ROGER McKENZIE highlights how health workers in DRC are struggling to contain a deadly Ebola outbreak in a region already suffering conflict, aid cuts and a legacy of imperialist degradation
VARIOUS members of the royal family have been in the news at the start of 2024 due to a range of health problems. Not for them, of course, the NHS but rather a private clinic in central London. Media coverage has been extensive but I can find no mention of another royal event.
January 30 in 2024 marked the 375th anniversary of the regicide that saw King Charles I executed in Whitehall for treason. Given that there is a powerful lobby on the Tory right that Our Island Story should be told in full and never added to or changed — a point made by Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch — this seems surprising.
Surprising that is until you start to look for historical reminders of the period between 1649 and 1660 when the country was run without the assistance of a monarch.
The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library
It’s not just the Starmer regime: the workers of Britain have always faced legal affronts on their right to assemble and dissent, and the Labour Party especially has meddled with our freedoms from its earliest days, writes KEITH FLETT
STEPHEN ARNELL casts a critical eye over the sudden rash of challenges to the two-party system on both sides of the Atlantic, noting that today’s performative populist politics sadly lacks Roosevelt’s progressive ‘Bull Moose’ vision of the early 20th century
The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT


