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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When Hugo Chavez and the people of Venezuela beat the US empire
April 11 marks the anniversary of 2002 coup in Venezuela, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE
The late Hugo Chavez (left) with then mayor of London Ken Livingstone
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
NINETEEN years ago in Venezuela a right-wing military coup briefly unseated its elected President Hugo Chavez before loyal armed forces units and a popular mobilisation of Caracas’s barrios turned the tables and restored Chavez to the presidency.
The coup was mounted by a combination of industrialists, businessmen, media owners, the principal trade union movement’s leaders, Catholic bishops and conservative military officers, working closely with the US government.
When Chavez won the presidential election in 1998 with 57 per cent of the vote and a mission to transform the country, Venezuela was not — contrary to a mainstream media myth — a model, egalitarian social democracy.
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The global left must be unwavering in it is support for Venezuela as Washington increases its aggression, and clear-eyed about the West’s cynical motives for targeting it, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
The US is desperate to stop Honduras’s process of social and democratic change, writes TIM YOUNG
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FIONA SIM of the Black Liberation Alliance reports on a whirlwind week in Caracas, including President Maduro’s inauguration