What we have seen through our initial encounters with mental health activism and mental health organisations and services is a lack of analysis and critique that we have come to expect where our friends and colleagues have engaged in other political, social and environmental issues. Our gut instinct is that mental health, and in fact most kinds of health care, are seen as personal issues that are either best dealt with by professionals or through personal choices such as alternative healthcare, healing or therapeutic communities or alternative self-help groups. In this article we are not pushing for another single issue campaign, or for the exploration of alternatives to mainstream psychology (although we recognise the importance of these). What we are asking is why isn’t health, and especially mental health an issue that we more regularly see as part of our anti-capitalist politics?

The relationship between the WOMBLES and the ESF process has been complex. Our involvement in the social forum discourse started when we were invited to participate in the first London Social Forum (LSF) in October 2003. The LSF had taken a critical position towards the various leftist parties (like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and their front group (Globalise Resistance), who had sought to dominate the ESF mobilising process while actively opposing local social forums. It was clear to us that there were progressive attempts to go beyond the hierarchical characteristics of traditional left politics and engage with the rise of anti-capitalism and its subsequent radicalisation on a grassroots level.

With the start of the world cup this week heralded by St. George’s crosses on cars, in windows and on television screens across the country Shift takes a closer look at the politics of (anti)nationalism and its relationship to international football. Can the world cup be a tool for progressive politics or is it better off left well alone? Two lovers of the beautiful game, Boydell and Carly Lyes, take sides over this tricky subject.

by the Wine and Cheese Appreciation Society of Greater London, published online in April 2010
“Oh yes ”, said Ford with a shrug, “of course”. “But”, said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?” “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard, ” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”1
1
The modern democratic state2 [...]

What we need to do is to create a culture of resistance in our workplaces and communities, a movement which, while fighting capitalism, seeks to replace it. In short, mutualism is not enough – we need revolutionary social movements.

Mass arrests of anarchist activists, squatters and punks are nothing new to Copenhagen. Compared with the battle to protect an autonomous social centre in 2007, the climate protests last December hardly saw the worst of the Danish police.

by Ben Lear, published in issue 8
The build up to this years UN conference on climate change, the COP-15 in Copenhagen, was huge. Both mainstream and alternative media were abuzz with predictions and discussions on the conference and the, almost obligatory, counter-mobilisation. From the Climate Camp at Blackheath to the pages of the Guardian and [...]

Since its beginning, Shift Magazine has been in some kind of dialogue with the radical left in Germany, infusing the current theoretical discourses from over here into UK activist theory. However little has been said about the activist practice in Germany, its political culture and how it may compare to that in the UK.

Everyone from the Conservatives to Labour, the BNP and the Green Party claim to have the most rational solutions for reducing CO2 emissions in the next 10 years (or however many it is until the end of the world). Considering these dire options this article looks at some of the barriers to a radical ecology that would place social and environmental justice at the top of the agenda. In particular, this article looks at three strands of political thinking, the left Greens (e.g. the Green party), the deep ecology movement and the BNP. It investigates the way these three broad groups use the words “indigenous community” a term that has become increasingly loaded with political meaning.

If anarcha-feminists are trying to tackle a feudal form of sexism, where women are actively prevented from participating in political society by a ruling class of men, they are attacking a straw man. The particular form that capitalist patriarchy, or patriarchal capitalism, takes is of a more structural, indirect kind.