Check out this brilliant documentary on Rock Against Racism, the movement that crushed the Nazi National Front in Britain in the 70s. Hosted by one of my favourite socialist comedians, Mark Steel, it corrects some of the myths that it was a flash-in-the-pan, extremists fighting extremists, loony left movement. It shows how RAR captured and mobilized an anti-racist sentiment for a broad layer of young people, sparking the Anti-Nazi League. It drew on Trotsky's position on fascism : deny it a public voice by any means necessary. Steel was a part of this movement (as he details in his autobiography) and provides levity to a heavy topic.



And while we're on the topic of British culture, visit The Left Field, the website of the trade union-sponsored tent at Glastonbury 2007. Tons of cool bands, fundraising for the ANL's successor Love Music Hate Racism, addresses by Tony Benn and a Spanish Civil War veteran - there's video footage too. It's a place where the left and trade unions converge, where culture is a means to a message and not an elitist high ground for hipsters, a country where 177,000 people can get together to hear decent music. Not, I repeat not, where I live.