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
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On the socially transformative roles of the bicycle and holiday camp
MAT COWARD looks at how the bicycle helped spread socialist education and the holiday camp was invented for the benefit of the working class
Caister Camp Halt was a railway station on the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway which served the holiday camps near the Norfolk coastal town of Caister-on-Sea, England
[Public Domain]
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
Alba party leader KENNY MacASKILL makes some suggestions on how to save our pubs and reduce irresponsible drinking
The catastrophe unfolding in Gaza – where Palestinians are freezing to death in tents – is not a natural disaster but a calculated outcome of Israel’s ongoing blockade, aid restrictions and continued violence, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
Opinion polls point to electoral collapse, parliamentary rebellion and a looming leadership challenge as Starmer’s Labour haemorrhages working-class support and the far right exploits the vacuum left by a hollowed-out party, says NICK WRIGHT
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
KIRKPATRICK MACMILLAN is not a firm of City accountants, but something much better: the “inventor” of the bicycle.
(Inventor has to go in inverted commas, because so many people are credited with inventing various versions of what became the bicycle. Macmillan is widely held to be the man who made the key breakthrough of adding pedals).
But this week’s column is really about how socialists came to invent the holiday camp.
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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
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