Marxist. Trade Unionist. Socialist-feminist. Author. Poet. Speaker. Tutor. RMT ex-Exec. Workers' Liberty. Autie. Bi. PUFC fan.
Pages from (or about) the past. Those who do not learn from its mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
UCL Roberts Building, Room G08, Torrington Place, London WC1E 7JE From the Poplar Rates Revolt in the 1920s to the Clay Cross Rent Rebels in the 1970s, there is a history of left-wing Labour Councillors refusing to implement Conservative … Read More
“Freedom is always The freedom of dissenters” Rosa Luxemburg
Janine Booth speaking at a meeting on Public Transit Struggles in London and Toronto in August 2015. The meeting was organised by the Socialist Project and also included speakers from Toronto-based campaigns for better public transport.
A reflection on my son visiting the Stonewall Inn because of his passionate commitment to LGBT equality, only to find that he couldn’t go in. I remember the age of consent cut from twenty-one A landmark among the battles our … Read More
In 1848, in response to the 300-strong Convention for Woman’s Rights in Seneca Falls (USA) and its Declaration of Sentiments, a Philadelphia newspaper urged the city’s ladies not to join the new movement and become women but to stay as … Read More
If Nicholas Winton were saving the children today His Transport of Kindness would camp out in fear at Calais Compassion is easier cast back through history’s mist Abhorrence for migrants but Oscars for Schindler’s List No humans may cross here, … Read More
They’ve thresholds, scabs, and if you’re rude On pickets, then they’ll jail you Perhaps their Bill may still include Transportation to Australia This isn’t fairness as they say Look, we know what class war is If Tolpuddle’s Martyrs were here … Read More
Venue: Birkbeck College, London Well-resourced, accessible, safe public transport would be a key component of the infrastructure of a sustainable, rationally-run society. But capitalism is not making such a great job of it. Transport is generally inadequate, profit-driven, understaffed, and not … Read More
Written on the centenary of the start of the appalling slaughter that was the Gallipoli campaign in World War One: Rank corpses carpeted Gallipoli At Russell’s Top, Lone Pine and Suvla Bay By bullet, bayonet or dysentery Eight months of … Read More
Janine will be speaking about the experience of the London Underground Public-Private Partnership at a workshop at the World Social Forum, hosted by Observatoire Tunisien de l’Economie. The workshop will bring together campaigners against PPP, and the London Underground experience is rich … Read More
Presentation by Janine Booth at AutismCon, January 2015
The WSF was the organisation led by Sylvia Pankhurst, which had previously been the Workers’ Suffrage Federation, and before that, the East London Federation of the Suffragettes. It had previously fought militantly, first for votes for women, and then more … Read More
Thanks to the TUC Library for asking me to write this guest blog post, published here. And for existing. Guest post on Minnie Lansbury and the WEA archive collections This guest blog post is written by Janine Booth, who recently visited … Read More
Janine will be giving an illustrated talk about Minnie Lansbury – East End Suffragette, socialist, school teacher, champion of the victims of war, rebel councillor and my hero! as the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the East London History Society. Venue: Latimer … Read More
Publikshed in Soildarity 350, 21 January 2015: During the 1914-18 war, well over 2,000 people wrote published poetry in the UK. Most of them were not soldiers writing from the trenches. The “soldier poets” such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried … Read More
Back in 2009. Docklands publications The Wharf published this review of Janine’s book, ‘Guilty and Proud of it: Poplar’s rebel councillors and guardians 1919-1925’.
My recommended First World War reading – from this selection of recommendations by socialists in Solidarity 347, 10 December 2014. The Home Front by Sylvia Pankhurst We are less than half a year into four years of commemoration of the centenary of … Read More
An article published in Workers’ Liberty no.66 in 2001, which turned out to be a precursor to my 2009 book, Guilty and Proud Of It. In Hackney, east London, the Labour/Tory coalition administration – the first in Britain since World War … Read More
When an officer was killed in World War One, the British Army told his next of kin by telegram. Lower-ranked men’s deaths were reported on Form B104-82. ‘Calamity’ is a poem by E.H. Visiak. Private Ted was my great uncle. … Read More