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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Sock it to them!
Think knitting is sedate and harmless? JULIA BARD begs to differ – knitting has a long history of radicalism and rebellion
Knitting
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
MY GRANDMOTHER arrived in London from Riga in 1912 aged 24. Along with the samovar, the brass Friday night candlesticks and three young children, she brought her skills at sewing, embroidery, crochet and knitting. She taught my mother to knit, and my mother taught me.
When I was five, mum gave me short, plastic needles and a round ball of red wool. I learnt plain and purl, how to cast on and cast off, and how to pick up dropped stitches.
I loved the feel of the yarn, the rhythm of the movements, the sound of the needles, and the way you could talk and listen while your hands were being creative and productive.
More from this author
Decades after Dale Spender’s groundbreaking work on how language embeds male dominance, the struggle to reshape words that accurately reflect women’s experiences remains both vital and unfinished, writes JULIA BARD
It’s myopic to suggest that fascist ideology has been ‘imported’ into Britain and could not possibly be home-grown, argues JULIA BARD
Pro-Palestine Jews don’t need ‘keeping safe’ on our own demos, writes JULIA BARD, following yet another heavy-handed attempt to link religion and ethnicity to political positions by the police
A member of the Islington Friends of Jeremy Corbyn campaign, JULIA BARD, explains its motivation and goals
