Ash Sarkar

Sarkar grew up in North London and was raised by her mother. Sarkar's great-great-aunt, Pritilata Waddedar, was a Bengali nationalist who participated in armed struggle against the British Empire in 1930s Bengal.[5] Her grandmother is a hospital carer.[1] Her mother is a social worker[1] who was an anti-racist and trade union activist in the 1970s and 1980s,[5][6] helping to organise marches after the racially motivated murder of Altab Ali.[6] Sarkar says that, as a child, her mother briefly met Mao Zedong while in Beijing.[7]

She attended a comprehensive school before moving to a selective grammar school for sixth form education.[1] She gained undergraduate and master's degrees in English Literature from University College London.[8]

Sarkar is a senior editor at Novara Media and teaches at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.[9] In 2017, she taught Global Politics at Anglia Ruskin University as an associate lecturer.[1]

She is a contributor to The Guardian[3] and The Independent.[1]

Sarkar at The World Transformed 2017

In her writings and commentary, Sarkar has expressed anti-imperialist,[10] feminist,[11] anti-fascist,[12] and libertarian communist[13] views. She has taken part in anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-Trump protests[14] and joined a hunger strike to protest against the detention of asylum seekers at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre.[15] She supported the Stansted 15's actions against deportation flights.[16] After a clip of her telling Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain that she was "literally a communist!" went viral, Sarkar clarified her views as libertarian communist, a "long termist" who supports Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn's anti-austerity policies.[13][8][17][18]

Sarkar's writing and broadcasting makes liberal use of humour and London slang, and she has written that politics "should be joyful and exuberant."[8]

Although she only became a Labour Party member during the UK General Election campaign in late 2019,[19] Sarkar (and Novara Media more generally) has become closely associated in media commentary with Jeremy Corbyn's democratic socialist project:[20] The Times has described her as "Britain's loudest Corbynista".[1]

In November 2017, responded positively to calls by a speaker at a World Transformed festival to "make the left hate again", pointing to Philip May, husband of the then-Prime Minister, as a legitimate target.[21] Sarkar declared: "I'm on Team Hate".[21]

In January 2018, Sarkar suggested to Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell that the British national anthem be changed to a "grime banger" such as "Wearing My Rolex".[22]

In September 2018, Sarkar attracted controversy by defending anti-Israel activist Ewa Jasiewicz, who had spraypainted "Free Gaza and Palestine" onto a wall of the Warsaw Ghetto.[23]

Sarkar lives in North London[24] and is a Tottenham Hotspur supporter. She is a Muslim.[8]

• Independent – Ash Sarkar
• The Guardian – Ash Sarkar
• Media related to Ash Sarkar at Wikimedia Commons