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 press and politicians for the most part keep the people of this country in ignorance of the real treatment meted out to the natives,” Keir Hardie noted in 1906.
While much has changed in the intervening 119 years, this quote from the Labour Party’s first parliamentary leader remains an astute observation about much of the British media today.
The British military and their political masters are, of course, still keen to keep the often dirty and deadly reality of British foreign policy from the public. For example, in his 2021 book The Changing Of The Guard, author Simon Akam explains the British army’s “highly restrictive media policies meant that much of the fighting” during the British occupation of Iraq “went unreported.”
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



