Welcome to Andy Worthington

It’s 35 years since 1,400 police, on the instructions of Margaret Thatcher, violently crushed a convoy of men, women and children trying to get to Stonehenge to establish what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival. The Battle of the Beanfield remains one of the most indefensible episodes of state violence in our lifetimes, and, while it didn’t crush dissent, it paved the way for sustained efforts to do so on the part of successive governments.

As Boris Johnson defends Dominic Cummings’s shameful flouting of the coronavirus lockdown rules back in March and April, the outrage shows no sign of diminishing, as is entirely appropriate. Cummings has shown contempt for all the people who observed the lockdown rules, even when it involved great sacrifice and personal loss, and his refusal to resign – and Johnson’s defence of him – shows how both men believe, very fundamentally, that there is one rule for them, and another for the rest of us. Both of them must go.

The coronavirus is not only threatening the Guantánamo prisoners; it is also leaving them more isolated than ever before. No attorney visits are possible right now, and the International Committee of the Red Cross has suspended its visits for the first time since the prison opened. In response, I’m encouraging you to write to the men still held, to let them know that they haven’t been forgotten.

I look at the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the construction industry in London, enthusing about the shutdown of sites, and hoping that the entire bloated industry will collapse – not only because its developments are either unnecessary or overpriced, or both, but also because the entire industry is so environmentally ruinous. My critique is also part of a wider analysis of the huge drop in emissions since the lockdown began, in which massively reduced car use has played a major part, although this progress will be rapidly undone without a renewed commitment to a permanent reduction in emissions as countries begin to try to ease their way out of lockdown.

Linking to an academic article about my 2007 book “The Guantánamo Files”, which has just been published in the European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies. The article is entitled, “The Use of Power and Ideology in Guantánamo: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Andy Worthington’s The Guantánamo Files.”

My new article about the impact of the coronavirus, with a particular focus on rental problems, both in a domestic context, in which furloughed workers, and those suddenly laid off, are facing unprecedented problems paying their rent, but have received no help from the government, and, in a business context, with numerous businesses, including restaurants and pubs, calling for rents to be suspended to prevent them from going under.

Today I’m marking the eighth anniversary of when I set out on my bike, with my camera, to take photos in all of London’s 120 postcodes. Eight years later, I haven’t stopped, and, in the last seven weeks, I’ve been seeing the capital through new eyes during the unprecedented coronavirus lockdown.

For these lockdown days, have a listen to the six-part, four-hour Radiolab series from New York’s WNYC Studios, ‘The Other Latif’, a detailed exploration of the story of Guantánamo prisoner Abdul Latif Nasser, approved for release but still held, by his namesake, Radiolab’s Latif Nasser.

A link to – and my discussion of – an hour-long interview I recently undertook with Chris Cook in Canada for his Gorilla Radio show. We discussed Guantánamo, the ninth anniversary of WikiLeaks’ release of classified military files relating to the Guantánamo prisoners (on which I worked as media partner), the coronavirus, and how it has changed the world to an extraordinary extent (with both positive and negative repercussions), and my photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London.’ Chris also played ‘This Time Win’, an eco-anthem that is the new single by my band The Four Fathers.

An interview about my activism — involving Stonehenge and the Battle of the Beanfield, Guantánamo, the housing ‘regeneration’ industry in the UK, and the currently unfolding environmental crisis — as published in Gonzo Weekly and International Times, based on questions from the publisher and activist Alan Dearling.