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
Remembering Hugo Chavez
Rewriting history when it comes to Hugo Chavez’s role in Venezuela and Latin America’s past is part of the current US offensive for ‘regime change,’ says KEN LIVINGSTONE
INSPIRATIONAL: Hugo Chavez among children
[Mision Verdad/Truth Mission]
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
YOU won’t read about it much in those parts of the media currently arguing for war on Venezuela, but when Hugo Chavez first became president in 1999, Venezuela had endured a wave of economic and social catastrophes in the preceding two decades.
Up to seven in 10 people had been left in poverty. Income per head had collapsed to the levels of the 1950s. Millions were left to live in barrios dangerously clinging to the mountainsides, often without clean water or sanitation. Many had no proper access to healthcare and education
After Chavez’s election in 1998 with a 57 per cent vote, he set about his mission to transform the country.
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Long having been considered the ‘US’s backyard,’ Latin America is the crucible of anti-imperialist struggle – yet with the rise of China as an economic and ideological counterweight to Washington, we see a new phase of that struggle emerge, writes BEN CHACKO
From defeating illiteracy to tackling student stress, China’s system transforms lives while putting people before profit — British educators should consider what we could learn from the world’s largest school system, writes LOGAN WILLIAMS
FIONA SIM sees the Venezuelan anti-fascist and anti-imperialist initiatives as offering hope to the rest of the world
With Trump coming back to power, interventions aimed at regime change and a far-right resurgence in the region are heavily on the agenda, writes MATT WILLGRESS, calling on the international left to prepare to act in solidarity