Since 2010, one in five firefighter jobs has disappeared alongside 30% funding cuts — all while climate breakdown brings record blazes and flooding. It’s time to fund our fire service properly, writes FBU general secretary STEVE WRIGHT
Latest editorial
When Henry III had to bow to public opinion
It's hard to think of any single piece of legislation enacted on this island since November 1217 that was more radical in spirit or in practice than the Forest Charter, writes MAT COWARD
MOMENTOUS: (L to R) Henry III of England by David Cole, 1694; The Charter of the Forest, 1225 reissue, held by the British Library
[Public Domain] 
In the current climate, it is vital to bust the myths and put forward the case for a humane and decent social security system that supports people, argues FRAN HEATHCOTE
CWU leader DAVE WARD tells Ben Chacko a strategy to unite workers on class lines is needed – and sectoral collective bargaining must be at its heart
Labour must not allow unelected members of the upper house to erode a single provision of the Employment Rights Bill, argues ANDY MCDONALD MP
With 121,000 vacancies and 44.8% of staff feeling unwell from work stress, the NHS 10-year plan will not succeed unless the government takes immediate action to retain existing staff, writes ANNETTE MANSELL-GREEN
With 90 courses from health and safety to neurodiversity, AI and political economy, we are helping workers understand the political context of their struggles, writes general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE
THE word “forest” was brought to England by the Normans, and it didn’t have much to do with trees.
A forest was an area of mixed land — fields, scrub, woods, marsh, heath — in which only the king, or those he licensed, were allowed to hunt. The establishment of forests was an attack on the ancient freedoms of the high and the livelihoods of the low which led to centuries of class conflict.
As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle put it, William the Conqueror “set apart a vast deer preserve, and imposed laws concerning it. The rich complained, and the poor lamented, but he was too relentless to care, though all might hate him.”
Similar stories
‘Honest’ Tom Wharton’s 1682 drunken rampage through St Mary’s church haunted his political career, but his satirical song Lillibullero helped topple Catholic James II during the Glorious Revolution, writes MAT COWARD
MAT COWARD tells of a pioneering suffragette and one of the first direct actionists, who’s commemorated in a street name in Swindon
MAT COWARD unearths Gustav Holst’s radical roots, from meetings at William Morris’s house to pamphlet-printing and agitation with the Red Vicar of Thaxted — and laments that he is remembered today for the entirely wrong reason
MAT COWARD resurrects the radical spirit of early Labour’s overlooked matriarch, whose tireless activism and financial support laid the foundations for the party’s early success