From London’s holly-sellers to Engels’s flaming Christmas centrepiece, the plum pudding was more than festive fare in Victorian Britain, says KEITH FLETT
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The civil refugee rescue fleet is no ‘pull factor’
Speaking to Ben Cowles, Italian researcher MATTEO VILLA debunks the idea that search and rescue operations are encouraging people to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean to Europe
Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
From a lockdown digital project to a vital tool for class solidarity, ROBERT POOLE and HENRY FOWLER reflect on half-a-decade of struggle
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
THE European Union recently agreed to extend its anti-human trafficking naval mission, known as Operation Sophia, for a further six months.
Though ostensibly a military mission, Operation Sophia is thought to have saved close to 50,000 lives in the Mediterranean since it began in 2015, following the outbreak of the so-called “migrant crisis.”
There was one very important caveat to the EU’s extension of Operation Sophia however. The EU agreed not to redeploy the search and rescue (SAR) ships it “temporarily” suspended in April after Italy’s government, then a populist and far-right coalition, threatened to veto the entire mission.
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The irrational hatred towards Russia within Western elites and their subsequent actions put the people of the EU in mortal danger, writes RAINER RUPP