General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Christmas is cancelled: Now it’s time for action, time for sanctions
HUGH LANNING on why our new year task and resolution must be to turn the massive public support and sympathy for Palestine into a veritable political tsunami to shift Western politics
BAE protest
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
CHRISTMAS is cancelled. The Bethlehem municipality confirmed last month that all festivities have been scrapped ahead of December 25.
“The reason is the general situation in Palestine; people are not really into any celebration, they are sad, angry and upset; our people in Gaza are being massacred in cold blood,” a spokesperson said.
I was in Bethlehem one Christmas Eve and phoned my mother — a good Catholic. She said: “How lovely dear.” I first had to explain that it was Orthodox Christmas Eve — January 5 or Twelfth Night — and the reality of Bethlehem today, rather than the Bethlehem of myth and religion. Walled in and walled off from Jerusalem, shops and hotels closed down — the only tourists were Americans bussed in to the “manger” and out by Israeli tourist companies with commentaries from Israeli guides.
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The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Starmer is going to go down in Labour history as as much a warmonger as Tony Blair – and the issue will prove his nemesis, says HUGH LANNING
Labour must recognise Israel’s true aims of total colonisation of Palestine and massive regional expansion — and therefore end the arms sales and trade deals that enable the destruction of any two-state solution, writes HUGH LANNING
As the slaughter in Palestine continues and the solidarity movement’s calls for accountability and a shift in international policy grow, political leaders must realise they face a reckoning for their silence, writes HUGH LANNING
