From London’s holly-sellers to Engels’s flaming Christmas centrepiece, the plum pudding was more than festive fare in Victorian Britain, says KEITH FLETT
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Post Office commemorates the strike that dramatically changed the Isle of Man
GLORY DAYS: The Strike Committee, July 1918, Alf Teare, seated far left, Harry Emery standing on the right
Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
From a lockdown digital project to a vital tool for class solidarity, ROBERT POOLE and HENRY FOWLER reflect on half-a-decade of struggle
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
THIS is a year of centenaries. Memories of the struggles of the suffragettes combining with those of the blood and the wire; of undersized Tommies marching to the sound of the guns and of the armistice that was intended to signal the end to all wars.
Yet, some things are forgotten. History is, after all, a matter of choice, of emphasis, light and shade — as well as of strictly weighed and measured evidence.
The voices of the rich, the powerful and articulate often drown out all other cross-currents, the experiences of the masses, and both the sorrows and achievements of the poor and the working people.
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The independent TD’s campaign has put important issues like Irish reunification and military neutrality at the heart of the political conversation, argues SEAN MacBRADAIGH
Millions of ordinary English people of all backgrounds consider the cross their own — abandoning it, and its left-wing history that includes the peasants’ revolt, concedes vital ground to the right, argues SIMON BRIGNELL
Remembering a dedicated T&GWU activist, internationalist and anti-sectarian
From anti-apartheid work to uniting migrant workers, Sutton showed us how to build worker power, keeping socialism’s flame burning bright, and leaving London’s mighty May Day parade as his legacy, writes Phil Katz