SOLOMON HUGHES finds the government went along with a US scheme to distract from Israel’s lethal Gaza blockade with an impractical floating pier scheme – though its own officials knew it wouldn’t work
August’s riots echo the dark history of reactionary ‘Church and King’ mobs
Socialist historian KEITH FLETT traces the parallel evolution of violent loyalist rampages and the workers' movement's peaceful democratic crowds, highlighting the stark contrast between recent far-right thuggery and mass Gaza protests
REACTIONARY RAMPAGE:
The house of radical dissenter
Joseph Priestley is destroyed
by a right-wing mob during
the 1791 Birmingham riots
Historically the framework of that expulsion of Palestinians was predicated on the use of war as a pretext, as opposed to war as a response to Palestinian resistance, writes RAMZY BAROUD
VICTORIA HOLMES salutes the brave stand being taken by Palestine Action hunger-strikers in British prisons, and explains their demands
SYMON HILL looks at Tommy Robinson’s bid to use Christmas to spread division and hate — and reminds us that’s the opposite of Jesus’s message
CAMERON HARRISON and CJ ATKINS analyse the White House’s new strategy in detail
DENNIS BROE says media ownership is not only grossly concentrated in the US, Britain and France – new mergers are advancing the power of the rich to censor the news
THE fascist-inspired riots of early August raised again the question of how protest occurs and what form it takes.
Some Tory leadership contenders made entirely specious comparisons with the huge and peaceful marches on Gaza that have taken place since October 2023.
Two entirely different things were being conflated but historically that wasn’t always the case. Until the last years of the 18th century, a riot was the most common and most frequent form of protest.
Before trade unions and working-class political organisations had developed there existed, for example, collective bargaining by riot. An employer would be besieged by workers until they addressed wage demands.
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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
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
DAVID RABY reports on the progressive administration in Mexico, which continues to overcome far-left wreckers on the edges of a teaching union, the murderous violence of the cartels, the ploys of the traditional right wing, and Trump’s provocations
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT