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
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Emmeline Pankhurst is far from the only suffragette we should remember
DAVID ROSENBERG writes on Teresa Billington, the Women’s Freedom League and the other suffragettes who fought for equality within their own movement and struggle
Members of the Women's Freedom League
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
TERESA BILLINGTON was a self-motivated rebel born in Blackburn in 1877. She ran away from her very strict Catholic working-class family. While apprenticed as a milliner, she went to night school, after long days at work, to train as a teacher.
She worked at a school in Crumpsall, Manchester, but was hauled up in front of the local education committee and faced the sack, because she had refused to teach religious instruction. One of her responses to her own strict religious upbringing was to become an agnostic.
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