Seventeen years after losing her council job due to needing endometriosis surgery, Michelle Dewar’s campaign for paid menstrual leave gained 50,000 signatures in a week, reports ELIZABETH SHORT
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How the protests of 1968 challenged the established politics of the day
As we approach the end of a year of events marking 50 years since 1968, KEN LIVINGSTONE reflects on the lessons for the struggle for socialism today
A huge demonstration against the Vietnam war in Grosvenor Square, London, October 27 1968
From 35,000 troops in Talisman Sabre war games to HMS Spey provocations in the Taiwan Strait, Labour continues Tory militarisation — all while claiming to uphold ‘one China’ diplomatic agreements from 1972, reports KENNY COYLE
White racist rioting has many an infamous precedent in Britain, writes DAVID HORSLEY
The SNP might dissemble over the meaning of ‘nationalism,’ but it can’t disguise the fact that it is no left-wing party, says ELAINE SMITH
Castro became one of the first leaders to denounce Israeli genocide against Palestinians at the UN, comparing zionist persecution to Nazi crimes while Cuba trained PLO cadres and awarded Arafat state honours, writes PABLO MERIGUET
The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT
IT IS impossible to understand the significance of 1968 without knowing about the decades before. I was born in 1945 just as Labour came to power and gave my generation the best life in British history, with the welfare state, NHS, housebuilding and full employment. But although this was a big progressive shift in our economy, our culture remained deeply conservative.
I had no interest in politics as a kid, spending time collecting newts and studying astronomy. When I left school I tried to get a job at London Zoo but they had no vacancies, so I became a technician at the Royal Marsden’s cancer research unit.
My parents had always been working-class Tories but now I was surrounded by a dozen other technicians, all of whom were working-class Labour. I started work in 1962 just as a new generation of pop music burst into being. That generation from the 1940s changed our culture, not just in music and fashion but also with brilliant new actors.
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