Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
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Their May Day bank holidays and ours
KEITH FLETT looks back on some working-class and ruling-class traditions
VIBRANT: A May Day rally in Trafalgar Square, London
BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
IN RECENT decades pop songs from the Mamas and the Papas and the Boomtown Rats have reminded us that Monday is not the most popular day of the week.
Indeed before industrial capitalism got a firm grip in Britain, it was common for artisan workers whose weekend consisted only of the Sunday to take Monday off, sometimes extending into Tuesday as well.
The practice was known as Saint Monday. It may surprise people in 2023 that Peterloo in August 1819 and the Chartist protest for the vote on Kennington Common in April 1848 both took place on Mondays.
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Modern Christmas as we know it, with its trees, dinner menu, cards and time off from work, only dates back to the early days of modern socialism as we know it, writes KEITH FLETT, checking in on Marx, Engels and the Chartists in the 1800s