Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER
A new wind blowing in Ireland?
With the return of government to Stormont, and cracks showing in the political edifices of the DUP and Sinn Fein, is the door opening to an all-Ireland politics, asks NICK WRIGHT
Lock padlocks on a set of gates at the steps of Parliament Buildings, Stormont Estate, November 7, 2022
A judge in a German court ruled that the ban activity imposed on renowned Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today
Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON
THESE lines are written with a clear view across Co Down to where, as the song has it, the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea. Television viewers might know this delightful port town from the Hope Street series, set in a fictional Ireland far from the reality.
On the southern edge of Donagadee stand two flag poles. One carries an increasingly tattered union flag, the territorial marker of loyalism and the union. The other, an equally bedraggled flag of the Israeli settler state which, no less than the butcher’s apron, tells us much of what we need to know about the loyalist mindset.
The two most unionist-minded newspapers in Ireland, the Belfast Telegraph and the Newsletter, are exemplars of well-thought-out newspaper design and serve their largely partisan readership with a mixture of news and comment perfectly tailored to what is a diminishing proportion of the population in Britain’s oldest colonial possession.
More from this author
Holding office in local government is a poisoned chalice for a party that bases its electoral appeal around issues where it has no power whatsoever, argues NICK WRIGHT
From Gaza complicity to welfare cuts chaos, Starmer’s baggage accumulates, and voters will indeed find ‘somewhere else’ to go — to the Greens, nationalists, Lib Dems, Reform UK or a new, working-class left party, writes NICK WRIGHT
There is no doubt that Trump’s regime is a right-wing one, but the clash between the state apparatus and the national and local government is a good example of what any future left-wing formation will face here in Britain, writes NICK WRIGHT
European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde sees Trump’s many disruptions as an opportunity to challenge the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ — but greater Euro assertiveness will also mean greater warmongering and militarism, warns NICK WRIGHT
