Writing
I am a researcher on arms conversion and international security, having written for peace organisations including CND and CAAT and for trade unions. My recent work is on the creation of a post-carbon and post-militarist economy based on anarchist and syndicalist principles of workers control.
Militarism or Arms Conversion? Labour’s Defence Review and Real Security
The Crisis of Global Imperialism: Security, it seems, can only be measured in ever-higher degrees of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) consumed by the Military-industrial Complex (MIC). The fact that global arms spending already stood at a record $2.4 trillion in 2023… READ MORE
From Progress to Purgatory – A Personal History of the Capitalocene
I was born in 1956, the eldest of four children in an extended family of home-makers, dockers and factory workers. I’m now 67 and, from those early days in Hull through to a working life around the UK, have been an active trade unionist. I care passionately about politics and, despite the obvious setbacks to the labour movement . . . READ MORE
From ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ to Twenty Twenty-Four: How Orwell’s Dystopia Became Our Reality
Big Brother isn’t watching you. Big Brother is stamping on a human face, forever. The essential truth of George Orwell’s great novel, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, is not one of political oppression through state surveillance but through permanent war that serves the material interests of authoritarian elites.… READ MORE
BAE Systems and the Levelling-flat Agenda
In February, the UK Government unveiled its flagship Levelling Up plan to improve opportunities across the country. The UK arms manufacturer BAE Systems claims to be at the forefront of this agenda. Steven Schofield argues that both are highly dubious propositions … READ MORE
Music
My songwriting has focused on a trilogy of albums – Subversion, 2018; Insurrection, 2021; The Commonwealth of Anarchy, 2023; that explore political and environmental themes from the crisis of globalised capitalism and militarism to the vision of an anarchist alternative. I have also written a ‘lockdown’ album of Luddite songs – Underliffe Echoes that was released in 2022.
