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
WHEN Henry Mayhew started the series of social investigations into the London working class in 1849 that was to become London Labour and the London Poor, he laid out a prospectus in the Morning Chronicle.
He wrote of investigating the “large and comparatively unknown body of people” that comprised the labouring poor who lived in slum housing, often in insanitary conditions with, at best, uncertain employment. He set a pattern that has emerged at times of crisis since.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, revealing a US government and president in George W Bush who was not only unprepared to deal with it but had reduced funding previously for measures that might have helped, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Michael Brown said: “We’re seeing people that we didn’t know exist.”
With more people dying each year and many spending their final days in institutions, researchers argue that wider access to palliative care could offer a more humane and cost-effective alternative, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
SUE TURNER is fascinated by a book that researches who the largely immigrant workforce were that built the Empire State
Inspired by a hit TV show, KEITH FLETT takes a look at the murky history of undercover class war
While ordinary Americans were suffering in the wake of 2005’s deadly hurricane, the Bush administration was more concerned with maintaining its anti-Cuba stance than with saving lives, writes MANOLO DE LOS SANTOS



