SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
THE right-wing media is full of bellicose Tories, including the Prime Minister, who say that Palestinian protests are “aggressive mobs” that are apparently threatening democracy. Yet more measures are planned to “crack down” on protest, except for ones that the Tories support such as farmers, of course.
Before she was sacked as home secretary, Suella Braverman said Palestinian protests were “hate marches” and protesters an “intimidating mob,” which is also what the reactionary thinker Edmund Burke said about the French revolution.
She then summoned up far-right groups who duly appeared and attacked police at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. Meanwhile, crowds of many hundreds of thousands have continued to march peacefully calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in central London.
It’s not just the Starmer regime: the workers of Britain have always faced legal affronts on their right to assemble and dissent, and the Labour Party especially has meddled with our freedoms from its earliest days, writes KEITH FLETT
Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT
The government cracking down on something it can’t comprehend and doesn’t want to engage with is a repeating pattern of history, says KEITH FLETT
KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations



