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
State power weaponised against us
In the second extract from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staffer HILARY CAVE recounts the bitter struggle to provide sustenance for strikers’ families, and the invidious role of David Willetts – now in the House of Lords
SOLIDARITY: Miners’ wives and their supporters arrive in London in 1984 for a rally and mass lobby of MPs. More than 8,000 miners from all over Britain were involved
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 long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
ONCE OUR strike began, single strikers found they were entitled to zero social security pay. The regulations falsely assumed that strikers would receive £15, later £16, weekly from their union in strike pay. Government was aware that this assumption was false, yet it fitted the Ridley Plan ethos of washing the state’s hands of responsibility for paying strikers.
The NUM had no history of giving strike pay to our huge membership, so in real life, families had to live on state benefits set at pittance level under the pretence that their usual breadwinner had ceased to exist. As these supposed ghosts still needed food and clothing, families had to stretch a paltry amount of money even further.
Forty years later the wife of a former miner still remembers bitterly that to provide for her family, including herself and her husband, a four-year-old child and a baby she received £11.75 each week. Another Derbyshire mining family still remembers receiving between £13 and £15 each week for a family with two children and a baby.
Similar stories
HEATHER WOOD pays tribute to a champion of working-class women and a fierce voice of solidarity
In the last of four extracts from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staffer HILARY CAVE recalls the 1985 campaign in the Nottinghamshire coalfield against the breakaway unions who went on to sabotage the great strike
In the third extract from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staffer HILARY CAVE recounts how women throughout the striking coalfields showed their mettle when the going got tough
In the first of four extracts from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staff HILARY CAVE recalls challenging police intimidation during the miners’ strike, exposing how the full machinery of state was deployed against the working class