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
'Break the taboo – we need to talk about Nato'
Ben Chacko reports on the launch of a new Stop the War pamphlet on the history of the US-led military bloc and the threat it poses to peace today
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
THE peace movement needs to break the new “taboo” around criticism of Nato, activists heard at the launch of the Stop the War Coalition’s updated pamphlet Nato: a war alliance on Tuesday night.
“Nato is central to so much of what is going on in the world today,” the coalition’s Andrew Murray pointed out, “but we’re in a situation where in conventional and parliamentary politics it’s been removed as a topic.
“Questioning Nato and its role is forbidden not only in the Tory Party, which has more or less always been the case, but now in the Labour Party under Keir Starmer. Where Labour MPs might in the past have been speaking at a meeting like this, now they cannot criticise Nato for fear of losing the whip.”
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VIJAY PRASHAD examines why in 2018 Washington started to take an increasingly belligerent stance towards ‘near peer rivals’ – Russa and China – with far-reaching geopolitical effects
