Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
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The 1984-5 miners’ strike – while Thatcherism won, working-class resistance was not defeated
IAN LAVERY MP, who took part in – and was arrested on – the great strike, looks back on the significance of this heightened period of class struggle
WOMEN TO THE FORE: The Welsh contingent of miner’s wives and their supporters cross Westminster Bridge during a protest march enroute to a rally at Burgess Park, London on August 11 1984
BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
AS A CHILD of the ’60s growing up in Ashington, Northumberland, my life was defined by coal. The entire community owed its existence to the mining industry, the schools I attended, the leisure facilities I used, the doctors’ surgeries and hospitals were all built by the miners.
Forty years ago, in February 1984 I was a mining craft apprentice at Ellington Colliery, just a few miles north of my home town. Having recently turned 21, I enjoyed the lifestyle afforded to me by a vibrant mining community that worked hard and played hard. While rumours of industrial strife persisted, I was very much unaware of the turmoil that soon was to engulf the industry I worked in. The next year would put immense strain on coalmining families and communities and have far-reaching consequences.
When the strike reached the Northumberland coalfield, I had a decision to make. As an indentured apprentice we were exempt from taking part in the strike and told by the union to attend work. My dad, a strident supporter of the National Union of Mineworkers, for the first time in his working life, advised against following the union’s line. He told me I should not be going to work; it was the best advice I have ever received.
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PETER LAZENBY is fascinated by a book of cartoons that shows how newspaper cartoonists were employed to, on the one hand, denigrade and, on the other, to defend the miners’ strike of 1984-85
Remembering KEN CAPSTICK, vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers Yorkshire Area
With solidarity coming in from across Britain and the world, PETER LAZENBY speaks to the people who made Christmas 1984 a celebration of working-class resistance in Britain’s striking coalmining communities