Israel continues to operate with impunity in what seems to be a brutal and protracted experiment, while much of the world looks on, says RAMZY BAROUD
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The biggest petition: the Chartists’ demand for the vote, April 1848
Forget Farage and the recent daft demands for a new election against Labour: the greatest petition Britain has ever known gathered millions of names demanding the right to vote — and it didn’t work either, writes KEITH FLETT
TRULY MASSIVE: The great
Chartist meeting on Kennington
Common in London in 1848, was
supported by an even bigger petition
A new report by Amnesty International pulls no punches in highlighting the Labour government’s human rights violations of those on benefits, says Dr DYLAN MURPHY
With Reform UK surging and Labour determined not to offer anything different from the status quo, a clear opportunity opens for the left, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
A recent Immigration Summit heard from Lord Alf Dubs, who fled the Nazis to Britain as a child. JAYDEE SEAFORTH reports on his message that we need to increase public empathy with desperate people seeking asylum
By sticking together, working collectively and building the union, we can weather any uncertainty ahead, writes general secretary of Usdaw PADDY LILLIS
The announcement of a Women’s Justice Board should be cautiously welcomed, writes SABINA PRICE, but we need to see a recognition that our prison system is in crisis and disproportionately punishes some of the most vulnerable people in society
Cuba Solidarity Campaign secretary BERNARD REGAN says the inhuman blockade of Cuba not only continues, but the Donald Trump administration is ratcheting up aggression against both Havana and Latin America more widely
PETITIONING Parliament has been part of the democratic repertoire of contention for many centuries. Some issues might seem unusual in 2024. A recent study has found that 30 per cent of petitions to the House of Commons between 1833 and 1918 were about drink and temperance.
Petitioning has been in the news again because of an online call promoted by Elon Musk and Nigel Farage for a new British general election to be held. It has gathered several million signatures, albeit from 183 countries. It falls very much into a favourite campaigning area of the hard right — that of manufactured outrage.
Moreover, it is certainly nowhere near the largest-ever petition in Britain. In recent times, several around Brexit have been larger. However, we need to look back to the Chartists for a petition that remains the largest in British history.
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Modern Christmas as we know it, with its trees, dinner menu, cards and time off from work, only dates back to the early days of modern socialism as we know it, writes KEITH FLETT, checking in on Marx, Engels and the Chartists in the 1800s
LYNNE WALSH reports from the recent ‘Chartism Day’ conference at Reading University, where sisters of the 19th century Chartist struggle emerged from the pages of history