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
Latest editorial
This Election Gives a Clear Choice on Foreign Policy
Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on the Chagos Islands is just one clear example of how Labour would implement a truly ethical foreign policy, writes MATT WILLGRESS
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 long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
LAST week, the government ignored a deadline to give up control of the Chagos Islands.
In response, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “It’s clear that in refusing to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and defying the UN general assembly and International Court of Justice (ICJ), this Conservative government shamefully considers itself to be above international law.”
As Jeremy also said in a letter to Boris Johnson this week on the matter, outlining his stance on this issue in more detail, the government’s stance will “set the UK against the entire continent of Africa, and dozens of countries from all continents which supported Mauritius at the [UN] general assembly and before the court [the ICJ], including India, Brazil and many Commonwealth countries.”
Similar stories
The left must avoid shouting ‘racist’ and explain that the socialist alternative would benefit all
JOGINDER BAINS argues that the infamously cruel and calculated mass murder of Indians blocked into a public square and fired upon by the British Indian Army still faces a reckoning
Starmer’s unseemly rush to the right is part of a historical pattern when Labour is in power, argues ANDREW MURRAY, but there’s no reason why politics in general should follow this trajectory
