As Palestine Action prisoners go weeks without food, alleging dangerous neglect and detention without trial, campaigners warn that a near-total media blackout is hiding a crisis that could turn fatal – and fuel a growing wave of public anger. ELIZABETH SHORT reports
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1974: when Labour’s radical promises collided with political reality
JOHN ELLISON looks back at the Wilson government’s early months, detailing how left-wing manifesto commitments were diluted, and the challenges faced by Tony Benn in implementing socialist policies
Harold Wilson arrives in Downing St, 1974
As the new party emerges from its founding conference with a bold socialist identity, its future hinges on whether it can provide the organisational clarity needed to turn class sentiment into class power, argues NICK WRIGHT
RICHARD BURGON MP argues the left must build on recent victories and urgently unite around a bold cost-of-living programme
Far-right forces are rising across Latin America and the Caribbean, armed with a common agenda of anti-communism, the culture war, and neoliberal economics, writes VIJAY PRASHAD
Barred from returning home, a group of Greek Brigaders came to Britain and founded the League for Democracy in Greece – a movement that carried the flame of anti-fascist resistance from the 1930s through the cold war and beyond. ALI BASSAM ZAHID tells the story
Your Party can become an antidote to Reform UK – but only by rooting itself in communities up and down the country, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
THE first few months of the Labour government under “slippery” Harold Wilson from March 1974 brought serious departures from the decision-making of the previous Edward Heath Tory government, even though the general election of February 28 had left the Wilson government in an overall minority situation against other parties.
During the winter months Heath had put centre-stage the “unreasonableness” of a pay claim by the miners, and their follow-up industrial action.
Heath’s action plan was comprised of three planks: a declaration of national emergency; a three-day week for workers in industry (in the light of a deliberately exaggerated coal shortage due to the industrial action); and a general election on the issue of “who governs Britain?” Tony Benn had recorded in his diary on January 4: “Well, it is the class war and we have got to face it.”
The election had the look of a referendum about it: what do you want? To back sensible Conservative government or to back “chaos?” Heath was surprised when the count was done — as were the opinion pollsters — to discover that a majority of voters were backing Labour and therefore “chaos.”
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Barred from returning home, a group of Greek Brigaders came to Britain and founded the League for Democracy in Greece – a movement that carried the flame of anti-fascist resistance from the 1930s through the cold war and beyond. ALI BASSAM ZAHID tells the story
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