Labour will find increases in the state pension age are unacceptable, just as cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, personal independence payments and universal credit are — it needs to change direction immediately, writes PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE
The British empire: culture war and actual war
The flurry of criticism and counter-outrage over the classical colonial era is no mere academic matter, warns ANDREW MURRAY: what is being debated is whether fresh imperial slaughter can be sold to the public
This century, the 'bring back the empire' brigade had its way with Afghanistan and Iraq. Twenty years on from the start of the Afghan occupation it ended in utter ignominy.
CEREN SAGIR reports from the CND fringe meeting during the Labour conference, where speakers slammed a system where £99 billion nuclear arsenal replacement costs are ring-fenced while the two-child benefit cap remains
CND’s Stop the Nuclear Nightmare conference in Glasgow will be an important step towards destroying the false arguments that weapons and war spending will lead to job creation and prosperity, rather than bringing Armageddon closer, writes SIMON BARROW
KIM JOHNSON MP places the campaign in the context of the history of the working-class battles of the 1980s, and explains why, just like Orgreave and the Shrewsbury Pickets before it, justice today is so important for the struggles of tomorrow
REBECCA LONG BAILEY MP writes that it is time not just to adopt policies that will revitalise the lives of workers, but speak honestly and openly about whose side we are on and who the Labour Party is for: the millions, not the millionaires
All the areas that cause working people to feel insecure have to be addressed, through a return to unashamedly pro-worker politics, if the horror of a Farage government is to be avoided, writes IAN LAVERY MP
THE British empire is one of the front lines in the culture war. Few things make Establishment academics and pundits angrier than the critical scrutiny British imperialism is increasingly subjected to, particularly by scholars that aren’t white, male and privileged, the characteristics hitherto regarded as essential for holding an opinion on the subject.
Historians like Niall Ferguson and Robert Tombs argue that the empire wasn’t such a bad thing overall, a few undeniable excesses notwithstanding, or, as a fallback, too complex to pass judgement on. They are keener on emphasising Britain’s role in abolishing slavery than its prior record of promoting and profiting from it, and its foundational part in the development of capitalism.
They also disdain the intrusion of new scholars onto their terrain. In one especially unpleasant article, Tombs singled out three for the sin of exploiting “the fashionable theme of ‘anti-colonialism’,” as if hostility to colonialism was a priori a historical disability.
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