On July 7, 2005, the murderous mayhem that Blair's war has sown in Iraq came home to London in a devastating series of suicide bombings. Two weeks later, with apparent impunity, security forces shot dead a young Brazilian electrician on his way to work.

Rough Music is Tariq Ali's riveting response to these events.

He lays bare the vengeful platitudes of Blair's war on civil liberties, mounts a scorching attack on the cozy falsehoods of the government's "consensus" on what the threat amounts to and how to respond, and denounces the corruption of the political-media bubble which allows it to go unchallenged. Finally, invoking the perseverance and integrity of the great dissenters of the past, he calls for political resistance, within parliament and without.