General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
Latest editorial
The British protest against fascism that nearly derailed Mussolini’s plans for the ‘March on Rome’
ALFIO BERNABEI looks back 100 years to a key turning point in the emergence of fascism
Mussolini
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
AS HE prepared to take control of Italy with plans already under way for the march on Rome, Mussolini warned the British government that he would unleash “maximum-degree” retaliations against British ships in Italian ports if an anti-fascist protest by the British unions was allowed to go ahead which threatened to embarrass him in front of the whole world.
The protest, led among others by the British National Union of Railwaymen and the National Federation of Transport Workers, was the first major anti-fascist event outside Italian borders and was called at a time when Mussolini was sending out warnings that he was ready to advance, with up to 300,000 Blackshirts at his command.
The march on Rome eventually took place on October 28 1922 and the Italian king appointed Mussolini prime minister.
More from this author
ALFIO BERNABEI presents evidence that it was the Italian Socialist MP’s attempt – weeks before his death – to build an anti-fascist platform in Britain that cost him his life, as he vainly sought to prevent Italy from falling into dictatorship
Historian ALFIO BERNABEI tells the remarkable story of how Sylvia Pankhurst and Silvio Corio railed against the fascist ‘camorra’ in Clerkenwell’s Little Italy in the aftermath of Mussolini’s seizure of power
ALFIO BERNABEI looks back to when emigrant Blackshirts openly paraded through London to Westminster Abbey, tolerated by the Tory government and accepted by much of the mainstream press as a legitimate political movement in power in Italy
