The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
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Suffering for art: Legends on the breadline
Chris Searle on Jazz
In the wake of Ann Widdecombe’s murder, JOHN GREEN wonders whether the government will really get to grips with the root cause of these attacks on our MPs
The new PM’s opening addresses offered hope, council homes and reform — but little detail on how any of it will be delivered, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE
Despite the screeching from the right-wing media, Burnham’s speech chimed with the public mood - and socialists should take advantage, says Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO
Scotland's Labour leader cannot continue to evade responsibility for the party's decline, argues LAUREN HARPER
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
Stan Tracey Alone and Together with Mike Osborne
THE 1970s: it was a decade when, for adventurous jazz musicians, choosing jazz meant choosing poverty. Brilliant and risk-taking jazz virtuosi like Stan Tracey of South London and Mike Osborne of Hereford regularly played for virtually nothing — both their boundary-breaking music and regular gigs.
One of their regular weekly haunts was a very ordinary-looking pub called the Plough in Stockwell, south London. Avid listeners could sit down in its seedy saloon bar with half a pint of bitter and hear Britain’s most luminous jazz musicians until throwing-out time with no admission or cover charge. For them and their families it was often an intense struggle to survive without severely compromising their music.
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