From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to today’s F-35 sales, Britain’s historical responsibility has now evolved into support for the present-day outright genocide. But our solidarity movement is growing too, writes BEN JAMAL
December 1973: how the Tories sunk their own ship
JOHN ELLISON looks at the miners' strike and Shrewsbury 3 case that led Edward Heath to ask ‘Who governs Britain?’ and the electorate to answer: not you
MAN WITH A BOAT: Tory leader Edward Heath poses for the cameras in 1970
DIANE ABBOTT MP warns Starmer’s newly declared war on foreigners and scroungers won’t fix housing or services — only class struggle against austerity can do that, and defeat Farage in the process
Ben Chacko talks to ALAN MARDGHUM of the Durham Miners Association about Reform UK‘s dangerous inroads into Durham’s long-standing Labour county council; why he cancelled his party membership; and the political class’s disconnect from working people
Speaking to a CND meeting in Cambridge this week, SIMON BRIGNELL traced how the alliance’s anti-communist machinery broke unions, diverted vital funds from public services, and turned workers into cannon fodder for profit
We’ll be developing a people’s manifesto for the 2026 local elections. We’ll network, learn, inspire and support each other and chart a future path for socialist politics, writes JAMIE DRISCOLL
MAT COWARD rises over such semantics to offer step by step, fool-proof cultivating tips
MOLLY QUELL reports on the sanctions placed on International Criminal Court officials by the Trump regime, making it increasingly difficult for the tribunal to conduct even basic tasks
HALF a century ago, in December 1973, the Edward Heath government was advancing bullishly down a road that was to lead on February 28 1974 to a parliamentary disaster for the Conservative Party, and to a second spell of Labour government under Harold Wilson.
But in December this future was far from certain. The central issue for Heath (“the man with a boat”), against the international backcloth of the soaring price of oil and a curtailment of its supply, was the substantial improvement in wages sought by the National Union of Mineworkers for their members.
Price inflation had bitten hard into the gains made by the miners in their dramatically successful pay-catch-up strike of early 1972; and on September 12 1973, stimulated also by coal’s rising price, their claim for a new settlement was lodged.
Coal-face workers carrying out hard physical work in difficult conditions, and at high risk from dust and from pit accidents, however, were not lavishly paid.
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