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
The sudden arrival of a cold war with China
Within a few short years we have gone from celebrating links with China to ripping up essential relationships and paving the ground for military conflict — we must now oppose Aukus and a new nuclear arms race, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE
Xi Jinping and former PM David Cameron in a pub in 2015
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
AS SOMEONE who lived through the first cold war against the Soviet Union and its allies, and who was in some important respects politically shaped by it — including in terms of my decades-long opposition to nuclear weapons — I recognise all too well the depressing signs of a new cold war against China, being fomented by the US, Britain and a handful of other countries.
Here in Britain, we’ve seen:
● A thriving relationship with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei scuppered at US insistence, leaving 5G infrastructure to be ripped out of our networks, increasing costs to the Treasury and leaving us in the broadband slow lane.
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For 80 years, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings have pleaded “never again,” for anyone. But are we listening, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
The US’s bid for regime change in the Islamic Republic has become more urgent as it seeks to encircle and contain a resurgent China, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
CARLOS MARTINEZ condemns Europe’s failure to develop genuine autonomy from US hegemony, as leaders like Starmer and Macron cling to a declining imperial order rather than building good relations with the emerging powers
KEITH BENNETT explains why, despite its present meagre economic outcomes, an honest and fruitful partnership with China is worth pursuing