Working in a high-risk sector, prison officers’ calls for proper PPE must be heeded – and the POA will be fighting to ensure effective protection at work is delivered, writes MARK FAIRHURST

When it comes to extreme weather events, from wildfires to flash floods, it’s firefighters who are on the front line of defence, but services have been cut to the bone, and government is not taking seriously its responsibility for the environment, says STEVE WRIGHT

In his May Day message for the Morning Star, RICHARD BURGON says the call for peace, equality and socialism has never been more relevant

LUKE FLETCHER pours scorn on Labour’s betrayal of the Welsh steel industry, where the option of nationalisation was sneered at and dismissed – unlike at Scunthorpe where the government stepped in

Washington’s tariff policies become explicable in light of the US economy’s relative decline and the astonishing rise of China, argues MICHAEL BURKE

This May Day we reaffirm our commitment to working people and our class and to get trade unionism back on the front foot, says EDDIE DEMPSEY

DIANE ABBOTT looks at the whys and hows of Labour’s spectacular own goal

KEVIN DONNELLY reports from Monte Faudo and its annual remembrance of the region’s WWII partisan anti-fascist battles

SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war

RUBY ALDEN GIBSON believes Scottish parliament has enough powers to curtail Westminster Labour’s savage attack on welfare

The Trump government is seizing overseas students from their homes and campuses and even off the streets, with no legal grounds and no due process, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER

Our unions need to make a firm stand against so-called ‘defence spending’: the boss class say there’s no magic money tree — and there should be no magic mushroom cloud either, argues NATHAN HENNEBRY

ALAN SIMPSON warns of a dystopian crossroads where Trump’s wrecking ball meets AI-driven alienation, and argues only a Green New Deal can repair our fractured society before techno-feudalism consumes us all

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

As global fascism grows, ROGER McKENZIE urges the left to reclaim May Day’s revolutionary roots — not as an act of nostalgia, but as fuel for building a ‘community of resistance’ against exploitation and the rise of fascism

KYRIL WHITTAKER looks at what guides Vietnam 50 years after reunification
 

Incredibly, US Republican states are systematically dismantling child labour protections, with children transformed back into the cheap, disposable workers of the Dickens era, reports ANDREW MURRAY

RMT leader Eddie Dempsey's stark warning shook up a fringe meeting at the Scottish TUC

Scotland’s rapidly growing support for Reform UK is the result of a profound crisis of trust in mainstream politics — one that progressives share, and must harness, writes DEREK THOMSON

That Scotland was an active participant and beneficiary of colonialism and slavery is not a question of blame games and guilt peddling, but a crucial fact assessing the class nature of the questions of devolution and independence, writes VINCE MILLS

COLL McCAIL rejects the Scottish Establishment’s attempt at an ‘elite lockout’ of Reform UK and says the unions should be wary of co-option by their class enemies in Holyrood just to keep one set of austerity-mongers in power instead of Reform UK

The devastating impact of austerity has left Scotland’s education system on its knees, argues ANDREA BRADLEY, urging politicians to show courage by increasing wealth taxation to fund our schools properly

Glasgow Trade Union Education Centre secures two-year partnership after a landmark campaign

On the 80th anniversary of liberation from Nazi-fascism, left forces in Italy mobilise against genocide, armament, and the Meloni government, reports ANA VRACAR

From the ‘marketisation’ of care services to the closure of cultural venues and criminalisation of youth, a new Red Paper reveals how austerity has weakened communities and disproportionately harmed the most vulnerable, write PAULINE BRYAN and VINCE MILLS

It’s tiring always being viewed as the ‘wrong sort of woman,’ writes JENNA, a woman who has exited the sex industry

Tackling poverty in Scotland cannot happen without properly funded public services. Unison is leading the debate

As Reform UK threatens to capitalise on public anger, our Establishment politicians simply refuse to acknowledge their role in creating the very alienation that gives succour to Farage, writes CRAIG ANDERSON
 

After a ruinous run at Tolkien, the streaming platforms are moving on to Narnia — a naff mix of religious allegory, colonial attitudes, and thinly veiled prejudices that is beyond rescuing, writes STEPHEN ARNELL

Congress can chart a bold course that will force meaningful transformation for the people of Scotland

Edinburgh can take great pride in an episode of its history where a murderous captain of the city guard was brought to justice by a righteous crowd — and nobody snitched to Westminster in the aftermath, writes MAT COWARD

There are only two things that stand between workers and the musket’s volley today - the ballot and the union, asserts MATT KERR

When privatisation is already so deeply embedded in the NHS, we can’t just blindly argue for ‘more funding’ to solve its problems, explain ESTHER GILES, NICO CSERGO, BRIAN GIBBONS and RATHI GUHADASAN

The annual commemoration of anti-fascist volunteers who fought fascism in Spain now includes a key contribution from Italian comrades