We are not here to advocate for the arms industry or its CEOs, writes STEVE HANDFORD, and that means we must take a stand against the government’s spending on war
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Thatcher’s Tory leadership victory at 50
KEITH FLETT looks back 50 years to when the Iron Lady was elected Tory leader…
EVEN FURTHER RIGHT: Margaret Thatcher meets the press outside her Chelsea home after her leadership victory in 1975
As Labour mimics Tory welfare cuts while ignoring crumbling schools, educators must collectively resist the government's priorities and fight for an inclusive, creative system that values all children, writes NEU president SARAH KILPATRICK
Although our sector is hearing better things from the current government, the recognition that what we do is education in its own right, rather than just childcare, is still not reflected in policy, writes LUCY COLEMAN
Once able to defy a US president before Congress, Netanyahu now finds himself weakened by military setbacks and facing a populist Trump who may yet put ‘America first’ instead of Israel, writes RAMZY BAROUD
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
Without due process, hundreds of Venezuelans living in the US have been arrested, slandered as terroristic criminals and sent flown in chains to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison under an obscure 18th-century law, reports JOHN PERRY
The NEU’s annual conference promises heated debate, with motions on international politics, curriculum reform and union amalgamation likely to provoke strong reactions and challenge the status quo, writes Education for Tomorrow editor ROBERT POOLE
IT’S 50 YEARS since Margaret Thatcher was elected Tory leader. Ted Heath had lost two elections to Labour in February and October 1974 and was eventually forced to call a leadership election in February 1975. He lost in the first round of voting on February 4 to a right-wing outsider — Thatcher. In the second ballot she got a majority of all Tory MPs over four other middle-aged white men in suits and became Tory leader. Just over four years later in May 1979 she became prime minister.
The 50th anniversary has already been marked by a two-part recreation of an interview Brian Walden did with her in 1989. An opera written by social historian Dominic Sandbrook is due later this year.
Thatcher’s victory was unexpected, not least because she represented a rightward shift in Tory politics — even if anyone active in the early 1970s in the labour movement would have thought Heath with his hard line anti-union stance was quite right-wing enough.
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