The crew of the Freedom Flotilla boat, Handala, warned Israel to obey international law but are now in captivity, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Latest editorial
The travesty of liberal Christmas — from Ebenezer Scrooge to Simon Thompson
Despite being possibly the most popular Christmas story after Jesus's birthday, the political logic of A Christmas Carol — that poverty is not justified punishment for indolence — still escapes Britain's bosses, writes KEITH FLETT
A TALE AGAINST THE RICH: Charles Dicken's most famous work in its first edition, 1843
A Chilean court ruled that funds were illegally taken by the dictator to accumulate family wealth that is now disputed among his heirs, writes PABLO MERIGUET
DAVID HORSLEY remembers communist seaman Bill Bailey, the ‘Kid from Hoboken,’ whose heroics in tearing down a swastika flag from a ship’s mast inspired early anti-fascist resistance
Our Foreign Secretary now condemns Israel in the Commons, yet Britain still supplies weapons and intelligence for its bombing campaigns — as the horror reaches perhaps the final stage, action must finally replace words, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP
I went to bed planning for university, but woke to bombs falling on Gaza, losing my home, best friend, and nearly my hand — yet I am unbroken, and still dream of writing to carry Palestinian voices worldwide, writes EMAN GHASSAN ABUZAYED
The shock suspension of socialist MPs and Diane Abbott’s re-suspension reveals a leadership intent on crushing internal debate — but MERCEDES VILLALBA MSP warns against surrendering party democracy without a fight
CHARLES DICKENS wrote A Christmas Carol at remarkable speed, and it was published on December 19 1843. It had already sold 5,000 copies before Christmas Day that year — in a decade that was known as the Hungry Forties. The similarities with modern “foodbank Britain” are striking.
In Dickens’s book, Ebenezer Scrooge runs a financial business off Cornhill in the heart of the City of London, and the author takes us to his counting house on Christmas Eve.
Scrooge is in one office and across the way is his clerk Bob Cratchit. The office is barely heated, Scrooge being frugal in most things.
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KEITH FLETT looks at the long history of coercion in British employment laws
The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
10 years ago this month, Corbyn saved Labour from its right-wing problem, and then the party machine turned on him. But all is not lost yet for the left, says KEITH FLETT
