HEROES

Workers on strike
How do you choose? The nurses who have undertaken the first national strike action in their union’s history? The transport and postal workers standing firm in the face of bosses’ dirty tricks and a government determined to break their spirit, cut their pay and wreck their industries? The workers who have won hundreds of localised disputes and demonstrated again and again that there’s power in a union? RMT leader Mick Lynch has said “the working class is back” in 2022 — the struggle continues, but the courage and militancy we have seen this year is an inspiration.

Symon Hill
The extraordinary decision of police officers to arrest people for protesting at the anti-democratic travesty that was King Charles III’s accession to the throne showed how heavy-handed policing has become in Britain and how urgent is the fight for freedom of speech. Hill’s call of “who elected him?” at the king’s proclamation in Oxford saw him charged under the Public Order Act — but he spoke for millions of his fellows who would be citizens, not subjects.