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
Why Labour must be braver on the living wage
With the Tories copying Labour’s ideas it’s time for the party to be bolder on workers’ pay, says RUDI ABDALLAH
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
IMITATION is the sincerest form of flattery. Pavement ripped off The Fall, Elastica pinched from Wire and the Conservatives are copying Labour’s plans to raise workers’ wages.
Party conference saw Ayn Rand devotee Sajid Javid pledge something his heroine would, er, definitely approve of: state intervention to raise the “living wage” to £10.50 per hour in 2024 and eventually pay it to workers aged 21 and over.
This followed Labour’s announcement to raise the minimum wage for workers aged 18 and over to £10 per hour, the amount the living wage is expected to reach next year.
Similar stories
Labour’s watered-down legislation won’t protect us from unfair dismissal or ban some zero-hours contracts until 2027 — leaving millions of young people vulnerable to the populist right’s appeal, warns TUC young workers chair FRASER MCGUIRE
Every Starmer boast about removing asylum-seekers probably wins Reform another seat while Labour loses more voters to Lib Dems, Greens and nationalists than to the far right — the disaster facing Labour is the leadership’s fault, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR
