As Colombia approaches presidential elections next year, the US decision to decertify the country in the war on drugs plays into the hands of its allies on the political right, writes NICK MacWILLIAM

THE first week of February saw a couple of labour movement occasions centred on Shropshire and north Wales.
It was the 200th anniversary of the event known as “Cinderloo,” where miners protesting about wage cuts were attacked by the Shropshire yeomanry. Several were killed and others put on trial at Shrewsbury.
Over two days in the same week was the long overdue appeal by building workers convicted as part of the 1972 national building workers’ strike, in which the matters at issue also took place in the Shrewsbury area.

In 1981, towering figure for the British left Tony Benn came a whisker away from victory, laying the way for a wave of left-wing Labour Party members, MPs and activism — all traces of which are now almost entirely purged by Starmer, writes KEITH FLETT

Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT

KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past

The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT