TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about
When Henry III had to bow to public opinion
It's hard to think of any single piece of legislation enacted on this island since November 1217 that was more radical in spirit or in practice than the Forest Charter, writes MAT COWARD
MOMENTOUS: (L to R) Henry III of England by David Cole, 1694; The Charter of the Forest, 1225 reissue, held by the British Library
[Public Domain] 
DIANE ABBOTT exposes the misconceptions, rumours and downright lies perpetrated around immigration issues
With 12,000 fewer teachers since 2010 and dwindling resources, Scotland’s schools desperately need investment to support diverse learners rather than empty promises from politicians, writes ANDREA BRADLEY
Reversing outsourcing is the pre-election promise the government must honour, says Unison general secretary CHRISTINA McANEA
EMAN ABU ZAYED reminisces about the perilous time her family and neighbours endured in northern Gaza and how they were forced, in fear of their lives, to flee south
The EIS president who defended Marxist politics in the 1980s fought Thatcherite educational policies while organising Teachers for Peace rallies and ensuring Morning Star circulation in Scotland’s pit villages and factories, writes JOHN FOSTER
THE word “forest” was brought to England by the Normans, and it didn’t have much to do with trees.
A forest was an area of mixed land — fields, scrub, woods, marsh, heath — in which only the king, or those he licensed, were allowed to hunt. The establishment of forests was an attack on the ancient freedoms of the high and the livelihoods of the low which led to centuries of class conflict.
As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle put it, William the Conqueror “set apart a vast deer preserve, and imposed laws concerning it. The rich complained, and the poor lamented, but he was too relentless to care, though all might hate him.”
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‘Honest’ Tom Wharton’s 1682 drunken rampage through St Mary’s church haunted his political career, but his satirical song Lillibullero helped topple Catholic James II during the Glorious Revolution, writes MAT COWARD
MAT COWARD tells of a pioneering suffragette and one of the first direct actionists, who’s commemorated in a street name in Swindon
MAT COWARD unearths Gustav Holst’s radical roots, from meetings at William Morris’s house to pamphlet-printing and agitation with the Red Vicar of Thaxted — and laments that he is remembered today for the entirely wrong reason
MAT COWARD resurrects the radical spirit of early Labour’s overlooked matriarch, whose tireless activism and financial support laid the foundations for the party’s early success