It is 30 years since Tory prime minister John Major was moved to protect Iraqi Kurds from Saddam Hussein’s brutal slaughter. The safe haven initiative provides a telling example for Keir Starmer’s Labour as it rethinks its foreign policy, says GARY KENT....
ROGER SMALLEY recounts the life of a Blackburn ILPer who wanted her work ‘to sting people into rebellion against poverty and fire their hearts with a cause’. Ethel Carnie left an impressive legacy of dissent that continues to have relevance today....
Politicians of all shades trumpet the ideal of social mobility as a mark of a fair society. It’s a claim picked apart by Selina Todd in her rich and compelling new book, Snakes and Ladders. MARIA GOULDING is impressed by a powerful manifesto for change....
Like many working-class socialists, Blackburn ILPer Johnnie Duxbury left only a faint footprint on the historical record. Yet his life of brave activism and everyday kindness ‘enriches our understanding of socialist commitment’, argues ROGER SMALLEY....
GARY KENT recalls how some on the British left challenged orthodox thinking and pioneered an alternative approach to Northern Ireland that helped lay the political groundwork for the Good Friday Agreement....
Anyone from Northumberland or County Durham involved in the 1984 miners’ strike will know the name of Anne Suddick, who died in January aged 72. Anne was a founding member of Women Against Pit Closures, set up the Durham Miners’ Support Group, and coordinated the Northumberland and Durham Justice for Mineworkers Campaign. MARY STRATFORD...
With Washington in violent turmoil, Georgia’s historic result provides a model for rebuilding trust in a broken political system. But will Democrats heed the lessons? MARY FITZGERALD and AARON WHITE report from the United States....
MARIA GOULDING reviews Bernardine Evaristo’s 2019 Booker Prize winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other – an interwoven tale of diversity and race that has much to teach us about the need for tolerance in modern Britain. ...
When Eric Preston died on 20 September this year it not only brought to an end his long and active life in the struggle for socialism, but marked the passing of an era for the ILP too. Eric’s writing and thinking over more than 60 years of ILP membership was hugely influential, not only...
BARNABY MARDER of Socialists Against Antisemitism recalls the events that led to Labour being investigated by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, and considers what it must do now to restore the confidence of the Jewish community. ...
Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered in the run-up to the US election was a sobering and resonant experience, says MARIA GOULDING. It’s a story centred on a dilapidated old house, a powerful image for an American society struggling to overcome its legacy of lies, injustice and inequality....
Tenant activists in Stirling have been inspiring fellow students across Scotland to fight back against rip-off landlords and university rent rises. CIAN IRELAND and DANIEL DEERY report on 18 months of hard campaigning....