Murray Horton has been an activist for more than sixty years, in Aotearoa, Australia, and the Philippines. At one time an Editor of the University of Canterbury magazine Canta, and then active in the former National Union of Railwaymen, Murray has also been involved with the likes of the Christchurch Progressive Youth Movement, the Philippines…
At the 2025 Labour Party conference, Council of Trade Unions (CTU) President Sandra Grey challenged Labour to “give workers a reason to vote for” them by delivering fundamental, systemic change. She said that Aotearoa New Zealand’s “pavlova paradise” has been “eaten up by the rich,” laying the blame squarely at the feet of the 4th…
Vicky Southworth was a regional councillor at Environment Canterbury for 6 years (2019 to 2022). Prior to this she gained a Master of Water Resource Management from the University of Canterbury and worked as an engineering geologist with a focus on contaminated sites. Vicky will talk about the Nitrate Emergency declaration – what the issue…
The Wellington Socialist Society Presents – Against All Odds: A Public Talk on the Past, Present, and Future of Social Movements in Indonesia, In Conversation with Ben Laksana (Te Herenga Waka). Activism and social movements in Indonesia have been shaped by a long history of anti-communism, state violence, and the repression of popular organising. Drawing…
Join the Wellington Socialist Society and Rebel Press for the launch of Graeme Clarke’s memoir “It’s Not My Fault.” Graeme has spent much of his life in the trade union and socialist movements. He became active as a union delegate in the auto industry and later became a union official. He also became involved in…
On 14 February 1951, waterside workers rejected the shipowners’ wage offer and refused to work overtime. Within two weeks the government had deregistered their union, passed emergency regulations making it a crime to publicly support the union or provide funds, and sent the military onto wharves to do watersiders’ work. For five months, 14,000 watersiders,…
The son of a wealthy British peer, Ivor Montagu (1904–1984) rebelled against his privileged background, becoming a pioneer of film culture, a collaborator of two of the most famous directors of the era, an activist documentary maker and an ardent supporter of Soviet communism. He lobbied for Trotsky to be granted asylum in the UK…
‘In world market crises, all the contradictions of bourgeois production erupt collectively; in particular crises (particular in their content and in extent) the eruptions are only sporadically, isolated and one-sided.’ Theories of Surplus Value – Karl Marx What happens when capitalism reaches its limits? Can the system sustain itself indefinitely, or is collapse built into…
Sara Salman joins us to discuss her recent book, The Shaming State, which examines the erosion of social rights and the political use of shame against people in need, and argues that shame exacerbates the decline of social solidarity in neoliberal western regimes. Her book investigated the vanishing horizon of social rights in the United…
*PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT DATE DIFFERS FROM OUR USUAL SECOND WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH* Childbirth is often described as a natural process, but the decisions we make around birth, the care that is available and the risks we face, are embroiled in the dynamics of the capitalist system in which we live. In…