This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH

AS USUAL at this time of year, the headlines are full of the so-called “winter crisis” in the NHS, with talk of “pressures” and “demand” recited almost unchallenged as the cause of the disaster.
But it is vital to be clear that the NHS is not merely collapsing, it is in a state of induced collapse. When the Conservative government came into power in 2010, a healthy NHS quickly went into such decline that what were at first regular “winter crises” became year-round crisis and then collapse.
Public satisfaction with our health service went into freefall, from a record high of over 70 per cent in 2010 to the current day reality of 36 per cent between 2020 and 2021 and arguably even far less now.

With Reform UK surging and Labour determined not to offer anything different from the status quo, a clear opportunity opens for the left, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE

Keir Starmer’s £120 million to Sudan cannot cover the government’s complicity in the RSF genocide or atone for the long shadow of British colonialism and imperialism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE

