Heroes

The Birmingham Bin Strikers

These refuse workers have been on strike since March and have a mandate to keep going till March, unless the council sees sense and comes to a deal that doesn’t cut their pay.

Their struggle matters to us all: the largest local authority in the country seeks to tackle its financial problems by attacking the pay and conditions of its workforce, and if it gets away with it other councils will follow suit. 

The strikers themselves have shown the effectiveness of sustained picketing — and built alliance across the movement that have seen Strike Map organise mega-pickets shutting down depots across the city. Victory to the bin workers!

Francesca Albanese

The Italian legal scholar Albanese has rattled the most powerful people on Earth with her fearless documentation of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians — and paid a heavy price. 

Sanctioned by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in revenge for her UN report From an Economy of Occupation to an Economy of Genocide, her bank accounts have been frozen, and this UN special rapporteur is blacklisted and barred from the international banking system like a terrorist, forcing her to manage all transactions in cash. 

In Germany earlier this year, venue after venue pulled out from hosting her speaking tour under political pressure: when the Morning Star’s sister paper Junge Welt stepped up to offer a space, its office was crammed with 100 riot police tasked with preventing a lecture on international law from threatening national security. Albanese reminds us that honest scholarship and a readiness to speak truth to power still terrifies the ruling class.

The Palestine solidarity movement

So many people deserve special mentions, but the entire movement must be honoured: the heroic hunger strikers putting their lives on the line for justice; the thousands risking 14-year prison terms to expose the absurdity of the government’s ban on Palestine Action by sitting down peacefully in public; the leading peace activists arrested and charged for organising mass demonstrations, including Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition vice-chair Chris Nineham; the millions who have marched or fundraised or spread the word about a genocide, who forced Trump to tell Netanyahu in October that he cannot “fight the world” and must concede a ceasefire.

Not a ceasefire Israel has observed and not one promising justice or peace — so the struggle continues. And this formidable movement has shown that it will, repression or no, in solidarity with the still more heroic and resilient Palestinian people themselves.

Victor Grossman

With Victor’s death aged 97 last month we lost a powerful witness to the era of the Great Depression and fascism, through the cold war, the socialist German Democratic Republic and the restoration of capitalism from 1989.

His dramatic decision to desert the US army and swim across the Danube to defect to the East in 1952 set a life already dedicated to the communist cause on a unique trajectory, and his books Crossing the River and A Socialist Defector: from Harvard to Karl Marx Allee tell that unforgettable story. 

A constructive critic of German socialism in practice, he nonetheless reminds us of the huge social benefits of life in the socialist bloc and how much was lost when capitalism came back — while he remained a trenchant opponent of imperialism and war to his dying day. Red salute.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Countries around the world, Britain included, are enlarging their nuclear arsenals for the first time since the cold war. At Lakenheath, US nuclear-armed bombers are returning, while armchair generals talk openly of ending the taboo that has lasted since Hiroshima and deploying these horrendous weapons in war.

Under its new leader Sophie Bolt, CND has stepped up to the challenge across 2025, holding a tour bringing the arguments against rearmament to military bases across Britain and a fortnight’s peace camp in protest at Britain’s return to being Washington’s Air Strip One. 

Global nuclear war is a more threatening prospect than it has been in decades — but CND is showing it’s ready to play its part in preventing it.

Villains
 

“Tommy Robinson”

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has disfigured the British political scene for years but 2025 has seen ominous new developments, from his sponsorship by the world’s richest man — far-right megalomaniac Elon Musk — to the largest far-right demonstration in British history that brought well over 100,000 onto the streets of London in September.

Robinson now claims to have found God and is seeking to pervert Christian faith, or rather identity, into another stick to beat immigrants with. Though maybe this perennial grifter just sees an opportunity to attract more rich sponsors. Either way we must face down the politics of hate he represents in 2026.

Sarah Pochin and Robert Jenrick

One’s a Reform UK MP and the other’s a Tory, but there’s little enough to choose between these toxic right-wing parties these days. Alongside Robinson’s street thugs, the rise of the racist right is unmissable at Westminster, and the roles played by Nigel Farage’s handful of hatemongers and leading Tories desperate to mimic his politics are complementary. 

These two deserve public shaming for pushing the boundaries of explicit racism in public life: Pochin by complaining about the number of black people on telly and Jenrick with his no-white-faces-in-Handsworth drivel. Pure poison from two politicians we need to see the back of as soon as possible.

David Lammy

Not that the red team at Westminster have covered themselves in glory this year. Quite the opposite, and it’s hard to choose an outstanding offender in Keir Starmer’s corrupt, authoritarian and anti-worker Cabinet. 

We’ll pick on Lammy, because the so-called Justice Secretary is presiding over horrendous abuses of justice — refusing to meet lawyers for the Palestine Action hunger strikers, who are being held for months and years behind bars without trial, and now planning the withdrawal of the right to jury trials just as the police are getting into gear with mass arrests of obviously innocent people.

Donald Trump

He’s featured before, but Trump’s return to the US presidency in 2025 can’t go unmentioned. Trump Take 2 is proving far more dangerous than he was the first time round, heading a more cohesive team with a more ambitious reactionary project.

The White House declares active support for far-right movements across the world (particularly in Europe), expresses open contempt for international law, blows up boats, killing their crews, in a murderous rampage across the Caribbean while seizing Venezuelan tankers in acts of naked piracy. And all while moving closer to war.

In the Middle East, Trump breaks new ground by publicly endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and has already joined a direct Israeli attack on Iran — just days ago he mooted another. 

The new world disorder is a time of monsters, and Trump is — to quote the boot-licking Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte — the daddy of them all.