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
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Europe’s elite are worried once again
NICK WRIGHT recalls the Portuguese revolution and its degradation, arguing that now the pay-off for neoliberalism is spent, socialism is back with a bang
Young socialists march in London, summer 2018
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
PORTUGUESE medic Carlos Placido de Sousa was exiled to Britain following a daring prison break in January 1960 which freed the leadership of the Portuguese Communist Party.
A quiet man, tall, bookish and modest, it was De Sousa who both procured the drugs used to immobilise the guards in the fearsome Peniche fortress and drove one of the getaway vehicles.
With the notorious PIDE secret police on their tails, the revolutionaries went underground and into exile. For years De Sousa led the work of the PCP in Britain and edited the internationally renowned Portuguese and Colonial Bulletin which was the English language voice of the PCP’s strategy which culminated in the April 25 Carnation revolution.
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Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT
The left must avoid shouting ‘racist’ and explain that the socialist alternative would benefit all
ANDREW MURRAY casts an eye over past upheavals and asks whether the left can find a fire escape before the world goes up in flames
