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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Sending refugees back to hell with EU support
Piecing together the story from several documents provided by the EU following months of FOI requests, BEN COWLES exposes how the bloc’s supposed training of the Libyan coastguard has only made things worse
A photograph taken from the air of a sinking refugee dinghy in the central Mediterranean
[Ruben Neugebauer/Sea Watch]
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
THE International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has estimated that 347 people have died trying to reach Europe while crossing the Mediterranean this year.
The central Mediterranean route (which stretches from war-torn Libya to Malta and the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Sicily) has been particularly deadly in 2020 so far. According to IOM Libya’s latest update 33 people have died on the route this year and 135 people are still missing.
Perhaps more concerning is the uncertain fate of at least 4,500 people the IOM says were pulled back from the central Mediterranean to Libya in the past six months — mostly by the country’s coastguard.
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