BRIAN LEISHMAN on how the government’s refusal to release a pro-privatisation report on prison maintenance is fuelling fears of a cover-up

Labour’s austerity package, targeted at disabled people and the most vulnerable in our society, stands to drive over 150,000 children into poverty and millions of adults deeper into hardship, warns Dr DYLAN MURPHY

The CND responds to Starmer’s growing militarism with a ‘Tour of the bases’ protest. TONY STAUNTON reports from Plymouth 
 

George Frederick Wills (12/06/1927–20/05/2025)

The British economy is failing to deliver for ordinary people. With the upcoming Spending Review, Labour has the opportunity to chart a different course – but will it do so, asks JON TRICKETT MP

MATT KERR reflects on the unveiling of Mick McGahey’s bust in Holyrood, where the former NUM president who demanded a workers’ parliament with ‘internationalist horizons’ now watches over a parliament where Reform UK are advancing rapidly

Editor BEN CHACKO explains why next weekend’s Morning Star conference is not to be missed

LUKE FLETCHER MS demolishes the excuses preventing Welsh water nationalisation as billions of litres leave Wales annually, while households pay 27 per cent bill increases to fund Dwr Cymru CEO’s £900,000 salary

The regime’s handpicked female firsts — drawn from elite families — mask the reality of Dar al-Reaya ‘care homes’ where disobedient women are beaten and drugged, and the feminists who fought for driving rights remain jailed, writes MARYAM ALDOSSARI

JEAN SILVAN EVANS pays tribute to the social campaigner who sang the Welsh national anthem to Khrushchev in Moscow and became Rhondda’s communist mayor in 1979

Caroline Darian, daughter of Gisele Pelicot, took part in a conversation with Afua Hirsch at London’s Royal Geographical Society. LYNNE WALSH reports 

As the regime in Iran continues to face international pressure to reduce its nuclear programme, workers continue to struggle for wages they can live on despite harsh repression of trade unionists, reports JAMSHID AHMADI

Beet likes warmth, who doesn’t, so attention to detail is required if you’re to succeed, writes MAT COWARD

SOLOMON HUGHES reveals how six MPs enjoyed £400-£600 hospitality at Ditchley Park for Google’s ‘AI parliamentary scheme’ — supposedly to develop ‘effective scrutiny’ of artificial intelligence, but actually funded by the increasingly unsavoury tech giant itself

As summer nears, TOM HARDY explains how unions are organising heat strikes and cool stations while calling for legal maximum workplace temperatures — because employers currently have no duty to protect workers from dangerous heat

European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde sees Trump’s many disruptions as an opportunity to challenge the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ — but greater Euro assertiveness will also mean greater warmongering and militarism, warns NICK WRIGHT

KEITH BARLOW examines the 1975 referendum that saw Britain vote to stay in the EEC, revealing how Tony Benn understood that EU free-market principles and capital movement rules would tie the hands of any government putting people’s interests before corporate profits

Tom Morrison pays tribute to the blacklisted engineering apprentice turned communist organiser who spent decades transforming Drumchapel's unemployed workers’ centre into a hub of political education, drama groups and activism

JOHN ELLISON looks back at Labour’s opportunistic tendency, when in office, to veer to the right on policy as well as ideological worldview

The distinction between domestic and military drones is more theoretical than practical, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

DAN ROSS looks at the difference between reality and myth over Tiananmen Square, 1989

Starmer should not need to wait for the High Court’s decision on F-35 parts in order to do the right thing, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE

SABINA PRICE reports from the World Federation of Democratic Youth general assembly in Namibia

Long-term monitoring gives an in-depth picture of marine heatwaves around our coastline, writes TIM SMYTH

DAVID CONWAY explores how trades councils uniquely bring together diverse local groups to tackle everything from domestic abuse to green campaigns, but warns they must attract younger delegates and use social media more effectively

A devastating new 44-page report reveals Labour’s cuts will push 400,000 into poverty and cost disabled people up to £10,000 annually, while the government refuses to make savings by cutting spending on war instead, writes Dr DYLAN MURPHY

Recent charges under Scotland’s Hunting with Dogs Act highlight enforcement gaps, writes KIERAN COLES, revealing how police routinely give hunts notice of their presence in advance, effectively removing any chance of catching lawbreakers red-handed

As Trump targets universities while Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem redefines habeas corpus as presidential deportation power, STEPHEN ARNELL traces how John Scopes’s optimism about academic freedom’s triumph now seems tragically premature

Here are the voices of DANIEL KEBEDE, FRAN HEATHCOTE, HOLLY TURNER and LEANNE MOHAMAD explaining why they will be taking part in the People’s Assembly No More Austerity demo next weekend 

DIANE ABBOTT MP argues that Labour’s proposals contained in the recent white paper won’t actually bring down immigration numbers or win support from Reform voters — but they will succeed in making politics more nasty and poisonous 
 

Exempting military expenditure from austerity while slashing welfare represents a fundamental misallocation of resources that guarantees continued decline, argues MICHAEL BURKE

In the conclusion of his two-part article, PETER MERTENS reveals that while global military spending hits $2.7 trillion with European arms company profits soaring 1,000%, €1 invested in hospitals creates 2.5 times more jobs than weapons

IAN LAWRENCE welcomes the government sentencing review but warns past experience shows such words rarely translate into meaningful action

In the first half of a two-part article, PETER MERTENS looks at how Nato’s €800 billion ‘Readiness 2030’ plan serves Washington’s pivot to the Pacific, forcing Europeans to dismantle social security and slash pensions to fund it

Human rights activist PETE STEVENSON, aka Pete the Poet, considers alternative ways of holding a meeting

The German Chancellor seeks EU sanctions on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to prevent future governments from resuming Russian gas deliveries, delivering a devastating blow to German industry — and German workers, writes RAINER RUPP

Noboa’s second term looks set to deepen his neoliberal policies: reduced public investment, privatization, cuts to social programmes, and militarisation, says  PILAR TROYA FERNANDEZ

Peaceful protesters are facing increasingly authoritarian clampdowns, including two recent arrests for putting a sticker on a Barclays ATM. LYNDA WALKER reports

RONNIE KASRILS pays tribute to Ruth First, a fearless fighter against South African apartheid, in the centenary month of her birth

Despite internal pressure over the Gaza genocide, Narendra Modi’s government has deepened relations with Tel Aviv. ROGER McKENZIE explores the geopolitics behind these strengthening links

ALASTAIR BONNETT reports on the paradoxes of populist attitudes towards protection of the natural world

The Tories’ trouble is rooted in the British capitalist Establishment now being more disoriented and uncertain of its social mission than before, argues ANDREW MURRAY

Our roving AGM from this Thursday through Sunday and our upcoming Morning Star Conference 2025 on June 14 in London are great opportunities to meet the team and help plan the way forward, says editor BEN CHACKO

STEPHEN ARNELL examines whether Starmer is a canny strategist playing a longer game or heading for MacDonald’s Great Betrayal, tracing parallels between today’s rightward drift and the 1931 crisis

Under Modi’s hard-right regime, India is going backwards — but not in the state of Kerala, where the communist-led government continues to deliver remarkable results in infrastructure, economic growth, healthcare, welfare, education, science and social harmony, reports PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY

TERRY HANSEN explains how Netanyahu’s boasts of 92,000 aid trucks contradict his own January admission of providing ‘minimal humanitarian aid’ and decades of Israeli documents reveal policies designed to keep Palestinians at ‘minimal subsistence’ levels since 1991

In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

JOHN GREEN observes how Berlin’s transformation from socialist aspiration to imperial nostalgia mirrors Germany’s dangerous trajectory under Chancellor Merz — a BlackRock millionaire and anti-communist preparing for a new war with Russia

Research shows Farage mainly gets rebel voters from the Tory base and Labour loses voters to the Greens and Lib Dems — but this doesn’t mean the danger from the right isn’t real, explains historian KEITH FLETT

Israel’s messianic settler regime has moved beyond military containment to mass ethnic cleansing, making any two-state solution based on differential rights impossible — we must support the Palestinian demand for decolonisation, writes HUGH LANNING

BILL GREENSHIELDS invites all and sundry to this years’ Derby Silk Mill Lockout March, Rally and People’s Festival on June 7

As Gaza burns and politicians abandon ‘bairns not bombs’ slogans to embrace a war economy, MATT KERR exposes the real purpose behind Britain’s EU fishing agreement: accessing €150 billion in militarisation funds

RMT’s former president ALEX GORDON explains why his union supports defence diversification and a just transition for workers in regions dependent on military contracts, and calls on readers to join CND’s demo against nuclear-armed submarines on June 7
 

In part two of May’s Berlin Bulletin, VICTOR GROSSMAN, having assessed the policies of the new government, looks at how the opposition is faring

David Lammy is now calling Israel’s escalation of the Gaza genocide morally unjustifiable — but what is truly unjustifiable is for Lammy to say this while directly arming and providing surveillance information for the genocide, writes NUVPREET KALRA

PRABHAT PATNAIK details the epochal shift of political power from Western neocolonialists to the people

Police guidelines suggesting home searches and digital checks for women who experience pregnancy loss under suspicion of having broken the outdated 1967 Abortion Act have sparked uproar, writes PEOPLES’ HEALTH DISPATCH 

MAT COWARD tells the extraordinary story of the second world war Spitfire pilot who became Britain’s most famous Stalag escaper, was awarded an MBE, mentored a generation of radio writers and co-founded a hardline Marxist-Leninist party

SOLOMON HUGHES details how the firm has quickly moved on to buttering-up Labour MPs after the fall of the Tories so it can continue to ‘win both ways’ collecting public and private cash by undermining the NHS

In part one of his Berlin bulletin, VICTOR GROSSMAN assesses the economic and political difficulties facing the new Merz government — and a regrettable ruling-class consensus on the solutions

The intensified Israeli military operations in Gaza are an attempt by Netanyahu to project strength amid perceived political vulnerability, argues RAMZY BAROUD

MARK FAIRHURST highlights the main issues facing officers in a long neglected service, and raised by front-line delegates at POA conference last week, including understaffing, violence, bullying and the ongoing denial of workers’ right to strike

A bizarre on-air rant by Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s head of counter-terrorism, shines a light on the present state of transatlantic relations, says NICK WRIGHT

As the UAE-backed RSF carries out drone strikes on humanitarian infrastructure in war-torn Sudan, the US sells more weapons to the UAE, writes PAVAN KULKARNI    

Black Americans already understand what genocide looks like, argues the Black Alliance for Peace, who are supporting the complaint, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Nature's self-reconstruction is both intriguing and beneficial and as such merits human protection, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

While claiming to target fraud, Labour’s snooping Bill strips benefit recipients of privacy rights and presumption of innocence, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning that algorithms with up to 25 per cent error rates could wrongfully investigate and harass millions of vulnerable people

ANYA COOK reports from the Newcastle citizens’ assembly, where over 240 people gathered to create a people’s manifesto ahead of next year’s local elections – part of former mayor Jamie Driscoll’s Majority movement

While working people face austerity, arms companies enjoy massive government contracts, writes ARTHUR WEST, exposing how politicians exaggerate the Russian threat to justify spending on a sector that has the lowest employment multiplier 

Head of education, campaigns and organising for the General Federation of Trade Unions HENRY FOWLER explains why it is launching a fund to support trades councils and give them access to a new range of courses and resources

Real security comes from having a secure base at home — Keir Starmer’s reckless and renegade decision to get Britain deeper into the proxy war against Russia is as dangerous as it is wasteful, writes SALLY SPIERS

The plan is to stigmatise and destabilise South Africa in preparation for breaking it up while creating a confused and highly racialised atmosphere around immigration in the US to aid in denying rights to non-white refugees, explains EMILE SCHEPERS

ALAN SIMPSON warns that Starmer’s triangulation strategy will fail just as New Labour’s did, with each rightward move by Labour pushing Tories further right

From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to today’s F-35 sales, Britain’s historical responsibility has now evolved into support for the present-day outright genocide. But our solidarity movement is growing too, writes BEN JAMAL

As Starmer flies to Albania seeking deportation camps while praising Giorgia Meloni, KEVIN OVENDEN warns that without massive campaigns rejecting this new overt government xenophobia, Britain faces a soaring hard right and emboldened fascist thugs on the streets

MAT COWARD rises over such semantics to offer step by step, fool-proof cultivating tips

DIANE ABBOTT MP warns Starmer’s newly declared war on foreigners and scroungers won’t fix housing or services — only class struggle against austerity can do that, and defeat Farage in the process

We’ll be developing a people’s manifesto for the 2026 local elections. We’ll network, learn, inspire and support each other and chart a future path for socialist politics, writes JAMIE DRISCOLL

Speaking to a CND meeting in Cambridge this week, SIMON BRIGNELL traced how the alliance’s anti-communist machinery broke unions, diverted vital funds from public services, and turned workers into cannon fodder for profit

Ben Chacko talks to ALAN MARDGHUM of the Durham Miners Association about Reform UK‘s dangerous inroads into Durham’s long-standing Labour county council; why he cancelled his party membership; and the political class’s disconnect from working people

It’s where she was looked after and loved by workers who don’t deserve Starmer’s ugly condemnation, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

MAT COWARD tells the story of Edward Maxted, whose preaching of socialism led to a ‘peasants’ revolt’ in the weeks running up to the first world war

VINCE MILLS gathers some sobering facts that would inevitably be major obstacles to any such initiative

MOLLY QUELL reports on the sanctions placed on International Criminal Court officials by the Trump regime, making it increasingly difficult for the tribunal to conduct even basic tasks

BILL GREENSHIELDS urges an intensification of the information offensive against the impact of the spurious discourse peddled by Reform UK

Labour’s pop-loving front bench have snaffled up even more music tickets worth thousands apiece, reports SOLOMON HUGHES

RAMZY BAROUD on how Israel’s narrative collides with military failure

DANIEL GOVER considers the procedural complexities awaiting a Private Member’s Bill in its passage through Commons and Lords

ROGER McKENZIE explains how Ibrahim Traore has sparked the flames of hope across Africa, while the Western powers seek to extinguish all attempts to build true sovereignty in the long-exploited continent

JAMIE TUCKNUTT reports on an initiative that brings together two epochs of the city’s anti-fascist struggles

KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet

Just as German Social Democrats joined the Nazis in singing Deutschland Uber Alles, ANDREW MURRAY observes how Starmer tries to out-Farage Farage with anti-migrant policies — but evidence shows Reform voters come from Tories, not Labour, making this ploy morally bankrupt and politically pointless

As Britain marks 80 years since defeating fascism, it finds itself in a proxy war against Russia over Ukraine — DANIEL POWELL examines Churchill’s secret plan to attack our Soviet allies in 1945 and traces how Nato expansion, a Western-backed coup and neo-nazi activism contributed to todays' devastating conflict

While Trump threatens to send Haitian gang leaders to El Salvador's terror prison, DANNY SHAW reveals how these paramilitary groups are merely symptoms of US-backed neocolonial rule — the real terrorists are the CIA and international actors arming desperate youth to traumatise an unarmed population

As food and fuel run out, Gaza’s doctors appeal to the world to end the ‘genocide of children,’ reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs