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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Geoffrey Pyke, Britain’s brilliant anti-fascist inventor
MAT COWARD looks at the personal ideology of a man as concerned with the psychology of inventing as with inventing itself, whose ideas about education – and contributions to the war effort against the Nazis – live on
The ice-based building material ‘pykrete’ narrowly missed deployment in WWII, though both have a fanbase in the modern scientific community
[Office of Stategic Services/ Creative Commons]
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
ON February 23 1948, the inventor Geoffrey Pyke was reported dead at his home in Hampstead by his landlady. He had clearly committed suicide, aged 54, though no-one was precisely sure why.
It was a tragic end to a life which had contained a great deal of achievement — and a great deal of pain. Obituaries noted his almost unparalleled importance as a thinker (“one of the greatest geniuses of his time”), his lack of public recognition and his eccentricity.
At the start of the first world war, Pyke had come up with the brilliant idea of becoming an undercover journalist for a British newspaper — in Berlin. At that time, the British secret service had failed to insert any of its agents into Germany, and Pyke didn’t speak German, so the odds weren’t really on his side. In October 1914, despite his forged US passport, he was arrested within a few days.
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MAT COWARD tells the extraordinary story of the second world war Spitfire pilot who became Britain’s most famous Stalag escaper, was awarded an MBE, mentored a generation of radio writers and co-founded a hardline Marxist-Leninist party
MAT COWARD recalls the communist and pacifist aristocrat whose commitment made a difference in the Spanish civil war, the Blitz and WWII Europe
MAT COWARD offers a roll call of refuseniks – some for political reasons, others for quirky reasons of their own
A crucial part of the war effort, the Home Guard, was launched partly due to the influence of Tom Wintringham, a revolutionary communist with a passion for DIY grenades and guerilla warfare, writes MAT COWARD