TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about

THE assault on free speech within Britain’s Labour Party speaks like a ghost from my past. I was banned from public speaking in apartheid South Africa almost 60 years ago. My crime, aged 23, was advocating votes for all. The apartheid government accused those like me of undermining the safety of whites.
When all avenues of peaceful change were blocked, we had no option but to turn to armed struggle. We argued that there was no equivalence between the state violence of the oppressor and the resistance of the oppressed. International solidarity helped bring about the demise of the apartheid system.
We empathise with those in the Labour Party today, who are being victimised by a double agenda: for their socialism and for defending Palestinian rights. It is astonishing and deplorable that a witch hunt is underway within those ranks — as elsewhere.

The charter emerged from a profoundly democratic process where people across South Africa answered ‘What kind of country do we want?’ — but imperial backlash and neoliberal compromise deferred its deepest transformations, argues RONNIE KASRILS

RONNIE KASRILS pays tribute to Ruth First, a fearless fighter against South African apartheid, in the centenary month of her birth

SALEEM BADAT and VASU REDDY introduce a new book about an outstanding interpreter of the world, and an activist scholar committed to changing society

