FRAN HEATHCOTE believes that while the the Chancellor outlined some positive steps, the government does not appreciate the scale of the cost-of-living crisis affecting working-class people, whose lives are blighted by endemic low pay
High time for miners’ pension justice
The miners who toiled away down the pit, creating the wealth and prosperity so enjoyed by the British state, should now get their due, says JON TRICKETT
NUM members after carrying out safety work at Mardy Colliery, South Wales, in 1984
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pouring €11.5bn into the Kiev swamp, blocking Trump’s peace plan, and pushing Nato right up to Russia’s borders – no matter if it costs hundreds of thousands of lives, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN
The 2025 Budget shores up the PM’s political position with headline-grabbing welfare U-turns, but with no improvements on offer to declining public services or living standards, writes MICHAEL BURKE
The unifying victory of Irish progressive forces in the presidential campaign should be a salutary lesson to the left in this country, argues MARY GRIFFITHS CLARKE
Martin Taylor, the hedge-fund multimillionaire who has poured millions into pushing Labour rightwards, helped finance Lucy Powell’s supposedly dissenting campaign — suggesting her victory was not the ‘soft-left’ rebellion some have claimed, says SOLOMON HUGHES
A November 15 protest in Mexico – driven by a right-wing social-media operation – has been miscast as a mass uprising against President Sheinbaum. In reality, the march was small, elite-backed and part of a wider attempt to sow unrest, argues DAVID RABY
FOR over 25 years I have been proud to represent the constituency of Hemsworth.
Hemsworth is a special constituency with a special history. I represent over 20 villages, many of which have historic links to the pits.
South Kirkby, Frickley, Kinsley, Sharlston and Ackton Hall Colliery in Featherstone are all situated in my constituency. For decades, these were huge employers in this part of Yorkshire.
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The Home Secretary’s recent letter suggests the Labour government may finally deliver on its nine-year manifesto commitment, writes KATE FLANNERY, but we must move quickly: as recently as 2024 Northumbria police destroyed miners’ strike documents
Remembering KEN CAPSTICK, vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers Yorkshire Area
National Women Against Pit Closures secretary LYNN GIBSON was nine years old when striking miners and their families celebrated Christmas in 1984. She will never forget it
With solidarity coming in from across Britain and the world, PETER LAZENBY speaks to the people who made Christmas 1984 a celebration of working-class resistance in Britain’s striking coalmining communities