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
‘There’s criminal complacency about the attitude to fire’
Fire Brigades Union leader MATT WRACK talks to the Star about the Grenfell inquiry, the firefighters’ pay freeze and the changing role of technology
Matt Wrack speaks at a protest in Westminster, London demanding answers over the Grenfell Tower disaster
Morning Star international editor ROGER McKENZIE says Trump’s ceaseless belligerence is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a multilateral world
Don’t dismiss Lebanon as a side theatre of this war, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN — there are signs Israel has expansion in mind, and it has demonstrated its willingness to expel and kill whole populations
The media present Starmer as staying out of Trump’s war — but we’re already deeply involved in a conflict that sees the US and Israel kill civilians on a huge scale, argues IAN SINCLAIR
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports on this week’s conference unveiling the findings of the Gaza Tribunal established by Jeremy Corbyn
CHRISTOPHE IMMER of the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt reports on a Berlin conference on the politics of art and the legacy of Marxist critic Hans Hess
FIREFIGHTERS have been fighting more than just fires over the last 100 years. As the legendary Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which represents one of the most unionised workforces in the country, celebrates its centenary year, the Morning Star caught up with the union’s leader Matt Wrack at its annual conference in Brighton to see what he thinks the big fights of the next 100 years will be.
A lot has been achieved by the FBU since the union formed on October 1 1918. Back then firefighters didn’t get holiday or sick pay and lived on fire stations like “municipal slaves” in what was known as the continuous duty system. This meant firefighters were on duty all the time, with just one day off each week.
They would be expected to clean the chief fire officer’s toilet and even be disallowed the right to sleep with their own wives before a shift.
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