Once again Tower Hamlets is being targeted by anti-Islam campaigners, this time a revamped and radicalised version of Ukip — the far-right event is now banned by the police, but we’ll be assembling this Saturday to make sure they stay away, says JAYDEE SEAFORTH
Working-class consciousness alive and on the rise in Cornwall
Although the Labour Party has shifted to the right, socialism is thriving down in the south-west. DAWN EVANS reports
GOING STRONG: A lively RMT picket in Penzance, west Cornwall
[Pic: Anthony Matthews]
URI WELTMANN reports on a day in the life of peace activists from Israel, travelling to help Palestinians in the West Bank harvest their olives under threat from settlers and soldiers
The independent TD’s campaign has put important issues like Irish reunification and military neutrality at the heart of the political conversation, argues SEAN MacBRADAIGH
Italian unions are mobilising against rearmament and for wages and investment – but left blunders still leave the ‘post-fascist’ Italian PM looking likely to keep her job, says NICK WRIGHT
New research into mutations in sperm helps us better understand why they occur, while debunking a few myths in the process, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
CAROL WILCOX argues for the proper implementation of the land value tax, which could see unused plots sold off and landlords priced out of landlordism, potentially resolving the housing and planning crises
CORNWALL does not have a strong history of organised, industrial militancy. In the 19th century the influence of Wesleyan Methodism became a dominant force in this tin mining region, and at a time when radical political movements and the strong growth of trade unionism was emerging in other mining communities throughout Britain, Cornish Methodism promoted an engagement with Liberal politics rather than trade unionism or socialism.
However, there were notable exceptions. William Lovett, a Cornish man from Newlyn, was the founding member of the radical working-class Chartist movement and the author of the movement’s influential document — the People’s Charter (1848).
And in 1840 Richard Spurr, a carpenter from Truro, was arrested while actively agitating for the cause of Chartism. Around the same period, it was reported in a Chartist publication that a meeting in Penzance of the Chartists movement had been so well attended that it caused serious alarm among the authorities. Despite these efforts, the Chartist movement failed to gain ground in Cornwall.
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With solidarity coming in from across Britain and the world, PETER LAZENBY speaks to the people who made Christmas 1984 a celebration of working-class resistance in Britain’s striking coalmining communities