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
IT IS 170 years since the French people overthrew King Louis Philippe and started a chain of events that led to 1848 being known as the “year of revolutions.”
One country that did not have a revolution was Britain and we should expect that point to be echoed again during 2018 by such media as bother to pay attention to history.
The general drift is that the British are sensible, moderate people not given to sudden outbursts that remove rulers and overthrow governments.
NICK MATTHEWS recalls how the ideals of socialism and the holding of goods in common have an older provenance than you might think
Two-hundred years ago, on September 27 1825, the world’s first passenger railway line was opened between Stockton and Darlington. MICK WHELAN, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, reflects on the history – and the future – of Britain’s railway industry
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



