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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What is ‘useful’ knowledge?
In their 100th Full Marx column, the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY looks at how socialists have grappled with the direction and framing of working-class self-education over the last 200 years
The Marx Memorial Library in London
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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
MOST people would agree that all genuine knowledge is potentially useful — though a little knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing and, in the wrong company, knowing too much can be positively lethal.
We are bombarded continually with “facts” together with advice: “useful” knowledge — how to get a job, improve your credit rating, save for a deposit on a house. Rarely are we helped to any real understanding of the workings of a society in which poverty is increasing amidst massive wealth for the few.
This 100th Full Marx column is perhaps as good an occasion as any to mark the birth of a movement for workers’ education which started 200 years ago, in Glasgow, Edinburgh and most importantly in London with the establishment of the London Mechanics’ Institute (LMI, later London University’s Birkbeck College) and which spread rapidly throughout Britain as well as in the “new worlds” of Australia and North America.
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