 We at Navara Media are all incredibly sad to pass on the news that Dawn Foster, a brilliant journalist, committed socialist and longtime friend of this organization, has tragically passed away. Dawn was only 34 and she died suddenly at her home after suffering from a long-term illness. Dawn, I'm sure most of our audience will be very, very familiar with her. She was a staff writer at Jacobin and before that a columnist at The Guardian. She was well known in particular for her uncompromising reporting on injustice across the UK that was particularly related to housing, social welfare and disability. Lots of topics that so many people in mainstream journalism just don't care about. That was her passion. She reported on people who were ignored by mainstream journalism and I think that's why people valued her so highly and why it's been so devastating to hear the news this week. She was a rare routine being a working-class woman who rose up to become a prominent national opinion writer, a regular on the BBC, a regular on Sky, lots of other mainstream platforms, always arguing passionately for the left, defending the principles of socialism often in very difficult circumstances and she did it remarkably well. She also has appeared on Navarra Media regularly since 2015 on FM's, on Tiskey Sour, on The Fix when we had that show. Has always been a really, really good friend of the show, really generous with her time, a real privilege to have her on board with our project over various times. I also have to say from my own experience, as well as an incredibly sharp intellect, a brilliant individual, always the life of a party, incredibly generous with her time, with her thoughts, very funny. Now, we're going to talk about what Dawn meant to Navarra and the left in a moment. First of all, for anyone who is unfamiliar with Dawn's work and as I say, I imagine most people watching this will be, I want to read a couple of extracts from her writing which I think really summarise what was so exceptional about her as a journalist. Now, this first extract is from a Guardian piece from 2015 and this was on living life with a chronic illness. He usually visits to doctors are rare, trips to hospital rare as still. Your body is temporarily malfunctioning. It is medicine's job to fix you. But when you're chronically ill, the equilibrium shifts and your attitude to your body does too. If sickness is a sign of being broken, coming to terms with the fact that you are going to be broken forever is a tremendous blow. Nothing brings this home more than the never ending NHS headed appointment letters, blood tests, scans and consultations. You know more about your body than you ever imagined. I've told no end of nurses that they'll find it impossible to get blood out of my bloody terrible veins, consultants, medical terminology without a butterfly needle. I'm lucky. I'm as functional as most healthy people despite multiple chronic health conditions. But at the same time, I'm reminded that I could die at any point from an epileptic seizure or that the genetic condition that causes constant pain could with little warning advance to make me lose the ability to walk. Now, obviously, the circumstances in which we're having this discussion make that all the more heartbreaking to read. Now, the topic which has come up most often on social media, and I do really recommend, sorry, if you haven't been on Twitter over the past 24 hours, just search Dawn Foster, see all of the wonderful things people are writing about her all the wonderful memories people are sharing because it is a real real credit to her. But as I say that the thing that which comes up a lot in terms of her writing is housing and also Grenfell. I want to go to a section from a 2017 piece from Jacob in this was written on the day of the fire. Then Dawn wrote Margaret Thatcher famously argued that there was no such thing as society. It was an idea that did immense damage, particularly to those who need social housing. But in places like West London on days like today, it is proven wrong in a fundamental way. The local community pulled together offering places to stay taking donations, donations, coordinating resources. The volume of rage at the tragedy and the fact that it seems so preventable has forced politicians to promise investigations. The battle now is to ensure that this anger is turned into change. Survivors must be properly housed. Those who could have prevented the fire must be held accountable. People living in similarly dangerous conditions across the country must be given urgent assistance. The housing crisis must be tackled. As one resident told me, many people will have died locked in their homes aware that nobody had cared for their safety while they lived. The only way to change a world where that can happen is through political action. I think that sentence is is a very important one to end on the only way to change a world where that can happen is through political action. Someone at such a young age dying is so tragic, whoever they are. I know lots of, we share lots of friends who will be in deep mourning now. I wanted you to talk I suppose on a broad term of what Dawn Foster and her work meant for Navara and the broader UK left. She was fearless journalist, woman, socialist. She was formidable and I saw somebody posted on Instagram and I thought it was, it summed her right up. She was the opposite of a sycophant. Dawn was pathologically, constitutionally incapable of being obsequious, of being servile. She could only tell the truth and it didn't always advance her career. It wasn't always necessarily in her best interest but that's who she was. It curtailed her progression in the industry massively. In terms of her relationship to Navara and she still did so extraordinarily well and like I say from her background, she was always defying the odds. To do that while retaining that honesty I think is remarkable, it's singular I think in Britain. In terms of her relationship to Navara, I mean she was always incredibly generous, very close friends with James Butler, of course, my co-founder. She would always make time to come on the show in the early days and to offer advice or tips and she was just always there and she was very, very aware of the fact that we needed to change politics in this country and that wasn't just going to come from some particular person, even if it was Jeremy Corbyn, leading the Labour Party. Dawn knew that we had to create a movement in this country, in the media, in organised labour, of course in party politics and social movements. She was somebody who was ready to be a part of that and to make serious sacrifices for that, to build a better country, a better planet and so somebody like that with that energy, that passion, that constant determination to always just be brutally honest, she never punched down, it's important to say. I can't recall her ever punching down. It's remarkable and so for her to pass it, I think 34, deeply, deeply, deeply sad, I say that as somebody who knew her but I think it's just, she had so much to say, she had, I know that she was working on a larger project around housing around Grenfell, I don't know how that progressed, I think the last time I spoke to her was maybe about 18 months ago, face to face, unsurprisingly, maybe two years ago at a Grenfell solidarity demo, she was working on something then, this was probably two years ago, she wants to give a voice to people that didn't have a voice in this country and so obviously it's just terrible that somebody so spectacularly unique has gone. But I think that's the important thing to say is that she was, she was the opposite of so much that we criticise the media for in this country, Michael. You know, we talk about sycophants and civility and doing whatever you have to do to progress in the industry, she never did any of that and she still scaled the heights, so rest in peace. I also think and I've been, I suppose, reflecting on this a lot over the past 24 hours, she was also quite rare as a commentator on the left because I think we often, I do this myself, you fall into this situation of thinking about short-term tactics, your, I think about this especially in terms of the second referendum, I mean, I always thought the second referendum was a bad idea, then by 2019 I was like, oh, let's go for it, trying to win over this section of the electorate, this section of the commentary, et cetera, et cetera. Dawn never did any of that. She didn't give a fuck when it came to issues like that. Her purpose was clear, which was to represent voiceless people, to talk about the issues she cared about, housing, poverty, austerity. She didn't flap about with sort of the moralism that I try not to fall into, but you know, looking back at sort of how I've engaged in politics over the past five years, I can't help it, I do it all the time, and I can't think of a single instance where Dawn got distracted or caught up in that debate where there's all these people saying, oh, the left there, you know, this, that, this, that, and we have to defend ourselves. No, we're not this, that, this, that. She's just like, who gives a fuck about this? And I really, really respect that. I knew Dawn for maybe 10 years. She was there covering the UK and Cup processes in 2010, we would clash different personalities, and that would happen with other people. It's important to say this, but I can honestly say whenever I had a disagreement there and then somebody was sort of, you know, people have conversations or I would try and there was some once I tried to sort of mend a rift between her and somebody else, never once politically did I think she was wrong. Never once, never. I might have disagreed with the tone of what she said or whatever, but she was a comrade. And that's a really, really important thing to say, Michael, really important thing to say, because, you know, like I say, when you, when you had a disagreement, generally over how the point was made, rather than the actual substance of the point itself, you put it to one side and say, no, no, politically she is sound. She is really up there with, with, with almost always getting things right. And like you say, there wasn't this flapping around trying to be, you know, morally right. She had a real hard heart, not in a bad way, in a very, very good way. She was an incredibly resolute, formidable woman. There's not many people you can say that for, Michael. I really, honestly, there's very few people I can say politically. I don't, I don't recall ever actually disagreeing with something they said, the political substance of it. I mean, we should clarify, obviously, she cared about being morally right, but it was not caring about being seen to be morally right. That's what makes people on, well, people across the political spectrum, but especially, you know, I fall into it being seen to be morally right, you know, matters as much as, you know, actually holding the position you, you believe in. I want to go to a couple of, of comments. Juliet Jakes says, rest in power. Dawn, one of the smartest, most uncompromising and hilarious people I met, utterly dedicated to her class over her career. Thanks for covering this terrible loss. And Sal says, Dawn was a journalist who put principles before career, the country would be a much better place if more in her industry did the same. Really lovely comments. As I say, I really do, you know, recommend go on Twitter, search Dawn Foster, see all the wonderful things people are saying about her at the moment, because you will see how much she meant to so many people. We posted on Instagram, sort of a carousel of images commemorating Dawn's passing. And I think the final one talked about how she should really be an inspiration to people that wants to join the media to be journalists. And I thought what Juliet Jakes said there was on the money. She put her class over her career. And that is again, incredibly rare, Michael. You know, we do at Navarra media what we do, because we believe in a set of political values and we want to advance them. That's why we started the organization. But Dawn, I mean, somehow, somehow did that in the confines of the mainstream media, which is incredibly difficult, but she managed to do it. And she made some hugely important interventions. If I recommend you to do one thing this weekend is go and look up what Dawn Foster has written over the past 10 years. Explore her work. Watch the intervention she's made on YouTube. And yeah, my thoughts go out to everyone who was really close to her. I know there are a lot of people hurting this weekend.