Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
Latest editorial
'Every weapons delivery is a licence to kill' - an interview with Egon Krenz
Ben Chacko speaks to East Germany's last leader about a world dividing again into armed camps
Egon Krenz at the UZ Pressfest last weekend
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
THE death of Mikhail Gorbachev this week brought discussion of the collapse of Soviet socialism back to the fore — especially as the neoliberal world order it ushered in is crumbling around us.
Just a couple of days before the last leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s death I was sat with the last leader of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), Egon Krenz, a speaker at one of the multiple political talks and rallies that with music, food and drink make up the Unsere Zeit press festival.
Krenz led the German Democratic Republic for a mere six weeks in late 1989 and, unlike Gorbachev, can take neither blame nor credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall: “It was too late for me to do anything.”
Similar stories
Western nations’ increasingly aggressive stance is not prompted by any increase in security threats against these countries — rather, it is caused by a desire to bring about regime changes against governments that pose a threat to the hegemony of imperialism, writes PRABHAT PATNAIK
After NGOs and the EU, UN condemns Germany’s crackdown on Palestine Solidarity, writes LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
While 69 per cent of Ukrainians want negotiated peace, Western leaders are cynically prolonging the war for their own strategic and economic goals, to the immense detriment of Ukraine and Europe, write BOB ORAM and MAGGIE SIMPSON
