DENNIS BROE gives an update on the last week of anti-austerity protests against the Macron regime, which has seen the supposedly more right-leaning Gilets Jaunes join with the unions and the left
Pablo Neruda: the poet and the two dictators
On the 50th anniversary of the mysterious death of Pablo Neruda, JIM JUMP looks at how the life of the poet and communist was inextricably linked to two notorious dictators
JOHN PERRY and FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ unpack the latest propaganda attack on Nicaragua, explaining how a clearly biased, US-backed regime-change NGO used a totally unrepresentative sample and survey methodology to get a ridiculous result
In 1981, towering figure for the British left Tony Benn came a whisker away from victory, laying the way for a wave of left-wing Labour Party members, MPs and activism — all traces of which are now almost entirely purged by Starmer, writes KEITH FLETT
ANDREW MURRAY breaks down this week’s rift in the new left party that was at one point polling at 15 per cent of the vote without even having formed — whether it will form now has been thrown into a pit of doubt
DIANE ABBOTT MP argues we shouldn’t see last week’s march as an inarticulate outpouring of confused class consciousness, arguing that the agenda was set by the stars of the international far right, whose speeches were explicit, extreme and unopposed
BERNADETTE KEAVENEY announces a simplified and streamlined way to get your paper delivered daily, and a big push for new readers that we can all help make into a success
AGED 32 and already a prolific poet, Pablo Neruda was a consul at the Chilean embassy in Madrid when in July 1936 Francisco Franco helped lead a revolt against Spain’s Popular Front government.
It was a defining moment for Neruda. His poetry would never be the same again. Nor would his politics. He gave vent to his feelings in I’m Explaining a Few Things, one of his greatest poems:
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers…
More from this author
Teaching youngsters about the International Brigades and the Spanish civil war is vital for a proper understanding of 20th-century history, writes JIM JUMP
JIM JUMP welcomes the new booklet published by the RMT and International Brigade Memorial Trust about the seafarers and rail workers who fought Franco’s fascism in Spain
JIM JUMP describes how the inspirational homecoming of the volunteers from Spain heaped shame on the appeasers and Franco supporters in the British government
JIM JUMP tells the story of British seafarers who traded with Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War
