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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Labour and the unions: a relationship worth saving?
The Labour Party, under the control of its right wing, has long sought to be free of its link to the unions — should the left still be fighting this, or looking at extraparliamenarry routes to working-class influence, ask NICK WRIGHT
Chancellor James Callaghan, then PM Harold Wilson and assistant general secretary
of the TUC Vic Feather watch the Durham Miners’ Gala in 1967
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
IT’S COMPLICATED. All relationships are. But the partnership for life between the trade unions — the working-class organisations that created the Labour Party — and the party itself has entered a new stage in which some, on both left and right, are questioning whether that relationship in its present form can survive.
On the right of the party — in Parliament and in the party apparatus — there is a clear sense that the powerful presence of trade unions in decision-making, candidate selection and policy formation now represents a threat to its 21st century project to decouple Labour from a politically engaged working-class movement and permanently occupy the centre ground.
Over a century, with occasional interruptions, Labour’s leaders enjoyed a comfortable relationship with right-wing union leaders who were content to allow the parliamentary party to determine policies.
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