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 recent crisis over North Korean nuclear weapons — which many feel is more of a crisis of having an unpredictable, hard-right politician called Donald Trump in the White House — will be the first time large numbers of people have felt that the world, and with it their own lives, could all end rather quickly in a nuclear war.
Those of us of advanced age remember that there have been many such episodes where the survival of all life on Earth hung in the balance since the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
In the early 1950s the US came close to using nuclear weapons in the Korean war, which ended with the division of the country into North and South.
For 80 years, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings have pleaded “never again,” for anyone. But are we listening, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
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



