Labour’s persistent failure to address its electorate’s salient concerns is behind the protest vote, asserts DIANE ABBOTT
			NEXT month will mark 40 years since the beginning of the 1984-5 miners’ strike. It was not only a formative struggle for an entire generation of socialists and trade unionists, but one whose outcome continues to shape British society today.
But when we meet this weekend for our Morning Star conference — Fightback: 40 Years On From the Miners’ Strike — we will be looking forward, not back.
The miners’ strike was the largest and most consequential industrial dispute of the Thatcher years. Their defeat put rocket boosters under Thatcher’s programme of privatisation and deregulation, from which we can trace a direct line to today’s failed state of collapsing services, enfeebled workplace rights and threadbare social security.
               The Home Secretary’s recent letter suggests the Labour government may finally deliver on its nine-year manifesto commitment, writes KATE FLANNERY, but we must move quickly: as recently as 2024 Northumbria police destroyed miners’ strike documents
               Our roving AGM from this Thursday through Sunday and our upcoming Morning Star Conference 2025 on June 14 in London are great opportunities to meet the team and help plan the way forward, says editor BEN CHACKO
               
               

