I, maybe naively, think this won’t be permanent. But right now, I can’t imagine just how difficult it is to be trans (or enby) right now. @davidkr.bsky.social writes on one of the most shameful legal cases in UK history. livesrunning.wordpress.com/2025/04/16/t...

Shunning, Schulman writes, is arbitrary. Shunning prevents the departee from learning necessary valuable lessons. In this account, all departures are bad, even the victim of sustained physical violence, shunning the domestic home under threat of death. davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/when-confl...

Ahead of @davidkr.bsky.social's book Comrade Delta, on the 2013 scandal in the Socialist Workers Party, DK Renton assesses the recent changes at the top of the party, asking 'Is it time to forgive the SWP?' davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/is-it-time...

Of the critics who were mocked, humiliated, threatened with violence, spat on, lied about, or had to watched in horror as the SWP tried to drive them out of the labour movement – to which is the party now willing to admit it did wrong? davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/is-it-time...

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

Between 1965 and 1980, dozens of the best-known musicians in Britain were collectors of Nazi regalia… tribunemag.co.uk/2025/12/thir...

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. 🧵👇

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...

"...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.

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.

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

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 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...

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...

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.

A Substack on Charlie Kirk's killer and how the story has changed about his likely politics davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/on-charlie...

"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...

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...

"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...

"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...

New Substack from me - John Wyndham, the war, repressed men, and why they don't make Tories like they used to... davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/how-a-sci-...

"The spirit of industrial places, of children’s exuberance, of parental fear..." Me for the Mechanics Institute Review on the history of English folk legend, Jenny Greenteeth mironline.org/non-fiction/...

A Substack on Arne Slot, leadership, innovation and grief davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/leadership...

"My face had been below the water’s surface with my feet beneath me, I gasped for air, the water invaded my lungs & I could not breathe." Me, for Labour Hub, on how I came to write my version of Jenny Greenteeth - labourhub.org.uk/2025/08/27/s... Book out today - shorturl.at/aQU98

‘The court’s concession that the group’s members are not terrorists in the ordinary sense of the term is significant and its importance will increase: any finding that proscription is proportionate will be hard to sustain.’ David Renton on Palestine Action: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

New Substack from me, in which I talk about working with Stand up to Racism - and what it's like to be made into a non-player character in the psychodrama of someone else's imagined script ("we are the revolutionary party and we're taking on the state"- yeah, about that...) shorturl.at/lt1FT

This work of love and rage will be out in May next year with Haaymarket; it's for anyone who cares about Marx (Eleanor, of course), HG Wells, Albie Sachs, Victor Hugo, Jean Améry, Hannah Arendt, György Lukács, Leon Trotsky, Victor Serge...

New video for my book - The Story of Jenny Greenteeth: By one who knew her. shorturl.at/XLuYc New #urbanhorror #folkhorror. £3.99 on kindle. Fear has changed sides With big thanks to Matt Saywell and Natalie Melton

A Substack from me asking an old question; are there features of our social life which point beyond the limits of capitalism? davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/where-are-...

My review of the new OR books collection - essays to resist Trump livesrunning.wordpress.com/2025/08/09/a...

First time I've ever been in Publishers Marketplace. Book due out in May next year

An interview with Matt Collins (the man played by Stephen Graham in the Walk-in) in which we discuss Nazis, forgiveness… how to defeat the new far right www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/what...

On Edward Fairfax, early modern poet and witch-hunter open.substack.com/pub/davidren...

“My grandparents fled Hitler, today in London someone screamed ‘filth’ in my face” – Garden Court barrister & author David Renton writes in the Daily Mirror about a counter-demonstration he went on to support refugees and defend them from protest. Read on here: 🔽 tinyurl.com/9s7m7hzf

"Refugees aren’t just grunt labour, they’re desperate to show us their talents, if only we’d let them." My piece for the Sunday Mirror on today's protests at the Thistle Barbican: www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...

‘The court’s concession that the group’s members are not terrorists in the ordinary sense of the term is significant and its importance will increase: any finding that proscription is proportionate will be hard to sustain.’ David Renton on Palestine Action, online now: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Deboxing #themellowcut #asmixedbyBen

Defend the refugees at the Thistle Hotel Saturday - 2nd August - 1230. Thistle City Barbican Hotel, 120 Central street EC1V 8DS

‘Whether this was the court’s intention or not, the practical meaning of its decision was that anything can be classed as support.’ David Renton (@davidkr.bsky.social) on the legal challenge to the Palestine Action ban, online now from the next issue: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Post from me in today’s @lrb.co.uk reflecting on the Palestine Action judgment