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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Ken Loach: ‘The left is always on the map’
Morning Star editor Ben Chacko speaks to one of Britain’s greatest living directors — and one of the biggest names to be expelled from Labour in the recent purges — about what the socialist left does next in the Starmer era
Ken Loach, November 2019
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
IT’S an election year. From its earliest days the Tories, Labour and SNP have been in salesperson mode, making pitches to the electorate.
But the last months of 2023 have, through the eruption of a huge street movement for peace and an exodus of councillors from a Labour Party that backs Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, thrown up new questions about that election.
Have they put the left back on the map, I ask film director Ken Loach — who since his expulsion from Starmer’s Labour (for the very Starmerist offence of failing to condemn other people who had been expelled) has helped set up the For the Many network to maintain a socialist voice in politics.
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