The Employment Rights Act marks a major victory for workers, but without stronger enforcement and collective organisation, its promises may fall short, says ALICE BOWMAN
TODAY, in the midst of what even our rulers describe as the worst crisis since 1945, the people of Britain will be enveloped in a cloud of toxic ideological matter ejected from the British state’s propaganda vents.
The country continues to reel under the Covid-19 crisis: its death toll now the highest in Europe; its dilapidated social and economic infrastructure — asset-stripped by years of neoliberal reform — brutally exposed; the corruption, complicity and complacency of its ruling class on show for all to see.
What better time, therefore, to dust off the gilded upholstery of the monarchic state, wheel out the monarch to intone about our shared heritage in the British wartime spirit, put Churchill’s speeches on repeat and start mainlining conservative nostalgia?
JOHN REES replies to Claudia Webbe
CJ ATKINS commemorates one of the most dramatic moments in working-class history
BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year
As the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia rebuilds support through anti-cuts campaigns, the government seeks to silence it before October’s parliamentary elections through liberal totalitarianism, reports JOHN CALLOW



