As Colombia approaches presidential elections next year, the US decision to decertify the country in the war on drugs plays into the hands of its allies on the political right, writes NICK MacWILLIAM
Decapitating the monarchy - January 30 1649
We do not celebrate the day when the English people separated Charles I's head from his body – an epoch-shattering occasion – but we should, argues KEITH FLETT
The move against alleged PKK members that sparked outrage as a community centre in north London was raided last year has now come to trial, writes TONY BURKE, but in the meantime, the peace process abroad has changed the situation almost entirely
A new report points a way to overcome complacent framing of climate issues, ‘by sparking a wider public reckoning with climate realities,’ and reconnecting with working-class people. IAN SINCLAIR reports
We cannot understand today’s world without understanding the rise of China – and we cannot understand China without understanding how it was shaped by the second world war, writes JENNY CLEGG
NICK WRIGHT reports from Italy, where 80 cities saw Gaza strikes as unions paralysed transport and massive crowds clashed with police in Milan — but France is also kicking off, and Westminster, in a very different way, is facing a crisis of legitimacy too
Escalating anti-China rhetoric from the West has a clear purpose – to manufacture consent for the new cold war, and potentially a hot one, argues CARLOS MARTINEZ
JANUARY 30 marks the 370th anniversary of the beginning of modern parliamentary democracy in Britain. On that day King Charles I lost his head in Whitehall and a government under Oliver Cromwell and then his son Richard ran things until 1660 when the monarchy was restored. It is of course still with us.
One might think that the birth of what was in effect the first parliamentary system anywhere in the world would warrant some degree of commemoration and indeed celebration. It will not of course. The 350th anniversary in 1999 did see some events and exhibitions which in the main focused on what a terrible thing it was that the forces of the New Model Army and the new Commonwealth had had the temerity to actually execute a monarch.
So January 30 is not, as it should be, a national holiday. The current Prince Charles, who may yet become King Charles III, will maintain an official silence, since 370 years on the royal family have still not come to terms with what happened on that January day in 1649.
More from this author
In 1981, towering figure for the British left Tony Benn came a whisker away from victory, laying the way for a wave of left-wing Labour Party members, MPs and activism — all traces of which are now almost entirely purged by Starmer, writes KEITH FLETT
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT
KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past
The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT
