DK Renton

Did Your Party's conference do enough to turn the tide of its disastrous beginnings? Corbyn and Sultana's new party is likely to benefit from factors for which it can claim no credit.

Corbyn and Sultana's new party is likely to benefit from factors for which it can claim no credit.

New from David Renton on The Lead as he considers what next for Your Party

Third Reich ’n’ Roll A new book reflects on the music industry’s disturbing obsession with Nazi aesthetics and ideology — ranging over unexpected examples of fascist fetishism, and celebrating those who challenged it.

Between 1965 and 1980, dozens of the best-known musicians in Britain were collectors of Nazi regalia…

tribunemag.co.uk/2025/12/thir...

In defence of jury trials rs21 - revolutionary socialism in the 21st century

DK Renton argues that David Lammy’s proposal to severely cut the number of jury trials is another authoritarian step by Labour.

revsoc21.uk/2025/11/30/i...

Here is a list of reasons why some of my hearings and trials this year have been delayed and kicked off into the long grass, stuck in our record court backlog. Serious allegations which will now be tried *years* after the event. 🧵👇

Yes, this weekend’s Conference is Your Party’s last chance – but don’t assume we’ll blow it This Saturday and Sunday, delegates will be gathering at Liverpool ACC’s conference centre to discuss the founding of a new party.

In a number of towns and cities, local activists have ignored the leadership contest and pressed on with local organising. Where people have done that – as we have in Islington – we’ve enjoyed the experience

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/yes-this-w...

Let’s put the politics back in: On a new history of the Anti-Nazi League

"...Telling the story of the Anti-Nazi League without giving equal weight to Rock Against Racism is like telling a version of Romeo and Juliet in which Romeo delivers his lines, while cutting Juliet’s words back to him..."

On a new history of the 70s

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/lets-put-t...

it would probably be sorta hard for just anyone to do it *this well* because it requires you to actually be normal about trans people, but still it feels important to state for the record that WE ARE NOT HARD TO STAND UP FOR AND ANY OF THEM COULD DO IT.

It comes as close as anything does to taking that side of fascism seriously: Saunders, Jenks, the infiltration of the NFU in the 40s and 50s…

Thanks for sharing. Did you ever read the Coupland book? Have often wondered how that generation felt, to people who actually farm.

Breaking the state rs21 - revolutionary socialism in the 21st century

In his final article on rs21’s key political ideas, DK Renton explains why we can’t take over the state – we need to smash it to create a new world of freedom.

revsoc21.uk/2025/10/10/b...

Splits, rows and even legal threats have dogged the first few months of what was supposed to be a new start for the left in Britain.

For The Lead, left-wing veteran David Renton dives into just what went wrong for Your Party🧵

Friends and comrades made a crowdfunding page for my family.

It’s really hard to post this. I know that there are a lot of other important issues asking for money but things have gotten to the point where we need to open ourselves up to your support.

Thank you for your consideration.

Rutgers professor moving to Europe after threats over antifa accusations Mark Bray says threats intensified after a Turning Point USA petition accused him of promoting political violence

One of many terrible parts of this is Rutgers' utter uselessness in helping Professor Bray. Rutgers isn't alone: universities are failing their community members—faculty, staff, and students alike—when it comes to doxxing and digital safety. And they've been failing them for years.

"...Of all Corbyn’s many controversial friendships, the one which has the potential to cause most damage to his legacy is Karie Murphy..."

Me for @theleaduk.bsky.social

"‘No Socialist looks on “outrages” as a virtue or thinks that violence can ever be anything but a miserable necessity,’ Eleanor Marx acknowledged. But whatever crime the Fenians had committed, there was ‘a greater criminal’: ‘the English Government’"

Me for @rs21.bsky.social on internationalism

Me for @truthout.org on the Pal Action protests

"Those arrested included nurses, Anglican priests, the former editor of the doctors’ magazine, the British Medical Journal. They waited without grumbling in the hot summer sun, ageing limbs made painful by the police’s slow processing of the crowd."

Out next May

"Renton rescues ‘forgiveness' from the pulpit and returns it, bloodied but lucid, to history. With a barrister’s intolerance for cant and a socialist’s contempt for vicarious absolution, he shows that forgiveness with justice is radical realpolitik"
—Richard Seymour

shorturl.at/WWeS5

Cover reveal:
Comrade Delta The 2013 Crisis in Britain’s Largest Far-Left Party

“An honest, balanced & well-documented account of an appalling episode” Ian Birchall

"An impeccably researched reckoning with the causes of a catastrophic betrayal" Sophie Lewis

Out in July 2026

shorturl.at/emntq

Anti-fascism needs culture West Runton punks, 1979 - Syd Shelton

How are you supposed to talk down your racist uncle if the only person he’ll listen to it’s the AI on his Android? Or the attention economy which cocoons our enemy – sending their cadres picures of crowds singing Allah is a Pedo?

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/anti-fasci...

The End of Chemo The picture was taken on Friday, it’s the last photograph of me in the chemo ward at UCLH.

"The worst was four weeks when it spread to my mouth. It was as if some torturer-antagonist was burning my jawbone with an oxyacetaline torch. The hospital recommended I drink salt water. “Just a placebo,” the consultant told me at our next appointment

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

If that’s how that part of the piece comes over, it wasn‘t my intention! I agree that we need more and better

A Substack from me, addressing the consequences of the Tommy Robinson movement last weekend. We probably won't see more marches on that scale this year. What will happen, though, is a huge boost of energy for Farage and Reform

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/tommy-robi...

Charlie Kirk’s death – and the return of the US street right Wired published a good piece this week, warning that in response to the Charlie Kirk news, you’re starting to see a reemergence of the street right in the US.

Me, with some worries about the signs of the re-emergence of the US street right

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/charlie-ki...

My granddad's cousin went to Spain in early '37 to fight the fascists and kept a diary of his experience. One entry read that he'd been shown how to clean his rifle by another, more experienced, Englishman by the name of Eric Blair. So yeah, I think we all know what Orwell would think.

On Charlie Kirk's murder - and the perils of commenting too fast We're on day three of the response to the killing.

A Substack on Charlie Kirk's killer and how the story has changed about his likely politics

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/on-charlie...

The workers have the power rs21 - revolutionary socialism in the 21st century

"In 1968, when students rose up at the Sorbonne, few of them had read any Marx. And yet one of their most powerful slogans of their movement was a radical simplification and restatement of Marx’s theories: ‘The boss needs you, you don’t need him.’”

revsoc21.uk/2025/09/12/t...

On fighting Robinson badly; and how else to understand him This Saturday, Tommy Robinson will march through central London.

Me, on the left and the odd idea that we need Tommy Robinson to be a Nazi in order to justify fighting him

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/on-fightin...

If it's any consolation Peadar, I don't know either!

Jenny Greenteeth, reluctant monster - Overland literary journal A creature of places, not of books — that’s how we should understand Jenny Greenteeth. She once belonged to specific, forgotten, sites: the cold, dark, moorland Black Pool on the way to Butterdon Hill...

"There must have been, at the beginning of her myth, some moments of genuine tragedy: the parents whose prodigal died, the brothers and sisters left bereft…”

Me, for Overland, on the myth of Jenny Greenteeth - overland.org.au/2025/09/jenn...

Reform and revolution rs21 - revolutionary socialism in the 21st century

"When I think of socialism, it seems to me that we are an alternative family, gathered round a table, all of us comrades yet far from all agreed. We challenge one another because we are trying to work out how to bring the system down..."

Me, for rs21

revsoc21.uk/2025/09/05/r...