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
Welcome to the Morning Star – the alternative to the corporate media monopolies
Editor BEN CHACKO welcomes new readers and explains why there’s never been a better time to get behind the people’s paper
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
IF YOU’RE reading this bumper edition of the Morning Star for the first time, welcome to Britain’s only national daily socialist, co-operatively owned newspaper!
After over two years of lockdowns, Covid waves and a shift to online only events, we’re very pleased to have worked with one of our 11 national shareholder unions, the CWU, to ensure a mammoth distribution today at the TUC’s We Deserve Better demo and elsewhere around Britain.
It’s all to get the message across — that however timid the parliamentary opposition to a government whose policies are deliberately driving down pay and allowing inflation to let rip, there is real opposition to this government in the trade union movement and it’s our job to build it into a force capable of forcing change.
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As advertising drains away, newsrooms shrink and local papers disappear, MIKE WAYNE argues that the market model for news is broken – and that public-interest alternatives, rooted in democratic accountability, are more necessary than ever
BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year
A chance find when clearing out our old office led us to renew a friendship across 5,000 miles and almost nine decades of history, explains ROGER McKENZIE
BERNADETTE KEAVENEY announces a simplified and streamlined way to get your paper delivered daily, and a big push for new readers that we can all help make into a success