A November 15 protest in Mexico – driven by a right-wing social-media operation – has been miscast as a mass uprising against President Sheinbaum. In reality, the march was small, elite-backed and part of a wider attempt to sow unrest, argues DAVID RABY
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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
Despite new European arrests, the evidence presented so far fails to explain the sabotage of the undersea pipelines – and veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s allegations of US responsibility cannot be easily dismissed, writes ROGER McKENZIE
Groups are urging the US government to secure the 16-year old’s release as his mental and physical health decline dramatically after nine months inside Ofer prison, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
MAT COWARD tells the story of the eccentric founder of a short-lived but striking experiment in ‘vital democracy,’ who became best known for giving away his estate to the nation
As figures from Tucker Carlson to Nigel Farage flirt with neofascist rhetoric and mainstream leaders edge toward authoritarianism through war and repression, the conditions that once nurtured Hitlerism re-emerge — yet anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments are also burgeoning anew, writes ANDREW MURRAY
As President Javier Milei is set to unveil a radical rollback of Argentina’s labour laws, unions warn of an unprecedented assault on workers’ rights, says BERT SCHOUWENBURG
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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