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
Latest editorial
Strike action shuts Brent special school amid row over pay and hours
NEU members at Woodfield School in north London are taking sustained industrial action against enforced cuts to learning support assistants’ hours and pay. MARY ADOSSIDES reports
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
WOODFIELD special school in north London has been forced to close as members of the National Education Union (NEU) took strike action about cuts to pay and hours.
Woodfield School is a mixed secondary special school in Brent. Part of the Compass Learning Partnership academy trust, the school has had to close numerous times recently after NEU members walked out.
Members are striking “in a fight to retain their pay,” as learning support assistants at the school “face pay cuts resulting from forced change in hours” and are having their weekly hours reduced from 36 to 32.5 — which equates to a £250 per month loss in income.
Compass Learning Partnership has already spent more than £1.35 million on “key management personnel” in 2023-24 so there is plenty of money to pay staff but that is not the trust’s priority.
Brent NEU secretary Jenny Cooper said: “This school and trust cannot operate without our members — they are the front-line workforce behind a company that generates generous salaries for its top executives. We do not see why staff in the classroom should see cuts to their pay when it is already so low.”
The NEU claimed that its representatives have tried reaching out to the trust in an attempt to resolve the issues and prevent the need for strike action. However, this approach has failed so far.
Morale is high among striking staff who have already taken nine days of industrial action. While this strike is in defence of pay and terms and conditions, it is also in defence of providing vulnerable children with high needs with the level of support they deserve.
If academy bosses refuse to budge the strike will continue into 2026 with four days already planned for January 6, 7, 8 and January 9.
Solidarity.
Mary Adossides is chair of Brent Trades Council.
Similar stories
RON BROWN makes the case for the Morning Star as the daily paper of all trade unionists, and especially education workers who have seen it cover their issues and their actions, day in, day out
