The annual commemoration of anti-fascist volunteers who fought fascism in Spain now includes a key contribution from Italian comrades
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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
The Islamic Republic’s suddenly weakened regional position exposes the nation to grave threats from US imperialism
DONG XUE explains why US tariffs hold no significant threat to China
ANSELM ELDERGILL asks whether artificial intelligence may decide legal cases in the future, in place of human judges, and how AI could reshape the legal landscape
Like pieces on a chess board, centrist parties lose ground as they accommodate rather than challenge far-right agendas — socialists must play things better, warns MATT KERR
Yanis Varoufakis and Jeremy Corbyn laid out a roadmap for peace, justice and equality as they celebrated the legacy of inspirational socialist Tony Benn, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The NEU’s annual conference promises heated debate, with motions on international politics, curriculum reform and union amalgamation likely to provoke strong reactions and challenge the status quo, writes Education for Tomorrow editor ROBERT POOLE
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
