Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
To take on Amazon a proper long-term strategy based on union activity is needed
Community organising has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective – it’s time for a switch to industrial organising, based on socialist principles, writes NIGEL FLANAGAN
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
THE news that the US union RWDSU (Retail Wholesale Department Store Union) has lost the ballot for recognition in Bessemer is an immediate and crushing defeat but also raises a longer-term question — is US-style “community organising” finished?
The loss of this vote among 6,000 workers in Bessemer, Alabama, is hot on the heels of the similar outcome at VW in the same state.
What is even more remarkable is that this is in the plant where an estimated 80 per cent of the workers are black African-American.
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It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR
Incoming Usdaw general secretary JOANNE THOMAS talks to Ben Chacko about workers’ rights, Labour and how to arrest the decline of the high street
The largest to-date strikes organised by the Teamsters union rattled Amazon facilities across the US before Christmas