MIKE COWLEY welcomes half a century of remarkable work, that begins before the Greens and invites a connection to — and not a division from — nature

THOUSANDS of peace protesters demonstrated in Athens this week in the largest display yet of opposition both to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to any escalation of the conflict by Nato.
The march from the university area to the parliament had the blessing of the full range of the left in the country: from the main opposition party Syriza, through the party of former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, to the Communist Party (KKE) and forces of the anti-capitalist left.
The KKE had last week called a demonstration from the Russian to the US embassy against what the party general secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas has described as an inter-imperialist war “in which working people are told to choose between rival robber camps.”

A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN

As Starmer flies to Albania seeking deportation camps while praising Giorgia Meloni, KEVIN OVENDEN warns that without massive campaigns rejecting this new overt government xenophobia, Britain faces a soaring hard right and emboldened fascist thugs on the streets

