This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH

ACCORDING to right-wing pundits, the Labour leadership “is finally learning to love Tony Blair again.”
The promotion of centrist types like Wes Streeting to the shadow cabinet and Keir Starmer’s support for Blair getting knighted are the outward signs of a not-so-secret nouveau-Blairism flourishing at the top of Labour.
But these neo-Blairites don’t seem to take Blair on his own word. They rarely celebrate his actual policies, only his election wins.

SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war

Despite Labour’s promises to bring things ‘in-house,’ the Justice Secretary has awarded notorious outsourcing outfit Mitie a £329 million contract to run a new prison — despite its track record of abuse and neglect in its migrant facilities, reports SOLOMON HUGHES

