With the death of Pope Francis, the world loses not only a church leader but also a moral compass
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Lawfare on class warfare: the Tories and the strikes
Since the 1980s the Conservative Party has been trying to win its battles against the unions by changing the rules they are fought on — but you can’t change the material basis of industrial struggle, writes KEITH FLETT
TURNING POINT: Pickets face off with police outside the News International plant in Wapping, 1986
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Keir Starmer’s £120 million to Sudan cannot cover the government’s complicity in the RSF genocide or atone for the long shadow of British colonialism and imperialism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
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We face austerity, privatisation, and toxic influence. But we are growing, and cannot be beaten
KARL MARX noted that the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living — and that certainly seems to be the case with current Tory attitudes to industrial action on the cost of living as Rishi Sunak promises yet more anti-union legislation.
The Murdoch-owned Times newspaper, for example, has opined on numerous occasions about trade unions, strikes and what union members must do — primarily stop them and get on with their work.
Yet nowhere in the Times commentaries, or indeed those of Tory ministers and MPs, is recognition of what the Thatcher governments did on trade union law.
More from this author
KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
