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
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Why we must unite to oppose the Health and Social Care Bill 2021
Once again market methods are being posed as the solution to the growing NHS and social care crisis, says HELEN O’CONNOR
Health Secretary Sajid Javid during a visit to Westport Care Home in Stepney Green, east London and (below) a health workers’ protest at Downing Street over the measly 3% NHS pay increase
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
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
ANYONE who has worked on the front lines of the NHS delivering services to patients knows that workloads are increasing and pay is not keeping up with the cost of living.
Some will even have been around long enough to remember the false claims that private investment would improve services and being told that carving up NHS services would bring modern and innovative healthcare solutions closer to peoples homes while enabling NHS organisations and their staff to deliver “seamless services.”
What has developed is that the public are faced with a confusing array of services that are further away from the home than ever before and family homes are being traded in for the spiralling costs of privatised care placements.
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When privatisation is already so deeply embedded in the NHS, we can’t just blindly argue for ‘more funding’ to solve its problems, explain ESTHER GILES, NICO CSERGO, BRIAN GIBBONS and RATHI GUHADASAN
Labour warned that workers expect better as anger mounts over welfare cuts and public-sector pay
Behind Starmer’s headline-grabbing abolition of NHS England lies a ruthless drive to centralise control so that cuts of £6.6 billion can be made — even if it means reducing cancer services and clinical staff, writes JOHN LISTER
Diverting public funding to grow private-sector ‘spare capacity,’ actively undermines the funding and staff available to the NHS and results in a worse service, write JOHN PUNTIS and TONY O’SULLIVAN