JOE BESWICK of the London Renters Union talks to the Morning Star’s new Left on Record programme
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Isabel Crook: an appreciation
JENNY CLEGG pays tribute to a remarkable woman who was a pioneer in bringing about greater understanding between China and the West
Isabel Crook in 1940
The unnecessarily violent police intervention at a Quaker place of worship is a PR disaster and will only serve to deepen the chasm between them and the public. SYMON HILL reports
ANDREW MURRAY wonders whether recent opinion polling and a fresh local authority by-election result in Ilford are an indication that the time is ripe for the left to make inroads
Due to the actions of this government, the challenges facing those with disabilities, such as spinal cord injuries, are nigh on insurmountable, argus RUTH HUNT
General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
ISABEL CROOK (1915-2023) was a pioneering anthropologist, committed communist and rare bridge between the West and China. She was renowned, with husband David, for the study Ten Mile Inn: Mass Movement in a Chinese Village, an invaluable record of the Communist Party of China’s mass line in action.
Isabel spent most of her life in China and was to witness its remarkable transformation from a war-torn land of beggars, bandits and people in rags under a corrupt Kuomintang (KMT) government to a country set on a path to prosperity, overcoming the problems of poverty, unemployment and instability, under communist leadership.
During the Cultural Revolution, she was kept in confinement by Red Guards for three years, receiving an apology from Zhou Enlai in 1973. In 1989, with David, she called on the government not to use force against the Tiananmen protesters. Isabel nevertheless was to remain optimistic about China’s future under CPC leadership.
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