Labour’s persistent failure to address its electorate’s salient concerns is behind the protest vote, asserts DIANE ABBOTT
I HAVE been looking again through the inches-thick government papers on the 1976-78 Grunwick strike because they give clues to how Labour governments can respond to big strikes.
The papers show that the police carried out intense political surveillance of the strike. They filed reports full of both detail and absurd rumours — like their fears of trade unionists mobilising hit squads of female plumbers or schoolchildren to cause havoc — which Labour ministers accepted without question.
The Grunwick dispute started when a largely Asian workforce in a north London factory went on strike to support a sacked colleague.
The Home Secretary’s recent letter suggests the Labour government may finally deliver on its nine-year manifesto commitment, writes KATE FLANNERY, but we must move quickly: as recently as 2024 Northumbria police destroyed miners’ strike documents
Hundreds travel to Birmingham to join ‘mega picket’ of striking refuse workers and supporters
As Birmingham’s refuse workers fight brutal pay cuts, Strike Map rallies mass solidarity, with unions, activists, and workers converging to defy scab labour and police intimidation. The message to Labour? Back workers or face rebellion, writes HENRY FOWLER and ROBERT POOLE



