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
VE Day and the battle for historical memory
There is a concerted attempt to rehabilitate fascism and downplay the resistance of working people and the communist role in defeating fascist barbarism. We underestimate this trend at our peril, warns JONATHAN WHITE
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
TODAY, in the midst of what even our rulers describe as the worst crisis since 1945, the people of Britain will be enveloped in a cloud of toxic ideological matter ejected from the British state’s propaganda vents.
The country continues to reel under the Covid-19 crisis: its death toll now the highest in Europe; its dilapidated social and economic infrastructure — asset-stripped by years of neoliberal reform — brutally exposed; the corruption, complicity and complacency of its ruling class on show for all to see.
What better time, therefore, to dust off the gilded upholstery of the monarchic state, wheel out the monarch to intone about our shared heritage in the British wartime spirit, put Churchill’s speeches on repeat and start mainlining conservative nostalgia?
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The proponents and enablers of Holocaust distortion and anti-communism now have increasing political power and influence in a number of European countries, obstructing an understanding of the reality of fascism’s crimes, warns MARY DAVIS