There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
GCHQ 40: the ban on trade unions in 1984
Ahead of next weekend’s march and rally, HUGH LANNING explains why the GCHQ struggle and eventual victory means so much to the British labour movement
The 13th Anniversary GCHQ March moves through Cheltenham, January 1997, to commemorate when trades unions fought against the government's decision in 1984 to band trades union membership at the communications and eavesdropping centre
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
IN 1984 no-one had heard of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the government’s then-secret intelligence-gathering centre — let alone that the staff were represented by trade unions.
All that changed on January 25 1984, when Margaret Thatcher’s government announced its decision to impose a total ban on trade union membership at GCHQ.
The decision came without warning or consultation, and it provoked a sustained campaign unparalleled in modern labour history. It ended in 1997 when, in one of its first decisions, the Labour government overturned the ban.
More from this author
Israel’s messianic settler regime has moved beyond military containment to mass ethnic cleansing, making any two-state solution based on differential rights impossible — we must support the Palestinian demand for decolonisation, writes HUGH LANNING
The mass movement supporting Palestine represents potential political power that the left must now embrace as central to its strategy, writes HUGH LANNING, ahead of this Saturday’s Socialism or Barbarism day school in London
Starmer is going to go down in Labour history as as much a warmonger as Tony Blair – and the issue will prove his nemesis, says HUGH LANNING
Labour must recognise Israel’s true aims of total colonisation of Palestine and massive regional expansion — and therefore end the arms sales and trade deals that enable the destruction of any two-state solution, writes HUGH LANNING
