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
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Halfon’s ‘white privilege’ dead cat has been eviscerated by the Social Mobility Commission
SOLOMON HUGHES welcomes a thorough deconstruction of the Tory bid to blame anti-racists for working-class underachievement
Robert Halfon
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
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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 government’s own Social Mobility Commission has attacked Tory MP Robert Halfon’s attempt to say the reason poor white kids do poorly at school is because teachers care too much about black and Asian kids.
Halfon’s education select committee issued a report this June about poor school performance of white pupils who get free school meals: this is a very real problem as poor kids, especially in small towns, have been neglected, and don’t do well at school.
Thanks largely to previous Labour governments, some efforts to improve school performance of the poorest kids has paid off in London and other big cities. But less well-off kids in towns and smaller cities – often poor white kids – still do very badly.
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In the second part of a two-part article, CONOR BOLLINS asks why the government’s ambition when it comes to the military is not applied to sectors where it could do real good
With 170,000 children living in poverty in north-east England and teachers leaving in droves over 20 per cent real-terms pay cuts since 2010, all while private companies siphon off billions, it is time to unite and fight for education, writes MATT WRACK