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
ON the face of it there may not seem to be much to link the protest for the vote that became the Peterloo Massacre on Monday August 16 1819 and the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests in central London during the first half of October 2019.
Yet both were seeking to change the world, peacefully, to exercise what might be called people power to promote reform.
The Metropolitan Police, while no doubt engaging in over-robust and possibly illegal policing tactics, didn’t kill anyone, unlike the yeomanry in Manchester two hundred years ago.

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