Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
NOT content with calling Jeremy Corbyn a “fucking anti-semite and racist,” and treating herself as the victim when the Labour Party threatened to act on a third party complaint about her use of outrageous and abusive language against a fellow Labour MP whom she has known for several decades, and is the leader of the Labour Party, Margaret Hodge has had the chutzpah to compare her fight against Corbyn’s alleged anti-semitism with her fight in her Barking constituency against the British National Party (BNP).
She has cynically drawn on her family’s direct experience of the Holocaust to bolster her special right to pronounce on the subject.
The usual suspects who regularly target their venom at Corbyn instead of the Tory Party — and happen, coincidentally, to be members of Labour Friends of Israel — Ruth Smeeth, Luciana Berger, Jess Philips, Chuka Umunna and others, have all lined up to defend Hodge’s comments and have praised to the hilt her proclaimed brave and courageous fight against the BNP.
May elections will soon be upon us and SABBY DHALU calls for a maximum mobilisation, across Britain, to defeat Reform UK and the right at the ballot box
Once again, our broad-based coalition outnumbered the anti-migrant protest in Faversham, but tackling the sentiment behind this wave of anger requires explaining the real reasons pushing millions into leaving their homelands, argues NICK WRIGHT
Listening to our own communities and organising within them holds the key to stopping the advance of Reform UK and other far-right initiatives, posits TONY CONWAY


