SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
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Labour, elections and war: the case of 2001 and 2005
It’s not just ‘the Muslim vote’ but a general opposition to war from the whole electorate that Labour should be wary of — even the Lib Dems have come off better better in the past, writes KEITH FLETT
VOTING AGAINST WAR: Women on an anti-war protest in 2005 hold placards from the Respect party which managed to beat Labour and win an MP, George Galloway, in Bethnal Green and Bow that year
RUBY ALDEN GIBSON believes Scottish parliament has enough powers to curtail Westminster Labour’s savage attack on welfare
KEVIN DONNELLY reports from Monte Faudo and its annual remembrance of the region’s WWII partisan anti-fascist battles
The Trump government is seizing overseas students from their homes and campuses and even off the streets, with no legal grounds and no due process, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
As global fascism grows, ROGER McKENZIE urges the left to reclaim May Day’s revolutionary roots — not as an act of nostalgia, but as fuel for building a ‘community of resistance’ against exploitation and the rise of fascism
Our unions need to make a firm stand against so-called ‘defence spending’: the boss class say there’s no magic money tree — and there should be no magic mushroom cloud either, argues NATHAN HENNEBRY
KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations
UNTIL recently, current events were held to pass into history at around the 30-year mark, which was when official government papers were released of that period.
In more recent times many documents have been opened up after 20 years, meaning that the early 2000s period of British history has now made its initial entry to the historical record.
In the 2001 general election, nearly a repeat of the result of 1997, Labour had a majority of 167. At the next election in 2005, Labour’s majority dropped to 66. Tony Blair was replaced by Gordon Brown as PM in 2006.
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KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
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KEITH FLETT reflects on the 1964 and 1974 election victories, arguing that despite years in power, Labour failed to fundamentally reshape society in the way Thatcher later would — a pattern Blair and now Starmer would follow
KEITH FLETT draws parallels with the 1834 Tory crisis, noting the absence of modern-day Robert Peel among the leadership contenders capable of reinventing the party for a new era
by Radhika Desai, Alan Freeman and Carlos Martinez
Normally in British politics, leftwingers defect right. Under Blair and now Starmer however, this trend seems to reverse, calling into question the ‘broad church’ that welcomes Tories and excludes socialists, writes KEITH FLETT