With a political crisis engulfing the Labour Party, the case for PR is back on the agenda. TONY BURKE argues trade unions must now engage on changes to our voting system
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The revolutionary life of Noreen Branson
From aristocratic upbringing to undercover communist courier and finally respected labour historian, MAT COWARD chronicles how personal tragedy and socialist conviction shaped an extraordinary activist’s journey
YVETTE WILLIAMS and JOE DELANEY dissect the institutional dawdling that rubbed salt into the Grenfell open wounds prolonging the agony of survivors
The HS2 debacle exposes what happens when public infrastructure is handed to private contractors – especially when set against China’s state-led high-speed rail success, says CARLOS MARTINEZ
After battling hills, rain and injury in a three-day cycle ride ending at the CWU conference, MATT KERR reflects on why class unity remains the answer to injustice
Through marches, music, schools and political debate, campaigners in Tower Hamlets are using the 90th anniversary of Cable Street to inspire resistance to modern racism. GLYN ROBBINS explains
A lifelong communist and community organiser, Pinder helped shape anti-racist and anti-colonial activism in Britain while dedicating himself to youth work and collective struggle, writes David Horsley
WHILE his men were out in force, searching in vain for a notorious communist courier, the police chief spent the night dancing with a charming young Englishwoman at a New Year’s Eve ball. His dance partner was, of course, the very agent his officers were hunting. They never caught her; nobody ever did.
Noreen Branson knew how to dance in respectable company — she had, after all, been a debutante. But her aristocratic upbringing at her grandparents’ house in Berkeley Square had not been as untroubled as it might sound: at the age of eight, in 1918, she was suddenly orphaned when both her parents died within days of each other.
Her mother fell to typhoid and then her father was killed in combat. Little Noreen Browne developed a loathing of war which never left her, and which perhaps determined the course of her adult life.
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