Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Darkness into light
The public outcry over the Assange case is reaching a new pitch, writes JOHN REES of the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign
ONGOING CAMPAIGN: Stella Moris, the wife of Julian Assange, talks to the media outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, after the Wikileaks founder was formally issued with an order for extradition to the US to face espionage charges, April 2022. John Rees is pictured on the left (dark coat, glasses)
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
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NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
“NEVER can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping floundering condition which is this High Court of Chancery,” wrote Charles Dickens in Bleak House.
Famously he used the smog of London as a metaphor for the all enveloping bureaucracy and obfuscation which engulfed the case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce that lies at the heart of the novel.
Such was the outrage at Dickens’ depiction of the courts that Bleak House played its role in the reform of the legal system in the 19th century.
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