HENRY FOWLER, assistant general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), reports on Day 2 from the GFTU’s residential Summer School at the Workers’ Retreat, Quorn Grange Hotel
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An explosive exposé of MI5’s unaccountable spying on communists and industrial militants
KEVAN NELSON reviews MI5, The Cold War and the Rule of Law by KD Ewing, Joan Mahoney and Andrew Moretta (Oxford University Press, £80)
Communist Party general secretaries Harry Pollitt (right) and John Gollan (left)
Assistant general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions HENRY FOWLER reports on day 1 from the GFTU’s residential Summer School at Quorn Grange Hotel
MPs and others called for the urgent release of tortured Palestinian doctor, Hussam Abu Safiya, held hostage by Israel and reportedly near death, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Strike Map co-founder HENRY FOWLER discusses the significance of today’s joint union letter to video game giant Rockstar, demanding trade union recognition for its workers. Their conversation highlights how our movement can harness its collective power to rebuild union power across the private sector
Capitalism has exploited — and polluted — our natural resources for too long, it’s time we treated our rivers as living beings, writes MIRIUM GAUNTLETT, LIAM SHAW and ROX MIDDLETON
The PM leaves office having squandered Labour’s electoral mandate and alienated its grassroots. He will not be missed, writes BRIAN LEISHMAN MP
BACK in 1987 MI5 operative Peter Wright, famously revealed in Spycatcher — The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer that his MI5 special facilities team had “bugged and burgled our way across London at the state’s behest, while pompous bowler-hatted civil servants in Whitehall pretended to look the other way.”
In deep-mining formerly secret documents released to the National Archives and a wide array of published sources, this study provides conclusive evidence of how in the immediate aftermath of the second world war the British state security services amassed to themselves immense operational powers despite having no statutory authority, no statutory powers and no statutory (and little otherwise) accountability. Thus creating the conditions for the civil liberties violations and criminal behaviour disclosed by Wright.
The book is the culmination of decades of academic research by Professor Keith Ewing, a frequent contributor to the Morning Star, together with co-authors Joan Mahoney and Andrew Moretta.
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