From London’s holly-sellers to Engels’s flaming Christmas centrepiece, the plum pudding was more than festive fare in Victorian Britain, says KEITH FLETT
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Ireland’s rotten old order clings to power
Despite plummeting living standards and multiple crises in housing, education and health, another Fianna Fail-Fine Gael coalition approaches after an election with low turnout and no breakthrough for the left, writes NICK WRIGHT
HEADING TO THE CENTRE:
Sinn Fein president Mary Lou
McDonald arrives at the count
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
From a lockdown digital project to a vital tool for class solidarity, ROBERT POOLE and HENRY FOWLER reflect on half-a-decade of struggle
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
IRELAND’S general election has finished with the two main parties of the Irish capitalist Establishment just two seats short of a majority big enough to form a coalition government.
In an election where near on half the electorate stayed away from the polls, Fianna Fail won 48 seats and Fine Gael 38. Sinn Fein won 39 seats, the Labour Party 11, the Social Democrats 11, and the Green Party lost all but one of its outgoing TDs. The number of independents elected was 23, while People Before Profit returned with three TDs.
To varying extent, all the parties likely to be included in a coalition government bear responsibility for the problems working people in Ireland face.
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