JOHN REES looks at why the June 20 international anti-war conference is such a vital initiative
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Media attacks on the left are nothing new
From the Chartists to left-wing councils in the ’80s to Tony Benn, all have received their share of vitriol from the right-wing press, says KEITH FLETT
Media attacks on leftwingers are nothing new. Tony Benn was often vilified in a similar manner to Jeremy Corbyn today
ROGER McKENZIE highlights how health workers in DRC are struggling to contain a deadly Ebola outbreak in a region already suffering conflict, aid cuts and a legacy of imperialist degradation
Associate Professor BUI QUANG TUAN explains how modernisation and growth are helping to unlock new foreign investment in the Vietnamese economy
New workplace rights are welcome, but the survival of the trade union movement will be determined not in Westminster but in workplaces across the country, argues JOHN CARSON
Nearly two decades after leaving office, the former PM is still trumpeting the same futile militarism and failed free market dogmas. The question naturally arises: why does anyone still listen to him, says ANDREW MURRAY
Very modest growth in membership serves to underline the need for a change of recruiting strategies, posits NIGEL FLANAGAN
VICTOR SERGE, the anarchist turned Bolshevik, and later critic of the direction the Russian Revolution was to take, wrote towards the end of his life in the late 1940s: “On several occasions a press with a vast circulation has hurled filth at me because I spoke the truth.”
It is a reminder that attacks on left-wing activists and writers by media owned by the rich and powerful are nothing new.
Indeed in the 1840s the leaders of the Chartist movement were often to be found being vilified in the press. Particular attention was paid, by Punch for example, to caricaturing the black leader of London Chartism in 1848 William Cuffay.
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Labour movement history in Britain shows workers secured reforms through collective pressure and political representation, rather than being gifted from above, writes KEITH FLETT
![[Pic: Andrew Wiard]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-01/19860503_a_wiard_0003.jpg.webp?itok=mR5zV0nE)
The once beating heart of British journalism was undone by technological change, union battles and Murdoch’s 1986 Wapping coup – leaving London the only major capital without a press club, says TIM GOPSILL
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT
SOLOMON HUGHES explains how the PM is channelling the spirit of Reagan and Thatcher with a ‘two-tier’ nuclear deterrent, whose Greenham Common predecessor was eventually fought off by a bunch of ‘punks and crazies’