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
Latest editorial
How the European Union captured the labour movement
In 1988, the late Jack Delors ‘sold’ the EU as the future of industrial and economic harmony to a much-diminished TUC — instead of more protection for workers’ rights, what came next was a neoliberal coup, writes NICK WRIGHT
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 YEAR was 1987. Thatcher had signed the Single European Act. This signalled Britain’s fuller integration into what became the European Union.
With sovereignty surrendered, the pressure for a reversal of the labour movement’s long-standing opposition to European capitalist integration intensified.
In the late 1980s, the labour movement was in bad shape. A slump conjoined with a Thatcherite destruction of manufacturing capacity and Thatcher’s deregulation of the financial markets — combined with the unashamed “monetarist” fiscal policies she and her chancellor pursued — drove unemployment over three million.
Similar stories
MARTIN HALL welcomes a study of Britain’s relationship with the EU that sheds light on the way euroscepticism moved from the margins to the centre
Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT
The shared path of the South African Communist Party and the ANC to the ballot box has found itself at a junction. SABINA PRICE reports
The left must avoid shouting ‘racist’ and explain that the socialist alternative would benefit all