Labour prospects in May elections may be irrevocably damaged by Birmingham Council’s costly refusal to settle the year-long dispute, warns STEVE WRIGHT
The Marxist staycation – Marx and Engels at the Victorian seaside in 1857
KEITH FLETT advises British Marxists to get in the sea
HENRY FOWLER and ROB POOLE explain the significance of today’s Megapicket
One hundred years after 1.7m workers shut the country down in defence of the miners, the struggles that sparked the 1926 General Strike are still with us – and will be honoured on London’s May Day march this year, writes MARY ADOSSIDES
The Labour Growth Group and its think tank partner, the Good Growth Foundation, have taken funding from major lobbying firms linked to housebuilders, banks and Heathrow – raising questions about corporate influence at the heart of Starmer’s pro-growth project. SOLOMON HUGHES reports
The fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a registered nurse and union member, has sparked nationwide protests and renewed calls from National Nurses United to dismantle Ice and related agencies, says MARK GRUENBERG
A Vatican photo-op, a hard-right donor and a rhetoric of mass deportations reveal how appeals to ‘Christian values’ are being reshaped by Reform and Tory MPs, says SOLOMON HUGHES
WITH the government’s chaotic handling of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, suddenly announcing changes late at night on Twitter, the attractiveness of a summer break in Britain, for those still able to afford it, has more attraction than usual.
The August weather is notoriously unreliable, but for socialists there is a chance to visit some of the locations that Marx and Engels enjoyed in the second half of the 19th century.
Not quite all are by the sea. There are references in the correspondence to Buxton, then a major spa town, and within reach of Manchester, for example.
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The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
