With the death of Pope Francis, the world loses not only a church leader but also a moral compass
A party with a penchant for war and oppression
Genocide, racism and imperialism are in the Labour Party’s DNA, argues TOM SYKES
BLAIR’S WARS: A British soldier trains his rifle on a crowd in Basra during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, 2003
LYNNE WALSH previews the Bristol Radical History Conference this weekend
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
Join the traditional march from Clerkenwell Green, which will bring together countless international workers’ organisations in a statement against the far right
Ecuador’s election wasn’t free — and its people will pay the price under President Noboa
Mountains of research show that hardcore material harms children, yet there are still no simple measures in place
We face austerity, privatisation, and toxic influence. But we are growing, and cannot be beaten
EVER since they came into government in July, Labour has been directly and indirectly supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its over 17,000 assaults on other Palestinian lands, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran. According to Declassified UK, the RAF have flown 100 spy flights over Gaza since Keir Starmer became prime minister and his government refuses to publish footage taken on one such mission on the day three British aid workers were killed by an Israeli air strike.
Meanwhile, Labour’s ban on 30 out of 350 arms licences is largely symbolic, since the export continues of components for F-35 fighter jets, which have been used in multiple war crimes including attacks on hospitals, medical personnel and defenceless civilians. Fifteen NGOs, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, have called for the British government to halt these sales, ensure the protection of Palestinian civilians and comply with “the ICJ’s orders to prevent genocide.” The plea has been ignored.
Labour’s backing of violence against Palestinians goes back a lot further than Starmer’s summer election win. In 1929, Labour’s first-ever prime minister, James Ramsay MacDonald, responded to a general strike and wave of protests in Palestine — then under British colonial domination — by sending troops in to kill 200 and imprison hundreds more.
More from this author
A legal case at the ICJ has exposed the role of Indonesian arms sales that were crucial to enabling Myanmar to kill thousands of civilians, reports TOM SYKES
Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jnr has won, using a tech-savvy social media rewrite of his parents’ dictatorship and a troll army to smear his closest competitor — DR TOM SYKES reports on a society seemingly unable to leave its own dark age
TOM SYKES went to Jaywick in Essex last summer and kept a diary. Here is an extract illustrated by his companion on that journey Louis Netter
TOM SYKES examines the ever-expanding military-industrial-academic complex
