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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A fight to defend our industry and our communities
Durham Miners Association chair STEPHEN GUY explains how the legacy of the strike lives on in north-east England with the miners’ gala in July and the under-refurbishment ‘Pitman’s Parliament’
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
THE miners’ strike of 1984-85 was an industrial dispute often considered a “battle,” involving 184,000 miners, their communities, the state, including most of the British media, the National Coal Board (NCB) and the Tory government, led by Margaret Thatcher.
The dispute was not about pay and conditions but rather a fight to preserve an industry, communities and a way of life. For decades, coalmining in Britain was the backbone of the economy, not least in north-east England, employing hundreds of thousands of people, hence the importance of victory in the struggle.
By any measure, the 1984-85 miners’ strike was a pivotal moment is British history and had no parallel in terms of its duration, size or impact, which continues to endure across many workplaces and communities.
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The Home Secretary’s recent letter suggests the Labour government may finally deliver on its nine-year manifesto commitment, writes KATE FLANNERY, but we must move quickly: as recently as 2024 Northumbria police destroyed miners’ strike documents
In the third extract from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staffer HILARY CAVE recounts how women throughout the striking coalfields showed their mettle when the going got tough
PETER LAZENBY is fascinated by a book of cartoons that shows how newspaper cartoonists were employed to, on the one hand, denigrade and, on the other, to defend the miners’ strike of 1984-85
Remembering KEN CAPSTICK, vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers Yorkshire Area