Gloucestershire’s phlebotomists have brought their historic strike to a close after almost a year of action, leaving a legacy of determination – and a clear lesson about the power of solidarity in the face of anti-union laws and austerity, says FBU general secretary STEVE WRIGHT
Latest editorial
From colony to curriculum gap: the erasure of Irish history in Britain
From colonialism to the Troubles, the story of England’s first colony is one of exploitation, resistance, and solidarity — and one we should fight to ensure is told, writes teacher ROBERT POOLE
CRUCIAL HISTORY: A silent crowd follows the funeral procession of the 13 who killed on Bloody Sunday, February 1972
With more people dying each year and many spending their final days in institutions, researchers argue that wider access to palliative care could offer a more humane and cost-effective alternative, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
While public outrage has focused on the abuse committed within Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit, key questions remain unresolved, says JOHN GREEN
In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint
Tens of thousands of students left their classrooms and took to the streets against conscription and rising military spending. NICK WRIGHT reports from Berlin
A call from the World Peace Council to the peace movements of the world
I HAVE a confession to make. I’m a third Irish, according to the DNA test my sister bought me for Christmas, yet it took me 40 years to learn anything about the history of Ireland. As the crow flies, I live closer to Dublin, where my grandmother was born and spent most of her childhood, than I do to London. Yet I’ve never even spent a drunken weekend on a stag do in Temple Bar.
My only introduction to Irish culture was singing rebel songs with my aunts, uncles and cousins at my grandparents’ house on Boxing Day each year. My mother used to tell me about her Irish dancing lessons and my aunt recalls being in a dance troupe called “Sinn Fein.” But over time, as the family grew and mixed with English blood, that sense of Irishness seemed to fade.
I’m not alone. Some estimates suggest over six million people in Britain and the north of Ireland are entitled to an Irish passport — more than the population of the Republic of Ireland itself! Yet I’d wager that one thing many of us share is our ignorance of Irish history.
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