In his May Day message for the Morning Star, RICHARD BURGON says the call for peace, equality and socialism has never been more relevant
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When Yuri Gagarin gave Britain’s ruling class a headache
MAT COWARD recalls the occasion when the first man in space paid a visit to our shores in 1961
A crowd of people at Heathrow Airport, who had waited to see Major Yuri Gagarin (centre) the first man in space, as he arrived at the airport to fly home after a four day visit to the country, July 15, 1961
This May Day we reaffirm our commitment to working people and our class and to get trade unionism back on the front foot, says EDDIE DEMPSEY
DIANE ABBOTT looks at the whys and hows of Labour’s spectacular own goal
When it comes to extreme weather events, from wildfires to flash floods, it’s firefighters who are on the front line of defence, but services have been cut to the bone, and government is not taking seriously its responsibility for the environment, says STEVE WRIGHT
LUKE FLETCHER pours scorn on Labour’s betrayal of the Welsh steel industry, where the option of nationalisation was sneered at and dismissed – unlike at Scunthorpe where the government stepped in
Washington’s tariff policies become explicable in light of the US economy’s relative decline and the astonishing rise of China, argues MICHAEL BURKE
SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
YURI GAGARIN, the first human to travel into outer space, was born on March 9 1934, so let’s celebrate his birthday by remembering the time he embarrassed a British Tory government simply by being charming.
The Soviet Union’s achievement in April 1961, in sending a crewed spaceship into orbit and bringing it safely back to Earth, was greeted worldwide as the start of a new scientific and historic epoch. Humankind had entered the space age, and as the cosmonaut at the centre of it, Gagarin, this humble, smiling son of a carpenter and a farmer, overnight became the word’s biggest celebrity.
He was sent on a celebratory world tour, which reached Britain in July. This was a political headache for the British government; the cold war meant that Britain, as an ally of the US, was reluctant to give a hero’s welcome to a representative of the enemy. It was particularly embarrassing to do so at a time when the US’s own space programme was struggling, and failing, to catch up with the USSR’s.
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