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
The Tories are complicit in Trump’s illegal ‘regime change’ agenda in Venezuela
The activities of the secret Venezuela Reconstruction Unit show the British government is entirely subservient to Washington’s priorities in Latin America, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE
Pretender: Juan Guaido
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
THE Westminster government’s “special relationship” with the US was again demonstrated last week as that of a lapdog obeying its master while hoping for a few crumbs from the table.
Specifically, on June 9 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) revealed that the secret Venezuela Reconstruction Unit had not only had contact with Juan Guaido, the self-declared “interim president” of Venezuela and failed coup leader, and his representative in London but had also visited Venezuela and met other Venezuelans.
The admission became public through a response to a parliamentary question tabled by Richard Burgon MP.
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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
With its track record of leveraging cultural power for US gain and barely concealed promotion of coup attempts, the US Agency for International Development will not be mourned among the US’s southern neighbours, write JOHN PERRY and ROGER D HARRIS
With Trump coming back to power, interventions aimed at regime change and a far-right resurgence in the region are heavily on the agenda, writes MATT WILLGRESS, calling on the international left to prepare to act in solidarity
FIONA SIM of the Black Liberation Alliance reports on a whirlwind week in Caracas, including President Maduro’s inauguration