Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
The empire that drowned in the Suez
Incredibly, 65 years after General Nasser showed Britain the door, there are MPs that seem to think we can one day have successful solo imperial adventures again. Nonsense, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
General Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in Egypt then successfully defended it against Britain, France and Israel, forcing them to retreat; without the US, Britain could not go it alone
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
IN 1956 General Nasser, the ruler of the newly independent Egypt, nationalised the Suez Canal. It runs through Egypt, was dug by forced Egyptian labour and legally belonged to the Egyptian state.
Britain, France and Israel responded by sending in gunboats, warplanes, paratroopers and marines to grab the canal back and try to overthrow Nasser. Egyptian troops fought back.
The US, Russia and the United Nations opposed the imperial adventure. Britain, France and Israel were forced into a humiliating retreat, with nothing to show for a couple of hundred deaths among the invaders and over a thousand Egyptian civilians and soldiers killed.
Similar stories
How can we claim to be human while our countries still support and defend the massacres in Palestine, asks HUGH LANNING
From nuclear bomb storage in the 1950s to surveillance flights over Gaza today, the Cyprus base has enabled seven decades of machinations so heinous that Starmer once blurted out ‘we can’t tell the world’ what goes on there, writes NUVPREET KALRA
While Hardie, MacDonald and Wilson faced down war pressure from their own Establishment, today’s leadership appears to have forgotten that opposing imperial adventures has historically defined Labour’s moral authority, writes KEITH FLETT
