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
A Week in Politics: Con-Dems dream up a Kafka nightmare
The PADDY McGUFFIN column
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
“THEY’RE talking about things of which they don’t have the slightest understanding, anyway. It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.” Franz Kafka, The Trial.
And thus we have, in a nutshell from the trembling pen of a consumptive Czech clerk, a fair approximation of the last two decades in British politics.
Kafka’s nightmare vision of the callous and ruthless nature of faceless bureaucracy is starting to look like a vision of a utopian future the way things have been going recently.
Similar stories
The government’s case for abolishing most jury trials doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, argues KIM JOHNSON MP – and it must be stopped before it does lasting damage to democracy
The Prime Minister’s hamfisted promotional video promising to go ‘further and faster’ coincides with Angela Rayner’s resignation over tax dodging and Mandelson’s long overdue departure over Epstein — incredible timing, writes MATT KERR
The heroism of the jury who defied prison and starvation conditions secured the absolute right of juries to deliver verdicts based on conscience — a convention which is now under attack, writes MAT COWARD
From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN