ALEX HALL interviews PAUL HOLDEN, whose bombshell book uses leaked documents to expose how the Starmer faction used systematic dishonesty to seize power and reopen the door to the corrupting ecosystem of corporate lobbying and sleaze
Pearse McKenna – Laoch ar Lar. An Appreciation
Remembering a dedicated T&GWU activist, internationalist and anti-sectarian
MAN OF PRINCIPLE: Pearse McKenna pictured on May Day 2016
The recent calls to strip Michelle Mone of her peerage after she was caught scamming the public for £122 million should reinvigorate the longstanding progressive demand to completely abolish the entire undemocratic, corrupt relic, writes ELLIOT TONG
As gold hits $4,000 per ounce, soaring from only $250 back in 2001, the US national debt has reached $37 trillion — it’s all about to come crashing down, warns JOHN ELLISON, which our leaders would have known had they only studied Marx’s magnum opus Capital
Now at 115,000 members and in some polls level with Labour in terms of public support, CHRIS JARVIS looks at the factors behind the rapid rise of the Greens, internal and external
Witnessing a war of words at a meeting on tackling militarism at The World Transformed, BEN COWLES spoke to a union rep who is organising against war from inside the arms industry itself, to hear about worker-led solutions to ending weapons production
FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ, ROGER D HARRIS and JOHN PERRY contrast Trump’s warships and F-35 fighters threatening Venezuela with the $20bn bailout for Milei’s collapsed economy, all enabled by a highly ideological IMF
A REAL hero of the trade union, labour and socialist movement has left us. Pearse McKenna, a bakery worker from the Falls Road in Belfast, became an activist in the Transport and General Workers Union and fought in numerous campaigns on behalf of the workers.
He was targeted for assassination by the pro-empire Ulster Freedom Fighters in 1991 because of his active intervention in the Ormeau Bakery in South Belfast, to secure a neutral, non-partisan workplace, in pursuit of the policy of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), in this case free of Orange and loyalist flags and bunting.
Pearse was seriously injured. Thankfully another one of the bullets missed, grazing his head, after McKenna dived for shelter under a bakery lorry outside of his workplace where he was shop steward.
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JIM JUMP looks forward to the International Brigade Memorial Trust AGM taking place in Belfast later this week where the spirit of solidarity will be rekindled
Why not pay a visit to Feile an Phobail, a people’s festival of community arts with roots in the days of internment without trial, and where the spirit of solidarity remains undimmed, says LYNDA WALKER
