Ash Sarkar


Ash Sarkar is a British journalist and left-wing political activist. She is a senior editor at Novara Media and teaches at the :nl:Sandberg Instituut|Sandberg Institute. In 2017, she taught Global Politics at Anglia Ruskin University as an associate lecturer. Sarkar is a contributor to The Guardian and The Independent.

Early life and education

Sarkar grew up in Palmers Green, North London and was raised by her mother, a social worker. Sarkar's great-great-aunt, Pritilata Waddedar, was a Bengali nationalist who participated in armed struggle against the British Empire in 1930s Bengal. Her grandmother is a hospital carer. Her mother is a social worker who was an anti-racist and trade union activist in the 1970s and 1980s, helping to organise marches after the racially motivated murder of Altab Ali. Sarkar says that, as a child, her mother briefly met Mao Zedong while in Beijing.
She attended a comprehensive school before moving to a selective grammar school for sixth form education. She gained undergraduate and master's degrees in English Literature from University College London.

Career

Sarkar is a senior editor at Novara Media and teaches at the :nl:Sandberg Instituut|Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. In 2017, she taught Global Politics at Anglia Ruskin University as an associate lecturer.
She is a contributor to The Guardian and The Independent.

Political views, controversies and reception

In her writings and commentary, Sarkar has expressed anti-imperialist, feminist, anti-fascist, and libertarian communist views. She has taken part in anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-Trump protests and joined a hunger strike to protest against the detention of asylum seekers at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre. She supported the Stansted 15's actions against deportation flights. 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.
Sarkar's writing and broadcasting makes liberal use of humour and London slang, and she has written that politics "should be joyful and exuberant."
Although she only became a Labour Party member during the UK General Election campaign in late 2019, Sarkar has become closely associated in media commentary with Jeremy Corbyn's democratic socialist project: The Times has described her as "Britain's loudest Corbynista".
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. Sarkar declared: "I'm on Team Hate".
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".
In September 2018, Sarkar defended anti-Zionist activist Ewa Jasiewicz, who had spraypainted "Free Gaza and Palestine" onto a wall of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Personal life

Sarkar lives in North London and is a Tottenham Hotspur supporter. She is a Muslim.