Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER
Human error holds back the revolution
The Morning Star marks the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China with a series of articles by CARLOS MARTINEZ. This week he looks at the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76
REVOLUTIONARY FERVOUR: (L to R) Big-characters posted on the campus of Peking University and Mao Zedong and Lin Biao surrounded by rallying Red Guards in Beijing on December 1 1966
[China Pictorial/Creative Commons] 
A judge in a German court ruled that the ban activity imposed on renowned Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today
Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON
THE Cultural Revolution started in 1966 as a mass movement of university and school students, incited and encouraged by Mao and others on the left of the CPC leadership.
Student groups formed in Beijing calling themselves Red Guards and taking up Mao’s call to “thoroughly criticise and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois ideas in the sphere of academic work, education, journalism, literature and art.”
The students produced “big-character posters” (dazibao) setting out their analysis against, and making their demands of, anti-revolutionary bourgeois elements in authority.
More from this author
The US’s bid for regime change in the Islamic Republic has become more urgent as it seeks to encircle and contain a resurgent China, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
CARLOS MARTINEZ condemns Europe’s failure to develop genuine autonomy from US hegemony, as leaders like Starmer and Macron cling to a declining imperial order rather than building good relations with the emerging powers
Chinese socialist planning and action over decades have created the world’s greatest reforestation programme, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ, and now its lessons in fighting desertification and climate change are taking root worldwide
Despite relentless hostility, the People’s Republic of China has lifted millions out of poverty, and become a global leader in innovation and climate action, while pursuing peaceful development in a multipolar world, writes CARLOS MARTINEZ
