Latest editorial
THE next Labour government will be more radical than Clement Attlee’s pioneering post-war administration, shadow chancellor John McDonnell vowed at the weekend.
After defeating Winston Churchill’s Tories in 1945, Attlee’s single-term government gave birth to the NHS and welfare state and brought coal, electricity and rail into public ownership.
Mr McDonnell said that Labour can “lay the foundations of a new society that is radically fairer, more equal and more democratic” if it takes power in 2020.
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON
As the labour movement meets to remember the Tolpuddle Martyrs, MICK WHELAN, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, says it’s an appropriate moment to remind the Labour government to listen to the trade unions a little more
