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
Unity is needed against far-right hatred
The Tory government has deliberately whipped up anti-migrant feelings in a cynical attempt to draw attention away from the economic crisis it created, says MARC WADSWORTH
Police officers on the scene outside the Suites Hotel in Knowsley
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
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
PERHAPS one of South African Nobel peace prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s most famous quotes is: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
With the appalling scenes on TV news this month of far-right thugs using firebombs and setting alight a police van outside a hotel on Merseyside, where refugees they were violently protesting against were cowering inside, never before did the great statesman’s wise words ring truer.
The black-led anti-racist campaign, The Liberation Movement (TLM), of which I’m co-founder, has joined 180 organisations that signed a Together With Refugees-initiated open letter to leaders of all parties in response to the appalling attack on the Suites Hotel in Knowsley, where asylum-seekers are housed.
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Listening to our own communities and organising within them holds the key to stopping the advance of Reform UK and other far-right initiatives, posits TONY CONWAY
White racist rioting has many an infamous precedent in Britain, writes DAVID HORSLEY
MARC WADSWORTH reports from the meeting to commemorate the Sharpeville Massacre 65 years ago