SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
British governments have a long history of repressing protest, but protests continue
With Gove, Lord Walney and others seeking to restrict our freedom of dissent, KEITH FLETT reminds us that such state repression is not new and it can be overcome
A photograph of the Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, London, 1848
Morning Star international editor ROGER McKENZIE says Trump’s ceaseless belligerence is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a multilateral world
Don’t dismiss Lebanon as a side theatre of this war, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN — there are signs Israel has expansion in mind, and it has demonstrated its willingness to expel and kill whole populations
The media present Starmer as staying out of Trump’s war — but we’re already deeply involved in a conflict that sees the US and Israel kill civilians on a huge scale, argues IAN SINCLAIR
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports on this week’s conference unveiling the findings of the Gaza Tribunal established by Jeremy Corbyn
CHRISTOPHE IMMER of the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt reports on a Berlin conference on the politics of art and the legacy of Marxist critic Hans Hess
THE huge wave of demonstrations since October 2023 in support of Palestinians and demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza has got the government rattled. It’s not just the hundreds of thousands who have marched peacefully week after week in central London but a range of protests across Britain.
The former Labour MP Lord Walney, appointed to the Lords by Boris Johnson, was meant to have produced a report on political violence in 2021. It never appeared, but recently Walney has been demanding restrictions and bans on protests he doesn’t agree with. The Tories’ “counter-extremism tsar” Robin Simcox has also weighed in with calls for bans. He was appointed by Priti Patel and was formerly a cheerleader for Donald Trump.
Finally Michael Gove has taken it upon himself to produce a little list of organisations he thinks are extremist. The list has a couple of fascist groups which are certainly extreme but also tiny, and several Muslim organisations because Gove, in reaction to Palestinian protest, is determined to promote Islamophobia.
Similar stories
It’s not just the Starmer regime: the workers of Britain have always faced legal affronts on their right to assemble and dissent, and the Labour Party especially has meddled with our freedoms from its earliest days, writes KEITH FLETT
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today
The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT
KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet