TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about
Stefan Heym: a central witness to socialism
Fleeing the Nazis to become a best-selling author in the US, then forced by Mccarthyism to settle in the GDR in the '50s, he would go on to open the reunified German parliament in 1994. JOHN ELLISON remembers a remarkable leftist
After leaving the US in the 1950's, writer Stefan Heym returned to Germany, living — sometimes as a critic of the government — in the GDR until it was dismantled. He died in a reunified Germany in 2001.
DIANE ABBOTT exposes the misconceptions, rumours and downright lies perpetrated around immigration issues
With 12,000 fewer teachers since 2010 and dwindling resources, Scotland’s schools desperately need investment to support diverse learners rather than empty promises from politicians, writes ANDREA BRADLEY
Reversing outsourcing is the pre-election promise the government must honour, says Unison general secretary CHRISTINA McANEA
EMAN ABU ZAYED reminisces about the perilous time her family and neighbours endured in northern Gaza and how they were forced, in fear of their lives, to flee south
The EIS president who defended Marxist politics in the 1980s fought Thatcherite educational policies while organising Teachers for Peace rallies and ensuring Morning Star circulation in Scotland’s pit villages and factories, writes JOHN FOSTER
STEFAN HEYM — journalist, novelist, essayist — and a lifelong socialist, died 20 years ago, aged 88, on December 16 2001. His unfading commitment to humanity through his writing and actions must be remembered and celebrated.
Born in 1913 into a prosperous Jewish family in the industrial east German town of Chemnitz, he was Helmut Flieg until he changed his name after fleeing to Czechoslovakia in March 1933, the youngest literary escapee from the newly installed Nazi regime. More than one change of country lay ahead for him.
The Flieg family’s textile business had no attraction for the growing Helmut. In September 1931, already anti-militarist, he produced a poem prompted by a newspaper report of German military officers being sent to China as instructors.
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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
