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
China: Labour must choose co-operation or oblivion
With the doomsday clock now set at 90 seconds to midnight, Labour urgently needs a China strategy distinct from that of the US, writes PAUL ATKIN
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer welcomes Ashley Dalton (centre left) to the Houses of Parliament in London as the newly elected Labour MP for West Lancashire
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
WE need to step back from any policies or ways of thinking that will set the Doomsday Clock even closer, or take us right into armageddon.
Whatever critique anyone has of China, or aspects of Chinese policy, a programme of disengagement and decoupling like that advocated by Sonny Leung and Sam Goodwin on Labour List last month, which involves cutting off Chinese investment and trade and limiting overseas students, would lock us into an economic war that is an inexorable step towards the real thing.
This is not hyperbole. There is a strong body of opinion in US foreign policy circles that the US needs to fight a war with China this decade by stoking up tensions around Taiwan, as the only way to prevent its peaceful economic rise and increasing technological sophistication overhauling the US and putting an end to any prospect that the 21st will be a “new American century.”
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From anonymous surveys claiming Chinese students are spying on each other to a meltdown about the size of China’s London embassy, the evidence is everywhere that Britain is embracing full spectrum Sinophobia as the war clouds gather, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
From 35,000 troops in Talisman Sabre war games to HMS Spey provocations in the Taiwan Strait, Labour continues Tory militarisation — all while claiming to uphold ‘one China’ diplomatic agreements from 1972, reports KENNY COYLE
JENNY CLEGG reports from a Chinese peace conference bringing together defence ministers, US think tanks and global South leaders, where speakers warned that the erosion of multilateralism risks regional hotspots exploding into wider war
Behind the war fever, there is more than just the alleged threat of Russia; economic decline and the struggle for geopolitical dominance play a crucial role in the increasing militarisation of our continent, writes MARC VANDEPITTE