A recent Financial Times column on the Iran war exemplifies how the Western elite worldview is more concerned with strategy and power than legality or human life, writes ANDREW MURRAY
If protests didn’t work they wouldn’t try to ban them
As huge demos once again hit the streets of Britain in defence of Palestine, we must recognise that ours is an era where street politics is increasingly vital, explains socialist historian KEITH FLETT
Protesters during a pro-Palestine march organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign in central London. Picture date: Saturday October 28, 2023.
STEVE BISHOP considers the prospects for a settlement of the conflict and how the demands of both sides are being viewed
The PM is drawing cautious distance from Donald Trump over Iran – but history suggests Britain’s support may run deeper than it appears, just as it did during the Vietnam war, says KEITH FLETT
Years of austerity and political failure have left classrooms overcrowded and staff overstretched – now educators are organising across roles to demand change, says ED HARLOW
While US restrictions tighten economic and social pressures on Cuba, international allies and grassroots campaigns are stepping in to support the island’s resilience, writes BERNARD REGAN, secretary of Cuba Solidarity Campaign
Labour’s approach to Scotland reveals a long-running tension between rhetoric and reality, warns PAULINE BRYAN
THE right to demonstrate was hard-won. It took a massacre at Peterloo in Manchester on August 16 1819, where soldiers on horseback cut down, killed and injured protesters who were demanding the right to vote, to remind that state that allowing political demonstrations was perhaps preferable to such confrontations.
It is a right that has required exercise in practice down the decades and centuries — and there have of course been times when demonstrations were banned or attacked by the police.
Since the 1960s protest marches have become a significant way of focusing on issues which official Westminster politics ignores.
Similar stories
It’s not just the Starmer regime: the workers of Britain have always faced legal affronts on their right to assemble and dissent, and the Labour Party especially has meddled with our freedoms from its earliest days, writes KEITH FLETT
The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
Research shows Farage mainly gets rebel voters from the Tory base and Labour loses voters to the Greens and Lib Dems — but this doesn’t mean the danger from the right isn’t real, explains historian KEITH FLETT