SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
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Rent freezes are needed to avoid mass evictions
RICHARD BURGON MP warns that there is a real danger that the coronavirus crisis will turn the housing crisis into a catastrophe
RUBY ALDEN GIBSON believes Scottish parliament has enough powers to curtail Westminster Labour’s savage attack on welfare
KEVIN DONNELLY reports from Monte Faudo and its annual remembrance of the region’s WWII partisan anti-fascist battles
The Trump government is seizing overseas students from their homes and campuses and even off the streets, with no legal grounds and no due process, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
As global fascism grows, ROGER McKENZIE urges the left to reclaim May Day’s revolutionary roots — not as an act of nostalgia, but as fuel for building a ‘community of resistance’ against exploitation and the rise of fascism
Our unions need to make a firm stand against so-called ‘defence spending’: the boss class say there’s no magic money tree — and there should be no magic mushroom cloud either, argues NATHAN HENNEBRY
KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations
OUR housing system has been broken for decades. Millions of people were struggling to pay the rent even before the coronavirus crisis, but many now face being overwhelmed by housing debt and the risk of losing their home.
After Thatcher’s neoliberal revolution we saw 40 years of insufficient council house building combined with increased marketisation of housing. Rents rose faster than wages, leaving private renters spending an average of 40 per cent of their income on rent. Access to long-term secure housing was pushed out of the reach of many.
The number of tenants who privately rent living in overcrowded conditions doubled in the last decade and, as with all of Britain’s social crises, black communities are especially affected and much more likely to suffer overcrowding.
All this meant that poor housing was already a public health concern. There are now even fears that areas with the highest levels of overcrowding could also have some of the highest numbers of coronavirus cases.
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In his May Day message for the Morning Star, RICHARD BURGON says the call for peace, equality and socialism has never been more relevant
RICHARD BURGON MP argues that a broad, united mass movement can stop the cuts and ensure it’s the wealthiest that pay their fair share
RICHARD BURGON MP says the government should use the Employment Rights Bill to reverse a shameful Tory decision on discrimination
RICHARD BURGON MP, who voted against the cut to winter fuel allowance, warns against a return to austerity, introducing his ideas that could raise billions to properly fund public services and boost wages instead
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