As tens of thousands return to the streets for the first national Palestine march of 2026, this movement refuses to be sidelined or silenced, says PETER LEARY
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Remembering staunch trade unionist Bob Gillespie – ‘a street fighter, a tiger’
Gillespie, pictured during the Glasgow Govan by-election of 1988
If the government really wanted to address public finances, improve living standards and begin economic recovery, it would increase its borrowing for investment, argues MICHAEL BURKE
MATT KERR takes a winter journey through poetry, labour and memory, from Glasgow to Newcastle, arguing that our radical past isn’t something to revere from a distance, but a tool still meant to be used
One of Canada’s most revered politicians is a native of Falkirk but is relatively unknown in his original homeland. KENNY MacASKILL tells his story
Labour prospects in May elections may be irrevocably damaged by Birmingham Council’s costly refusal to settle the year-long dispute, warns STEVE WRIGHT
HENRY FOWLER and ROB POOLE explain the significance of today’s Megapicket
BOB GILLESPIE who died on April 12 aged 85, was a staunch trade unionist and socialist, well-known and respected in the Scottish trade union and labour movement.
From humble beginnings he became a national officer of the print unions Sogat and GPMU.
Born in 1937, Robert Pollock Gillespie was evacuated to Ayrshire with his mother during the second world war. His father was an infantryman serving overseas.
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JOHN LANG recalls how Murdoch used scabbing electricians and even devised a fake newspaper to force a confrontation with printers – then sacked them all
Forty years on, TONY DUBBINS revisits the Wapping dispute to argue that Murdoch’s real aim was union-busting – enabled by Thatcherite laws, police violence, compliant unions and a complicit media
![[Pic: Andrew Wiard]](https://dev.morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-01/19860503_a_wiard_0003.jpg.webp?itok=mR5zV0nE)
The once beating heart of British journalism was undone by technological change, union battles and Murdoch’s 1986 Wapping coup – leaving London the only major capital without a press club, says TIM GOPSILL
Enduring myths blame print unions for their own destruction – but TONY BURKE argues that the Wapping dispute was a calculated assault by Murdoch on organised labour, which reshaped Britain’s media landscape and casts a long shadow over trade union rights today