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
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Class reproduction and untangling the class pay gap in Wales
Our class origin casts a long shadow over our lives — one of the areas in which this manifests is through the existence of occupational sorting and the class pay gap, writes LUKE FLETCHER MS
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
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
AN insidious aspect of neoliberalism’s ideological blitz has been to convince certain parts of society that working-class people being unable to “get on” is an individual, moral flaw — some sort of gene-deep character deficiency.
Aside from being — at best — a glib display of ignorance, it also neatly sidesteps any structural analysis of class, what functions people perform in the economy and how this reproduces class privilege.
What our backgrounds are — where we come from, our access to certain social networks, what kinds of support we can access (in short, the kinds of economic, social and cultural capital we can harness) — and how these affect our trajectories, cast very long shadows.
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Deep disillusionment with the Westminster cross-party consensus means rupture with the status quo is on the cards – bringing not only opportunities but also dangers, says NICK WRIGHT
From the ‘marketisation’ of care services to the closure of cultural venues and criminalisation of youth, a new Red Paper reveals how austerity has weakened communities and disproportionately harmed the most vulnerable, write PAULINE BRYAN and VINCE MILLS
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WILL PODMORE is intrigued by a study the British ruling class that follows statistical analysis with totally inadequate proposals for change