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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Celebrate Hugo Chavez’s legacy 25 years on
The struggle against US intervention in Venezuela continues, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE
CHAVEZ PRESENTE! A life-size cardboard cutout of Venezuela's late president Hugo Chavez is held by a supporter during an event marking the anniversary of the coup that overthrew dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez in 1958, in Caracas, last Monday
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
TWENTY-FIVE years ago later this year Hugo Chavez won the presidential election in Venezuela and paved the way to a sustained period — marked sometimes by setbacks of course, as any struggle is — of electoral victories by leftist forces in South America against powerful local elites buttressed by the United States.
As the annual Latin America conference meets today to discuss how progressive mass movements across the region are again resisting neoliberalism and US domination in their struggles for independence and sovereignty, Venezuela’s achievements in the Chavez period in this respect stand out as an example.
The US tried unsuccessfully to oust Chavez from office continually, including through the temporarily successful coup in 2002, but just months before he died, he again defeated the US-backed candidate in yet another election victory.
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The global left must be unwavering in it is support for Venezuela as Washington increases its aggression, and clear-eyed about the West’s cynical motives for targeting it, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
The US is desperate to stop Honduras’s process of social and democratic change, writes TIM YOUNG
Two months into Donald Trump’s second run as president, what can we glean about his policies towards Latin America so far, asks TIM YOUNG, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
FIONA SIM of the Black Liberation Alliance reports on a whirlwind week in Caracas, including President Maduro’s inauguration