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
Women and the miners' strike – a fresh look at our history
Recent research projects seek to re-examine the role of women during the 1984-5 miners’ strike by focusing on fact rather than prevailing formulaic imagery created by the media at the time. LYNNE WALSH reports
KNOW THY ENEMY: National women’s demonstration against pit closures in Barnsley
Morning Star international editor ROGER McKENZIE says Trump’s ceaseless belligerence is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a multilateral world
Don’t dismiss Lebanon as a side theatre of this war, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN — there are signs Israel has expansion in mind, and it has demonstrated its willingness to expel and kill whole populations
The media present Starmer as staying out of Trump’s war — but we’re already deeply involved in a conflict that sees the US and Israel kill civilians on a huge scale, argues IAN SINCLAIR
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports on this week’s conference unveiling the findings of the Gaza Tribunal established by Jeremy Corbyn
CHRISTOPHE IMMER of the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt reports on a Berlin conference on the politics of art and the legacy of Marxist critic Hans Hess
THERE are couple of lines in Mal Finch’s great song, Women of the Working Class: “In fighting for our future we found ways to organise. Where Women’s Liberation failed to move, this strike has mobilised.”
The strike in question was, of course, the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85. Some of the women in question were groups up and down the country, part of Women Against Pit Closures [WAPC]. The mention of Women’s Lib, though, is a lot trickier to pin down. The movement had already been demonised, not only in the tabloid press, but in working men’s clubs, workplaces and, hush-hush, even trade unions.
Spurious tales of bra-burning were rife, the strike for equal pay at Ford’s Dagenham plant had ruffled feathers, and there was a female prime minister in No 10.
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In the third extract from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staffer HILARY CAVE recounts how women throughout the striking coalfields showed their mettle when the going got tough