa Narayanan is a journalist who covers politics and technology. She works for the news non-profit the Citizens, and is a researcher and contributor with the Real Facebook Oversight Board. Her work has appeared in outlets like VICE World News, Tech Policy Press and Byline Times. With a postgraduate degree in Political Communication, she continues to research and write about topics at the intersection of politics and technology; more interested in the politics of people and technology than politics of the state. Occasionally she writes essays, and dabbles in poetry.
It's not uncommon for far-right spaces to use pornography to steer users to radicalising content. But a UK porn company has turned this process on its head.
The Titan submersible was lost because a company allegedly cut corners hoping disaster would not strike. The Adriana sank off the Greek coast because European policies were crafted to ensure that it would.
We need a broad civic coalition of thinkers and activists to stop the cycle of inflation and interest rate hikes.
Níall Glynn is an economist, researcher and founder of The Working Class Economists Group. He focuses on economic & social networks, economic planning, industrial policy and economic history. Most importantly, he never shuts up about class.
How ‘Windrush Futurism’ is empowering the descendants of Caribbean migrants to shape new identities.
Voices across the political spectrum reacted with outrage to the sentencing of a mother-of-three to 28 months in prison for taking an abortion pill later than the legal timeline. But the far Right is mobilising to toughen up the laws further still.
We speak to the armed Russian group staging attacks on Russia's military infrastructure - inside the country's borders.
Arun Kundnani has been active in antiracist movements in Britain and the United States for three decades. He is a former editor of the journal Race & Class and was a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. The Guardian has described him as "one of Britain’s best political writers." He lives in Philadelphia.
The Lead's Reading Room: An exclusive extract from Arun Kundnani's new book What Is Antiracism?
On Monday, a woman was sentenced to 28 months in prison through taking an abortion pill later than the legally mandated period.
This sentence higlights a simple truth: abortion is still illegal in the UK, bar a few narrowly defined exemptions.
This needs to be the other way around: abortion needs to be broadly legal in the UK, bar a few very narrowly defined exceptions.
And as importantly, abortion needs to be taken out of criminal law. It's not a crime: it's a healthcare issue, and it should be treated as such.
We call on all MPs, of all parties, to bring abortion laws in the UK in line with women's rights.
The sentencing of a woman to 28 months for taking an abortion pill after the legally mandated period highlights a problem: Abortion is still illegal by default. We need a new, straightforward abortion law that treats it as a healthcare issue first and foremost.
Boris Johnson has scurried out of the House of Commons, after finding out he'll be declared to have misled Parliament - an unprecedented disgrace for a British prime minister.
Just a few hours earlier, he unveiled his Honours List: a roll-call of cronies and enablers, almost all of whom either aided him in his catastrophic mismanagement of the country, or profited from it.
These aren't public servants - these are accomplices and enablers.
It is beyond preposterous that they should enjoy a lifetime reward for inflicting him on the country!
We call on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to scrap the list with immediate effect.
The eviction threat by Barking and Dagenham Council leader Darren Rodwell - a rising Labour politician - is not only cruel: it's bound to misfire.
Ella Sinclair is a freelance journalist based in London focusing on race, racism, politics and social justice. She has written for gal-dem and The Voice. Find her on Twitter.
As commercial DNA tests produce ever-more granular databases, descendants of slaves are being introduced to descendants of slaveholders. The implications for the reparation debate are vast.
The 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Leslie Lokko, feels like a radical subversion of everything you might expect from the world's main architectural exhibition - deposited right into the heart of the artistic establishment.
Alex Birch is a freelance journalist whose interests lie in gender, disability and pop culture. She has written for The Guardian, Red Pepper and GXRL
Nick is a journalist and author of The Great Post Office Scandal. His latest book is Depp v Heard: the unreal story.
The latest revelations about the use of racial identification codes - including "negroid types" - are just the tip of the iceberg.
Are Artificial Intelligence execs more worried about an AI apocalypse - or about regulation?
From being paid in "exposure", to distinct ableism in the workplace, disabled writers who use their voices and lived experiences to educate, are being let down at every turn - here's how you can treat them fairly.
Rosemary Richings is a writer, editor, and public speaker specialising in disability and neurodiversity-related subject matter and the author of Stumbling Through Space and Time: Living Life With Dyspraxia. Rosemary's writing has been featured in Travel + Leisure, Broken Pencil Magazine, Happiful Magazine, and many other print and digital publications.
Chris Stokel-Walker is a UK journalist who writes for WIRED, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times and more. He is the author of TikTok Boom: China's Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media, YouTubers: How YouTube Shook Up TV and Created a New Generation of Stars, and The History of the Internet in Byte-Sized Chunks.
John Urquhart is the founder of Cytgord Cymru and second elected general secretary & founder of Harmony Party UK. They are non-binary and a resident of Ely.
After years of sporadic and overbearing enforcement, South Wales Police needlessly divided a community before it even had time to realise it was grieving.
Maxine Harrison is a freelance journalist and writer with a special interest in diversity and culture. Maxine's work has appeared in The Independent, Business Insider and Refinery29 UK. You can follow Maxine on Twitter @BlessedIsM and visit her website at www.remireports.com.
94% of speech and language therapists are white, which means Black and ethnic minority patients are missing out on the cultural nuances that can be vital in treatment.
Ellie Mae O'Hagan is the Head of Engagement at Good Law Project. She previously worked as a strategic communications consultant and ran the Centre for Labour and Social Studies.
Some of the worst things said at the National Conservative conference were puzzle pieces of a much larger story. Here's is your guide - and a suggestion on how to push back.
It's easy to dismiss the National Conservatism conference last week as the farcical death throes of a mortally wounded party. But the Tories' forecasted defeat makes National Conservatism more dangerous, not less.
Neo-Nazis, National Conservatives, Ron De Santis: everyone on the hard Right is screaming about drag queens in libraries. But the high pitch belies a pragmatic calculation.
A useful analytical tool has become a box-ticking exercise that places limits on our understanding of people’s lives.
In the high-pressure world of fine dining, organising for better conditions makes sense.
At first glance, the new protest ban's chaotic debut at the Coronation backfired. But chaos was the point. If even the police aren't sure what's legal anymore, how can you, a citizen, feel safe to exercise your rights?
Since the coronation arrests, our membership almost doubled. We'll keep up the fight - not just for republicans, but for anyone who wants a functioning democracy in this country.
David Lammy’s argument that it would take up too much time to repeal the Public Order Act is nonsense. Keir Starmer's refusal to countenance even trying to is worse.
Labour says it would take too much time to repeal the Tories' authoritarian Public Order Act. At best, that's nonsense.
Matt Foot is a criminal defence solicitor, specialising in representing protesters and victims of miscarriage of justice. As a campaigning lawyer he co-founded Justice Alliance, to protect legal aid, and Asbo Concern. He has written for the Guardian and the London Review of Books. He is co-author of Charged - How the Police Try to Suppress Protest by Matt Foot & Morag Livingstone (Verso 2022).
Of all the pieces we publish, we didn't think the one to get the far right in a frenzy will be a feel-good hiking story. But it taught us something about how tightly that ecosphere is linked.
James Hawes is author of The Shortest History of Germany, which is available in over 20 languages, and The Shortest History of England, which made #4 in The Times. He is currently writing The Shortest History of Ireland.
If the Crown falls, the UK falls – and then England itself, that traumatised, post-colonial land, will take centre stage for the first time since 1707. And nobody wants that.
Marcus Ryder is the Head of External Consultancies at the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity. He is also the Chair of RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), the author of "Access All Areas - the Diversity Manifesto for TV and Beyond" and the Editor of "Black British Lives Matter".
Black and Asian Britons are still asked whom they would cheer for at a cricket match: England or "where they're from". Now we risk facing the same with the oath - especially as Commonwealth countries begin to reject the monarchy.
Each royal event is a marketeer's opportunity. Here's our guide to some of the more WTF items vying for your pound.
Mark Thomas is a writer and performer. He has done this for nearly 40 years. In that time he has won some things, done some things and is a member of the NUJ.
Police threats to crack down on protests against the monarchy aren't about law and order- they're just demands for deference.
The Tories' reasons for changing how we vote don't add up - even if you try to take their excuses at face value.
June Bellebono is a London-based writer, cultural producer and facilitator. They are the founder of oestrogeneration, a magazine platform highlighting transfeminine voices in the UK, and of Queer Good Grief, a peer support group by and for bereaved LGBTQ+ people. They have written for gal-dem, HUCK and Novara Media, and have organised events for Somerset House, Autograph ABP, QUEERCIRCLE and Museum of the Home.
Landlords in London's artsy warehouse district are following the old playbook: rent out cheaply, let creative tenants liven up the place, then kick them out and cash in. But this time, residents are fighting back.
Carenza Arnold is Communications Manager at Women for Refugee Women.
Cruel, racist, deeply dangerous - the bill MPs passed in the Commons is all that, but it poses a special risk to pregnant women and their unborn children. Still, the fight's not over.
Sayo Olukoga is a journalist who’s written for Black Ballad, Metro and others. She specialises in all things race, culture, media and fashion, and currently works full-time as a producer at GUAP Magazine.
Powerful, groundbreaking and nuanced, the acclaimed play enters the final week of it West End run.
Thank you for standing up for your right to vote!
The numbers are in: nearly 2 million voters - according to the government’s own figures - have been effectively BANNED from taking part in the local elections on May 4th. And these aren’t the final numbers. Between iNews reports of Tory leaflets in Labour areas telling people they don’t need to bring ID, and a Tory minister refusing to tell MPs if records will be even kept of how many people get turned away at the polling stations, we will likely never know how many Britons just lost their right to vote.
We do know those Britons are likely to be the same people already hurt the most by Tory governments: Black and Brown people, LGBTQ people, Muslim women, people with disabilities and people on benefits. Government surveys found all these groups are significantly less likely to have valid photo ID than middle-class white people - the majority of the Tory base.
Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman have just pulled off the largest single rollback of voting rights in British history. And let’s be clear: their excuses don’t stand up to even minimal scrutiny. The stated reason for Voter ID was impersonation fraud - which is virtually non-existent in our country. Only one person was convicted of election fraud by impersonation following the 2019 general election.
We demand Rishi Sunak and his cabinet scrap this dangerous, deeply damaging law before the next General Election, even if they think this will hurt them at the ballot box. That’s what democracy is supposed to be about.
And if they don't, we demand every other party leader - and every peer, and every MP! - pledge to scrap voter ID as soon as a new parliament is convened.
This petition will be delivered to all party leaders and every member of Parliament.
As cannabis users gather to celebrate 4/20, there is rising fear that corporate profiteering will destroy weed’s homegrown ethos.
Simon Speakman Cordall is a freelance journalist in Tunisia.
Tunisia’s president Kais Saied embraced a Western far-right conspiracy. Beatings, stabbings, rapes and deportations of Black Africans followed.
Hobbies like hill walking and wild swimming are too often seen as the preserve of white people. But a new generation is challenging the prejudices that stop diverse communities enjoying the great outdoors.
Ben Clinton is a political activist and freelance journalist. Originally from London, he now lives in East Sussex, working in Comms for the anti-monarchy pressure group Republic. He is also the Campaign Co-ordinator for Labour for a Republic.
Inspired by the success of Starbucks United in the US, baristas in the UK are organising too - but fear corporate backlash is imminent.
Daniella Peled is Managing Editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), an NGO working in two dozen countries experiencing conflict, crisis and transition around the world. IWPR's current Ukraine Justice Report project focuses on in-depth reporting and analysis of judicial processes taking place across the country and internationally.
From the myths about Black people not feeling pain, to racist technology that discriminates against ethnic minorities, Dr Annabel Sowemimo's new book explores the urgent need to decolonise healthcare.
Prosecutors are breaking new ground by holding war crime trials - in real time.
Adam Barnett is UK News Reporter at DeSmog. He is a former Staff Writer at Left Foot Forward and BBC Local Democracy Reporter. Adam has reported for The Guardian and written for Politics.co.uk and Little Atoms.
How Thatcher's chancellor made climate denial a Tory value.
Plant knowledge is on the decline: a study of UK students found only 14% could recognise more than three species of native plants. This is a serious problem.
Residents in Urmston are locked in a bitter struggle with their management company. They are paying "extortionate fees", but have no idea where that money is going.
After pushing his country to the brink of fratricidal conflict, Netanyahu feints a pause on his constitutional reform project. But none of the laws have been withdrawn, and when protests return, they'll be met by a new pro-government militia.
Lauren Crosby Medlicott is a freelance journalist who focuses on features about social justice and human rights.
Women seeking asylum in the UK to escape homophobic communities already face unique obstacles. Now, they might be sent to countries that are patently unsafe.
Working in bars and cafes is traditionally seen as gruelling as precarious - too precarious for staff to organise. But this is starting to change.
Robert Palmer is the Executive Director of Tax Justice UK, an organisation which campaigns for everyone in the UK to benefit from a fairer and more effective tax system.
As we approach the end of the tax year, consider this: a multi-millionaire like Sunak enjoys a lower overall tax rate than many of the people driven to strike action.
Rivers full of plastic, beaches full of sewage, fens all but gone and half the native species already extinct. This isn't a dystopia, but today's reality - unless both major parties take on a new approach.
I spent decades dodging the true-crime documentary that showcased my family’s trauma. Then, just as Netflix was set to revive it, came my chance to show what happens after the credits roll.
Tanja Bueltmann is a historian of migration and diaspora and holds a Chair in International History at the University of Strathclyde. Her research is focused primarily on Scottish, English and German migration, but she has recently also looked at migration in the context of Brexit. Brought up in Germany and a student of history at Bielefeld University, Tanja also brings her personal perspective on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, having been educated in Germany at a time when there was a particularly robust public discussion of how to deal with Germany’s Nazi past.
Adult autism diagnoses are on the rise - and nightlife is finally catching up, offering more sensory options for neurodivergent adults.
A latex glove in one hand, a polishing cloth in another, the Chancellor tried putting a sheen on our worst downturn in centuries. It didn't take.
Growing up in Germany, I was taught about the rise of Nazism. It’s vital to call out even the early symptoms.
George Gillett is a psychiatrist working in south London, academic researcher at King’s College London and a freelance writer. He has written for the Guardian, New Statesman, Spectator and Independent, among others. He tweets at @george_gillett and his writing can be found at www.georgegillett.com.
The film that dominated at the Oscars touched a nerve with generations that spend much of their time in online 'non-spaces', flitting between multiple realities and timelines, yearning for an escape.
I am Englishman, a Christian, a teacher, a patriot, an admiral of the fleet, a golfer, a hunter and a chartered accountant - and trust me: Rishi Sunak's inquiry into sex education doesn't go remotely far enough.
To the Chairperson of the BBC, Richard Sharp,
I am appalled by the BBC management's decision to suspend Gary Lineker from hosting Match of the Day, unless he agrees to stop voicing his personal view on a matter of great public interest - the government's appalling, dangerous rhetoric on asylum seekers. It is a blow to free expression in our country and a historic own goal for the Corporation. Only yesterday, the BBC said Gary will not be suspended or disciplined; less than 24 hours later, you choose to U-turn - and to lie about your decision, by issuing the false statement that Gary is stepping back of his own accord.
Let me be clear: Gary Lineker has absolutely nothing to apologise for.
First, Gary made his comment in his personal capacity, on his personal Twitter account, not on air. Second, he didn’t compare your patrons in the Tory party to Nazis - he merely said, as mildly as it can be said, that Suella Braverman’s rhetoric reminds him of the rhetoric employed in Germany in the 1930s. And third, he is far from the first to make this analogy - indeed, Joan Salter, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, made that same comparison, to Braverman’s face, as recently as last month.
We call on you to return Gary Lineker to Match of the Day before the next programme is out. And we call on all players, pundits and commentators to boycott the show until Gary is back in place.
Yours,
Making their return to the UK this month with five live dates, Kælan Mikla explore the darkness and light of Iceland's rich history.
Maddy Howell is a freelance journalist and community specialist with focuses on features and profiles within music culture, feminism, and social affairs. Her work delves into the inspiration and emotion that bring art to life, and the ways in which communities form and thrive in modern culture.
Sian Norris is a freelance journalist and writer specialising in human rights. Her work has appeared in the Observer, the Guardian, the i, the New Statesman, openDemocracy, and Byline Times. Sian's book Bodies Under Siege: How the far right attack on reproductive rights went global is published by Verso in June 2023. She was the founder of the Bristol Women's Literature Festival.
We asked the Home Office if they have any performance indicators for the cruel policies implemented by Sunak and Braverman. They said they do not - and the general statistics they referred us to suggest that so far, their policies are having the opposite effect.
Jail Time Records has just released its eclectic first album, made exclusively with incarcerated artists - a selection from more than 500 songs produced by the studio. We spoke with producer and co-founder Vidou-H.
Margie Ratliff is a co-producer and key participant of the documentary Subject, where she examines her participation in the 2018 Netflix true-crime documentary, The Staircase. She is currently starting the non-profit, Documentary Participants Empowerment Alliance, to bring mental health, legal, counseling, advocacy, and mentorship resources to past, present, and future documentary participants.
Panic and greed fuel spike in tenants being evicted under the infamous "Section 21" - but the stage for the crisis has been set by decades of bad policy.
Sabrina is a writer, filmmaker and anthropologist from London. Her first documentary, ‘Kings Of Our Own Right,’ was selected across multiple European festivals, and she is currently in post-production for a documentary about sex workers rights in North Macedonia. Sabrina has written for Girls On Tops, Trippin’ and Wonderland.
In his new football novel 'Your Show', Ashley Hickson-Lovence explores Rennie’s legacy and the shocking lack of diversity in British refereeing.
Aleksandar Brezar is a journalist, editor, and podcast host whose main motive in journalism is to take apart your misconceptions about Eastern Europe and the people who live there. After having lived and reported everywhere from Brussels to Kyiv, he currently resides in Rome. He edits opinion articles at Euronews View.
We look at why self-appointed crusaders, white supremacists and ultra-misogynists drift to Romania and the Balkans, and what they actually find.
You have access to far, far more land than you think you do - but finding that out takes sleuthing. From slavery records to ancient tree maps, here is how to find out who owns what - and where you come in.
The attack on a Black girl by a gang of white teenagers makes clear the UK education system falls far short of its duty of care for Black children.
Charlie is an award-winning freelance journalist, book editor, columnist, host, and creative with focuses on features and profiles on identity, culture, lifestyle, travel, media, and social politics.
She is a Managing Editor at Skin Deep, a former Senior Staff Editor at the New York Times and the former Editor-in-Chief at gal-dem magazine. Charlie has written and edited for a variety of publications, including the Guardian and Observer, Dazed, and the Financial Times.
The play uses verbatim accounts from the contentious trial that followed the racially-motivated murder of Ahmaud Arbery.
Israel is teetering on the brink between an authoritarian overhaul to rival Orban's, a popular revolt and an economic implosion. What comes next - and where does it leave the Palestinians?
Yas Necati (they/them) is a writer and performance poet who explores queer and trans identity, diaspora identity, mental health, recovery, community and resistance. They also campaign for queer rights, run workshops with campaigners, and perform as their drag act alter-ego, Turkish pop star Tarkan. You can find them at yasnecati.co.uk and @yas_necati on social media.
“Cyprus is an identity crisis”: On an island with a long history of colonisation and criminalised homosexuality, LGBTQ+ communities - in the UK and in Cyprus - are building connections that transcend the border between north and south.
Danielle Evans is an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the author of short story collections, The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her second won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and The Bridge Book Award and was a finalist for The Aspen Prize, The Story Prize, and The LA Times Book prize for fiction. She is the 2021 winner of The New Literary Project Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and a 2011 National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree.
An extract from Virgins, the opening story in Danielle Evans’ frank and funny collection exploring the lives of African American teens struggling to find a place in their community.
The East London singer-songwriter dives into the messy, turbulent world of modern love and dating on his delicate, humorous compilation, influenced by 90s slow jams.
Jumi Akinfenwa is a freelance journalist specialising in music and culture. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, VICE and gal-dem amongst others and in 2020, she was listed as one of MHP’s 30 to Watch and PITCH Magazine's Superpeople.
Joana Ramiro is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and political commentator.
In a world of Pornhub and dating apps, where desire is commodified and lucrative, tenderness can feel rare and subversive. Three artists explore it in the Liminal Gallery, Margate.
From the UK to the US, under 25's are unionising in droves, with 60% to 156% leaps in youth membership in some cases. What does it mean for the future of work - and for the ballot box?
Youds, who ran a not-for-profit cannabis shop, was apprehended by police on his way to deliver homemade, full-extract cannabis oil to a terminally-ill cancer patient near Birmingham. The case lays bare the patchiness of UK's drug laws.
There’s an old adage that profit is reward for innovation and risk-taking. That’s BS. Shell and BP are raking it in because we’ve let them own the market - environment be damned.
Kimberly McIntosh is a writer and researcher with a focus on racial justice and inequality. She has written for a range of publications including the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Independent, the Metro and Vice and discussed her work on BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live, BBC News and Sky News.
From TikTok to the Church of England, reparations talk is going deeper, wider - and more practical
Neuroscientist and psychonaut Zeus Tipado on how psychedelics and virtual reality intersect, what it has to do with Voodoo and Jesus Christ, and why the most mind-blowing thing here is the human brain.
Far from succeeding humans, machine learning desperately needs humans to succeed. But the emerging market for educating robots is a dark one.
Adele Zeynep Walton is a British Turkish journalist, specialising in global inequality, politics and popular culture. She has written for The Independent, the i, Dazed, VICE, Metro, The Big Issue, Jacobin, Open Democracy, Tribune, Huck, gal-dem, The New Arab and more. Adele is also DAZED's first ever political book columnist.
The British national narrative of slavery and empire is as selective as it is crude. A new exhibition, These Things Matter, explores the items that embedded these atrocities into our everyday lives.
Andra Simons is a Bermudian writer and performer living in London, UK. He studied theatre in Toronto, Canada. Andra’s first collection of poetry, The Joshua Tales (Treehouse Press) was published in 2009 and Turtlemen (Copy Press) in 2021. Andra has held workshops and lectured at various universities in the UK. He has also been published in several magazines, journals and anthologies as well as performed at numerous events, venues and festivals. Andra is the current Writer-in-Residence at the University of Greenwich. Photo ©Ajamu.
Gary Allen is a Labour and Co-operative Party Councillor for Victoria Ward in Hartlepool.
Lian is a senior multimedia reporter for Rappler.com, one of the few independent media outlets available in the Philippines. She covers human rights, justice, corruption and international law. Currently in the UK as a Chevening scholar, she has been given express permission to write for The Lead. You can read her Rappler work here.
Unlike the U.S. and Brazil, who toppled their authoritarian populists, the Philippines replaced Duterte with Bongbong Marcos - the son of deposed dictators Imelda and Ferdinand. Rappler.com's Lian Buan explores where the opposition may have gone wrong.
More and more people are paying rent to their mates - but this leaves occupiers unprotected and unsure of their rights.
My town just won Levelling Up money - but it'll go into building a "TV Production Village," even as hungry kids trudge to school in subzero temperatures. This isn't levelling up. This is Tory theatrics.
Ruby Deevoy is one of the UK’s few dedicated cannabis and psychedelics journalists. Bylines include The Independent, The Mirror, The Times, The Sun, The Express, The Metro, Evening Standard, Stylist, Woman & Home, Top Santé, Natural Health, Red, Platinum, Chat! and others.
You're hardly saving democracy by shutting down George Galloway and his ilk.
Serial rapist David Carrick told his victims that as a police officer, he can get away with anything. He was right. And he’s neither the first nor the last. It's high time to consider tearing down the system that enabled him.
Content warning: Mentions of sexual violence.
Shahed Ezaydi is a freelance journalist based in London, covering politics, race, culture, and social issues. She has written for gal-dem, The Face, Dazed, Glamour, and more. She's currently working on her first book, The Othered Woman: How White Feminism Harms Muslim Women.
The attempted coup against the left-wing Brazilian president was only the beginning: Bolsonaro left behind a state apparatus riddled with military men. Lula's future depends on whether he accommodates them - or brings them to heel.
Jamil Chade is a Brazilian reporter in Europe for several news groups in Brazil and the author of seven books. He has reported from over 70 countries, and uncovered major corruption scandals in Brazil. He was elected as the best Brazilian foreign correspondent twice - in 2011 and 2013, and in 2015 he was chosen as one of the 40 most influential journalists in Brazil. Chade was one of the researchers of the National Truth Commission, created by the government of Brazil to investigate crimes and violations of human rights committed during the military regime in the country.
Azeem is an anti-racism campaigner and former professional cricketer. Following his time as captain of the England under-19s, he played for several first-class county clubs, this included Yorkshire, where he suffered racist bullying. In 2020 he spoke out and pursued legal action. Since then, Azeem has become a cricket coach, and a powerful advocate for diversity and inclusion.
An FA panel has said John Yems is "not a conscious racist" - it's a familiar story of gaslighting victims and protecting perpetrators.
This was supposed be the year of health and freedom. Instead, many of us seem to barely recover from one ailment before succumbing to another. Here's what can be done.
Emmanuel is an educator, writer and speaker. He is also the director of the charity program called The Reach Out Project.
The ultra-disciplinarian headteacher stepped down from her Social Mobilities role, but will continue to fan the flames of culture wars in education. Pity the children.
Once upon a time, teaching offered social mobility, a great pension package, a chance to save for a house - and recognition and respect from the community. Today even writing this feels like a bit of a farce.
The "Minimum Services" bill is so vague it would allow any passing minister to force as many people into work as they please - eliminating more that just the right to strike. It's among the most dictatorial laws proposed in Britain in recent memory.
Why do the Tories insist on removing protections from children once they turn 16?
We've been around journalism too long to think that merely telling a story changes much. Most failures have architects, and next year, we want to start holding them to account - with your help.
Eman is a Nairobi-based freelance journalist.
The triple whammy of pandemic, war and climate change is ending the age of abundance in the West. How will the near future look like, and what does it mean for the UK?
Taking time out for yourself in the midst of a struggle can feel selfish. But avoiding burnout allows us to fight for longer. Can we take self-care and well-being away from influencers and back into the community and the movement?
Omolola Ogunyemi is an author born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria, before moving to the US to study. Her short stories have been published in Farafina and New Writing from Africa 2009. Her latest novel Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions was chosen as an Editor's Pick in the New York Times.
Boys accompanying women without hijabs. Women wearing hijabs protesting alongside those who refuse. Strangers sheltering beaten, tear-gassed protesters. And even a Free Hugs stall as an act of defiance. Filmmaker and poet Tara Aghdashloo chronicles the moments of light that keep her and other Iranians going into the new year.
Children born in the first blush of the pandemic will be thirty years old in 2050 - with “large-scale drought, famine, heat stress, species die-off, loss of entire ecosystems, and loss of habitable land" as the best-case scenario. But they are our last, best hope.
The Reading Room: An extract from a powerful new novel that illuminates the lives of a generation of Nigerian women through a set of interlocking stories.
The Secret Paramedic is a veteran paramedic in the UK. He's writing anonymously to sidestep NHS guidelines on speaking to the press.
I am a paramedic. We just want to help, but years of underfunding, scandals, privatisation, Brexit and COVID leave us at the gates of hell.
The only effect of Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak casting Albanians as a threat is more xenophobia in the UK, and anger and perplexity in Tirana.
Alice Taylor is a British journalist based in Albania. She is news editor at EURACTIV and their Albania and Kosovo correspondent. She also covers the region for DW, BBC, and occasionally The Times Before Albania, she lived in Malta where she was a columnist in local media and worked for award winning investigative platform The Shift News. She is also a board member at the Ethical Media Alliance and she teaches and speaks on media freedom and ethics.
The five-point plan to combat illegal migration is a desperate tangle of half-truths draped mostly over reheated old policies. The only potential for change it holds is for the worse.
Barrister and rights activist, specialising in migration, equality and international law. Practising law from Doughty Street Chambers since 2000.
Every year, young people working in Christmas retail are overworked, bullied and underpaid. I'm one of them.
All life on our planet is interconnected and our future depends on treating it with compassion and respect. By recognising this, we can protect the world’s wildlife and soils as if our life depends on it – because it does. As things stand, we only have sixty harvests left.
Oliver is the nom de plume of a retail worker currently working in fashion. They are anonymised because they fear their employer will fire them for speaking out about their working conditions.
Text generators aren't coming for most newsroom jobs - yet. But news media dependency on search trends means AI already has significant sway over what journalists get assigned, and who gets to read it.
While the world moves on, the UK government is trying to fob off northerners with an outdated project that is economically, socially and environmentally destructive - and that will entrench, rather than resolve, poverty in Cumbria.
Bali, a longtime centre of Hinduism in Indonesia, has been transformed by Westerners seeking Instagrammable enlightenment. We take a look at the gurus and ley lines, crypto-bros and digital nomads - and speak to the indigenous healers still serving communities beyond the social media haze.
Katie Hignett is a freelance journalist based in London. She has a background in health, science and anthropology, and has written for publications including Forbes, Metro.co.uk and Newsweek. Her investigative work on pandemic preparedness for HSJ was recognised as "Excellence in Reporting Coronavirus" by Press Gazette.
Philippa Nuttalll is an experienced journalist based in Brussels focusing on climate, energy and biodiversity. She was previously Environment Editor at the New Statesman and has written for the Financial Times, Prospect and the New Scientist.
It's tempting to greet the return of Benjamin Netanyahu for a sixth term as business as usual. His new allies, and the way he's accommodating them so far, suggests it's anything but.
Minnie is a writer and campaigner specialising in migrants’ rights, climate change and social justice. After working in both the European and UK Parliament for 5 years as a political advisor, she went on to lead campaigns at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.
We need a police investigation.
Over the summer, brigades battling record wildfires were outnumbered, even as fire engines stood dormant in garages for lack of staff. Then came winter - and the prospect of a real-terms pay cut. We spoke to the firefighters gearing up for a desperate attempt to save their service.
High-profile judicial review appeals have become a favoured tactic among liberals. But we're not in the United States - and these campaigns risk distracting from far more important battlegrounds.
David Renton is a barrister at Garden Court and the author of Against the Law: Why Justice Requires Fewer Laws and a Smaller State.
Western populists who attain power often have to unpick with democratic safeguards before indulging their appetite for autocracy. But in Italy, many fascist laws and attitudes never went away - and now have a 'post-fascist' prime minister unafraid to wield them. Long under threat, freedom of expression could be among the first to be hit.
Rachael Pells is a freelance journalist and author who writes regularly about science and research, among other things. Her book, Genomics: How genome sequencing will change our lives is published by Penguin.
Jess McCabe is a deputy editor at Inside Housing magazine. She focuses on housing, sustainability and diversity.
Angelo Boccato is a London-based freelance journalist. His work has appeared in publications like the Columbia Journalism Review, The Independent, and Open Democracy. He co-hosts the podcast Post Brexit News Explosion.
The division between "freehold" and "leasehold" is a monster hybrid of medieval law and postwar housing booms, unique to England and Wales. The cross-party move for reform has been stymied by Tory leadership convulsions. Now campaigners hope it can get back on track.
Less frontline journalist memoir and more instruction manual for anyone navigating bullshit, How To Stand Up To A Dictator tracks Maria Ressa's journey: from young girl squaring up to bullies in a New Jersey school to Nobel Laureate seeing off the strongmen and kleptocrats of the Philippines.
The e-vehicle revolution has been overwhelmingly confined to private cars. But what about HGVs? And can early morning waste removal trucks ever go truly green? We look at the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Yes, this year's summit, like every summit, fell short of what is needed. But the overall trajectory is progress. This is not the time to give up on the world's only functional framework to tackle climate change.
The Jeremy Hunt cuts are less radical than those of the 2010's, but they accumulate on top of the original austerity drive - the prime engine of Britain's epic economic slowdown. Here is how we break the doom loop.
Initiatives by K-pop fandoms have planted over 100,000 trees worldwide, making a palpable contribution to offsetting emissions. Now fans up the pressure on Korean record companies to commit to greener operations, and hope global leaders take note.
Dr. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. His research focuses on climate science and climate change. He was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geophysical Union in 2012. He made Bloomberg News' list of fifty most influential people in 2013. He has received the Friend of the Planet Award from the NCSE, the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the AAAS, and the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society. He received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement 2019 and was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He is a Fellow of the AGU, AMS, GSA, AAAS, author of more than 200 publications, numerous op-eds and commentaries, and five books including Dire Predictions, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, The Madhouse Effect, The Tantrum that Saved the World, and The New Climate War.
Soo is a South Korean reporter based in London, UK. She is a South Korea expert who regularly covers Korean culture/entertainment, including the latest K-dramas, films and K-pop news. She has covered the COVID-19 pandemic at Newsweek and was a long-time travel reporter/editor at the Daily Telegraph. She is the author of How to Live Korean, available in eight languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovak).
Alcohol, testosterone and emotion: Getting home from the pub surrounded by drunk football fans will be even more dangerous for women this winter.
The Reading Room: The champion ocean rower reflects on pollution and rising sea levels from the close vantage point of a trans-oceanic rowboat, and considers why even today it's hard to make the global North grasp the scale and the urgency of the crisis.
Rosalind Savage is an environmentalist and ocean adventurer. She has rowed solo across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans to raise awareness of the ecological crisis and has earned four Guinness World Records and an MBE. A former management consultant, Roz has just finished writing The Ocean in a Drop: Navigating from Crisis to Consciousness, published by Flint Books.
Scott Benton, Conservative MP for Blackpool South, said his constituents could “only dream” of being as “well-cared” for as detained asylum seekers. Have 12 years of Tory rule left his town that destitute? We went to find out.
"The end of the regime would be the ideal outcome. Stopping the killing of demonstrators would be an ideal outcome." The award-winning British-Iranian artist speaks to us about the ongoing uprising in Iran.
Louisa Jordan is a pseudonym. The author is a community nurse in the NHS, and has asked to remain anonymous.
When ‘clap for carers’ was introduced, it made us feel appreciated. But little else was done, and we are at breaking point. Striking is our very last resort.
Conversations around race, gender and sexuality have evolved, but we still have a tendency to demand clear-cut answers. Which box do you tick? Which bathroom will you use? Alabanza is more interested in the spaces between the definitions: the murkier, more human realm of uncertainty.
Netanyahu's return to power arm in arm with proudly homophobic racist is not "more of the same". It's a helluva lot worse. But it might spring new alliances, too.
When Paul Powlesland moored his boat on the Roding in 2017, the river was choked with slime and garbage. Now the community that sprung up around is keeping its waters clear - and Powlesland is turning to the next challenge: securing rivers their human rights. Jon Moses reports.
Matthew Williams is a Professor of Criminology and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts in hate crime and hate speech. He advises and has conducted research for TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Google, EE, Deutsche Telekom, The Professional Footballers’ Association, the UK Home Office, and the US Department of Justice. Matthew also founded and directs HateLab, a not-for-profit academic unit with a mission to democratise technology amongst civil society organisations to routinely monitor and counter online hate speech and divisive disinformation.
There's no paper trail linking specific Conservative talking points to the firebombing of the immigration detention centre in Dover. But 12 years of consistently dehumanising asylum seekers is what enabled this attack, and it may not be the last one.
"Publishing tells us the majority voice is the white middle-class male - this just is not the reality."
Rishi Sunak's rise to No.10 is a great step for one British-Asian man, but a much smaller step for minorities.
Just as with any civil war, the seemingly tiny conflicts on the fictional Irish island of Inisherin are deeply meaningful. An essential film in every sense.
Blackouts weren't supposed to be happening to my generation of Britons. But it's increasingly likely we'll have hours of them this winter. Here is how people are stocking up.
Western observers are trying to reduce the story of Iran's uprising to cliches. They fixate on sanctions or try to pretend a regime that butchers feminists is some kind of a reasonable alternative to US imperialism. As Iranians, our only weapon against these deadly fallacies is stories of those we lost - and those still fighting.
Dhruti Shah is a multi-award winning journalist. Formerly a staffer at BBC News specialising on the social beat, she is now a freelance wordsmith with features appearing in The Guardian and New Arab among others. She's the author of Bear Markets and Beyond: A Bestiary of Business Terms, offers herself up as a brainstorm buddy, and loves magical mystery tours.
Padraig Reidy is editor of Little Atoms. He has also written for the Observer, the Irish Times, the Guardian, Prospect and the New Statesman.
Shaista Aziz is a journalist, writer, and campaigner. She’s a columnist for Hypen and writes regularly for The Guardian. Her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Gal-dem, Globe and Mail, and more. Shaista presented a critically acclaimed BBC TV documentary on what it means to be young, French and Muslim, following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack.
Omid Shams is an Iranian writer in exile, a member of Danish PEN and a PhD law academic at the University of Portsmouth specialising in freedom of expression, modern and indirect methods of censorship. He cooperates with human rights organisations and media outlets such as Justice for Iran and IranWire on documenting the human rights violations in Iran.
A key argument made for Johnson's return goes something like this: we're not foisting on you another unelected prime minister, we're reverting to the prime minister you've already elected. That's a lie. Elections aren't won for life.
A new art installation in Gladstone Park commemorates Black migration and evokes themes of collective renewal.
One the most dangerous home secretaries in recent history is out of office, barely a day after blaming "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati" for all the country's ills. Celebrating? We have just the recipe for you.
Boris Johnson won in 2019 on a promise to end the devastation of the Cameron-Osborne austerity era. The newly unelected Hunt government has no moral or democratic claim to withhold even a penny of public finances.
Mic Wright is a journalist and media critic based in Norwich.
Sweetly tell a labrador it’s a prick, and its tail will wag as if you said you loved it. This is how many political journos acted after Hunt's first media round.
Adam Wagner is one of the UK’s leading human rights barristers and the UK's pre-eminent expert on COVID-19 laws. He was described in the House of Lords as ‘the only person in the country who can make sense of this variety of regulations’. He practises from Doughty Street Chambers.
For two years, freedoms we thought untouchable were torn away, and immense, intrusive power over the smallest details of our lives was handed over to a small group of people in government. It is essential we understand how this happened and why.
Under Starmer, the Labour party has taken up an increasingly punitive tone on crime and prisons, to court right-wing voters. The collapse of the Tory vote is an opportunity to stop talking tough and adopt a crime policy that would actually work.
Admitting you need help can be hard, but no hole in the ground is going to open up and swallow you. What's more, you're not alone. Accommodation, benefits, food, clothes and more - here's where to look.
Ella Clayton's first album marks a transition from acoustic to folk-rock, and reveals a dogged songwriter fully coming into her own.
Boyah J. Farah is an author, their writing has been featured in The Guardian, Harvard Transition, Scheer Intelligence at KCRW, Grub Daily and Truthdig. He is the winner of Salon's best essay of 2017. His essays have also appeared in Harvard's Kennedy School Review, Pangyrus magazine, and The Huffington Post.
Asking people about their salary history in interviews perpetuates discrimination. Let's give it a rest.
The Reading Room: An extract from the new memoir about a boy who escaped war in Somalia only to land on the battlefield of American racism.
Overworked, burnt out, and reduced to food banks - healthcare workers tell us why letting our NHS implode is even more dangerous than taking to the picket lines.
Ella is a freelance journalist specialising in worker's rights, youth culture, social affairs and lifestyle. You can find her work in Tribune Magazine, Huck Magazine, Novara Media, VICE, Dazed, metro.co.uk and The Lead.
Marie Le Conte is a French-Moroccan freelance political journalist based in London. She writes for, among others, the New Statesman, the Guardian, GQ, Vogue, the Sunday Times and the Independent. Her latest book, Escape: How A Generation Shaped, Destroyed And Survived The Internet, is out now.
The wake-like atmosphere at the conference was a grim backdrop to the prime minister's increasingly hysterical-sounding optimism.
Dr Naomi Elster is Director of Research and Communications for a cancer research charity. As a scientist she was involved in getting a new breast cancer therapy to clinical trial, and as a journalist she covered science and women’s health, for which she was co-recipient of a national award. She campaigned for abortion decriminalisation in Ireland and led a mental health-themed creative magazine. She is passionate about the potential of research to improve lives, healthcare disparities, and gender equality.
Taj Ali is a writer with a focus on class and socio-economic inequality. His work has previously appeared in the Huffington Post, Metro and The Independent.
Membership is growing, and support for strikes is on the up. But they are not yet the united national force they could be.
Derek Bardowell is the author of Giving Back, which reimagines philanthropy through a reparative lens and CEO of Ten Years’ Time. His first book No Win Race was a Sunday Times and Financial Times Book of the Year in 2019. Derek is a Thirty Percy Foundation and Mission 44 trustee.
Kwasi Kwarteng's budget is cosplay Reaganomics - but the UK cannot possibly recover in the same way America did.
Dimi Reider is a journalist and an editor, including at The Lead. He is a co-founder of +972 Magazine, and his writing has appeared everywhere from The New York Times to Haaretz and from Foreign Affairs to the London Review of Books. He also spent some time as a senior editor at Newsweek, but he doesn't like to talk about it much. Dimi is also a facilitator with background in conflict mediation and currently focusing on journalism and trauma.
James is an economist and director of the Progressive Economy Forum.
Cira Robinson, Ballet Black’s principal dancer, on humble beginnings, overcoming elitism, and building true inclusivity.
Three things to remember: It's not your fault, it's policy; you're not alone; and you can survive this.
Leah is an award-winning documentary director and journalist with roots in international current affairs and an editor at The Lead. Their film The Mortician of Manila, the story of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs through the eyes of an undertaker, was long-listed for an Academy Award, nominated for a Grierson Award and has won over twenty awards around the world. Leah became an ex-deputy foreign editor at Sky News after driving an armoured personnel carrier into the City of London during the 2009 G20 protests with a performance art group called the Space Hijackers.
Krista is a writer and award-winning social justice activist from Hackney, East London. An expert in child poverty and working in community development for Volunteer Centre Hackney, she's the founder of the Hackney Community Closet, a volunteer-led non-profit focused on empowering families and communities through the gift economy. She is the author of a series of childrens' non-fiction books and is working on her first novel.
The pandemic gave us the space to redress imbalances in our working lives. Is it time to rekindle the fight for a four-day working week?
Serena is a news editor at Dazed and a columnist for Prospect. She has previously written for Vice, Refinery29, Huck, i-D, British Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and Grazia.
Yes, prices could crash. No, it won’t help you.
Journalist Faima Bakar explains why ignoring climate change will devastate the planet and Tory re-election hopes.
Institutional philanthropy has a problem - but there are better ways to support charitable causes.
Travel chaos, dystopian politics, a distinct lack of sex - this is why summer 2022 was a flop.
Natalie is a journalist, podcast host, and the author of Mixed/Other - she specialises in social justice, inequality, lifestyle, health and wellbeing, and everything in-between. When she's not writing and editing for The Lead, you can find her work in the Guardian, Metro, Stylist, gal-dem, the Independent, and others. Mancunian living in London.
Bethan is a freelance features writer and producer specialising in pop culture. She loves asking people way too many questions and gets her ideas from conversations at the pub or listlessly scrolling through social media. You can find her work in Vice, iD, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, Metro UK, Pink News and now, here at The Lead.
Andy West is the author of The life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy (Picador 2022). His writing has been published in The Guardian, Aeon, 3AM Magazine, and Huck. He is philosopher in residence at HMP Brixton in London.
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Chaminda Jayanetti is a freelance journalist specialising in social affairs - housing, welfare and public services. He regularly writes for the Observer, Politics Home and Byline Times.
Jon is a freelance writer and the organiser of campaign group Right To Roam - a group fighting for free, fair and informed access to land and water throughout England.
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