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
November 1918 — one war ending, another continues
JOHN ELLISON gives a history of how the left press reported the end of WW1 and the start of hostilities towards socialist Russia
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
NEWSPAPER readers in Britain looking back from November 1918 would have appreciated that the balance of military forces on the Western Front, after four years of relative stability, had changed crucially in the Allies’ favour since August, causing the front to move remorselessly eastwards towards Germany’s frontiers.
But readers remained insulated from the human reality of the war’s daily horrors by authoritarian censorship and by unconditional support for the war given by war correspondents and mainstream editors, who were generally even reluctant to draw attention to the decisive role since the summer of the fresh million-plus US army.
In 1936, the then editor of this paper’s predecessor, the Daily Worker, Rajani Palme Dutt summed up the war in his classic World Politics. “The war of 1914 was inevitable in the sense that imperialism could find no other solution for its conflicts … The outbreak of the war … revealed that the world forces unloosed by imperialism had fully outstripped the control of the statesmen of imperialism … The war, once begun, drove forward with its own murderous logic … The Gordian knot … was finally cut by the sword of the revolution … The Russian Revolution ended the war in the East. The German Revolution ended the war in the West.”
More from this author
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
JOHN ELLISON looks back at Labour’s opportunistic tendency, when in office, to veer to the right on policy as well as ideological worldview
JOHN ELLISON recalls the momentous role of the French resistance during WWII
JOHN ELLISON looks back to the 1974 general election in Greece which freed the people from the oppressive military junta
