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
Latest editorial
From Extinction Rebellion to revolution: strategies compared
NICK WRIGHT assesses the programme and demands of the burgeoning ecological direct-action movement
An Extinction Rebellion protester eyes up a cop outside the Bank of England
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
EXTINCTION Rebellion (XR) has put environment politics in the popular imagination with a partisan spirit and the kind of creativity that inspires admiration.
Its daring tactics have wrong-footed political authority and the bourgeois media as well as giving the public-order police a more entertaining job than normal.
While the exotic behaviour of some XR activists gives Daily Mail editors apoplexy, the more common — and common sense — reaction from most people is to enjoy the anti-authoritarian exuberance in the same spirit that put-upon peasants and inebriated artisans in feudal Britain revelled in subverting authority when a successful armed rebellion seemed impossibly remote.
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