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
Latest editorial
Venezuela: UN special rapporteur’s report slams sanctions – but Biden retains them
We need to step up our campaign against the illegal US sanctions on Venezuela, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE
A man holds a painting of late President Hugo Chavez as he waits to enter the Historic Military Museum to visit Chavez's tomb on the eighth anniversary of his death in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, March 5
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
AN overwhelmingly damning report by UN special rapporteur on human rights Alena Douhan has catalogued the massive harm inflicted on the Venezuelan people by the illegal sanctions imposed primarily by the US but also by Britain, the EU and Canada.
Yet less than a month after its publication in February, President Joe Biden has chosen to renew by executive order what the Obama administration in 2015 termed “a national emergency with respect to the situation in Venezuela,” on the absurd grounds that the country continues “to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
The special rapporteur’s interim report, based on first-hand observations and extensive discussions with a wide range of stakeholders, makes a number of critical points about the sanctions.
Similar stories
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
Two months into Donald Trump’s second run as president, what can we glean about his policies towards Latin America so far, asks TIM YOUNG, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
FIONA SIM of the Black Liberation Alliance reports on a whirlwind week in Caracas, including President Maduro’s inauguration