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
Where the wealthy go in epidemics, then and now
Research shows that as the pandemic hit, those fleeing New York and London were white, educated and rich — we are certainly not all in it together, says KEITH FLETT

CHOLERA was the big and recurring disease of the 19th century. There was no full understanding of its cause and why it was spread until the 1880s.
Britain, along with the rest of Europe, saw several significant epidemics in 1831-2 and in 1848-9, in both cases also periods of revolutionary political changes.
The disease was held to be one of the lower classes, as indeed it mainly was, because of the insanitary housing conditions they had little choice but to live in.
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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

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Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT

Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
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Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT

KEITH FLETT uncovers the links between Dorset landowners, Caribbean plantations, slavery and the prosecution of trade unionists, revealing a darker side to the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ story