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
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The imperial debacle in Afghanistan: avoiding conspiracy theories
NICK WRIGHT looks at left approaches to the US's humiliation and its reverberations at Westminster
The hearse carrying Navy Corpsman Maxton Soviak leaves Edison High School stadium after his funeral in Milan, Ohio. Soviak was one of 13 US troops killed in a suicide bombing at Afghanistan's Kabul airport on August 26
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
CONFUSION ruled in the British socialist movement in 1884. The leader of the marxist Social Democratic Federation, Henry Hyndman, had antagonised much of the membership in arguing for a British military mission to rescue General Gordon then besieged by the Sudanese in Khartoum.
Accustomed to his role in asserting British imperial authority over the Sudanese people, the hapless colonial overlord was an early practitioner of the tactics that have caused countless deaths – of colonial subjects and British soldiers alike – over the generations and, in this instance, his own.
This came about when, in defiance of his instructions, which were simply to evacuate, he instead fortified the city and began to treat with the the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad.
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Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT
The proxy war in Ukraine is heading to a denouement with the US and Russia dividing the spoils while the European powers stand bewildered by events they have been wilfully blind to, says KEVIN OVENDEN