A call from the World Peace Council to the peace movements of the world
Let’s work towards a new dawn for localism
We can draw inspiration from Lambeth, Liverpool and Clay Cross in the battle against local government cuts, says CHRIS WILLIAMSON
Clay Cross councillors walk out of court in 1975 where they appeared over a creditors' petition in bankruptcy for their refusal to implement the Housing Finance Act
DR HANA SAADA asks why a war crime against innocent children on this scale does not dominate the world’s coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran
From the colonial oil plunder of 1909 to the current threat of a regional inferno: Western interference in Iran forms a chain of coups, puppets, and cynical geopolitics centered on oil, says MARC VANDEPITTE
As tensions escalate over Iran, CAROL MOCHAN MSP argues that Britain must finally learn from the disastrous legacy of Iraq and choose diplomacy over another catastrophic conflict
While Wes Streeting claims Britain lacks a growth strategy, his own NHS plans reveal one – turning the health service’s vast troves of patient data into a commercial asset for tech giants, investors and private healthcare firms, says HELEN MERCER
The mass killing of Iranian schoolgirls should have dominated global headlines. Instead it became another example of how civilians — especially women and children — are targeted in war, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
THE Uruguayan literary giant of the Latin American left, the late Eduardo Galeano, once said: “History never really says goodbye. History says see you later.”
Galeano’s maxim seems particularly apposite in terms of local government cuts today. Demands are growing for Labour local authorities to rediscover municipal socialism to resist the relentless Tory cuts that have continued every year since 2010.
The New Labour era reduced councils to mere delivery arms of central government. Local authorities became obsessed with a tick-box culture that resulted from the plethora of indicators dreamed up by Whitehall whiz kids. Then an army of dubious inspection regimes was used to beat local authorities into submission.
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Building is the solution for much of our housing crisis – and will also help to address poverty, ill health, and even anti-social behaviour and alienation, writes KENNY MacASKILL
Holding office in local government is a poisoned chalice for a party that bases its electoral appeal around issues where it has no power whatsoever, argues NICK WRIGHT
With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs
Born from my communist social worker mother’s efforts to bridge healthcare gaps, Labour’s push for home-based care now risks becoming another avenue for the US corporate takeover of the NHS, writes RICHARD CLARKE