Mask-off outbursts by Maga insiders and most strikingly, the destruction and reconstruction of the presidential seat, with a huge new $300m ballroom, means Trump isn’t planning to leave the White House when his term ends, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
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The neoliberal backdrop to the miners’ strike
LORD JOHN HENDY KC explains how the events of ’84-5 were an ideological assault unleashed on the working class in revenge for gains of the ’70s
Police officers march through a mining town
BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
The City is leaning on Rachel Reeves to cut welfare spending — when what’s needed is cuts to all the benefits given to the mega rich, corporations and banks to help them not pay or blatantly dodge their fair share of tax, explains BERNIE EVANS
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
ANN HENDERSON looks at the trailblazers of the Women’s Trade Union League and their successful fight for female factory inspectors — a battle that echoes in today’s workplace campaigns
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
THE miners’ strike of 1984-5 really began in 1947 when Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and others developed a quasi-philosophical theory to justify the unbridled capitalism of the 19th century. It became known as neoliberalism.
Ironically, 1947 was the year the British coalmines were nationalised, part of the “post-war consensus.” Neoliberalism rejected every aspect of it — from nationalisation to the welfare state and, in particular, the dominant economic theory which underpinned the consensus and mitigated the harshest aspects of capitalism, Keynesianism.
Neoliberalism has many features but of most relevance here is the proposition that trade unions are tolerable — except to the extent that, through collective bargaining, they distort the so-called “labour market.” The price of labour should instead be left to the freedom of individuals to compete against each other to work for the lowest wage each is prepared to accept to sustain life.
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In the second extract from her new memoir, former NUM headquarters staffer HILARY CAVE recounts the bitter struggle to provide sustenance for strikers’ families, and the invidious role of David Willetts – now in the House of Lords
PETER LAZENBY is fascinated by a book of cartoons that shows how newspaper cartoonists were employed to, on the one hand, denigrade and, on the other, to defend the miners’ strike of 1984-85
Remembering KEN CAPSTICK, vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers Yorkshire Area
With solidarity coming in from across Britain and the world, PETER LAZENBY speaks to the people who made Christmas 1984 a celebration of working-class resistance in Britain’s striking coalmining communities