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
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Stop dumping on our railways
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
WHEN first standing for London mayor in 2000, Ken Livingstone was asked by a journalist: “Can you tell us a joke?”
“Salman Rushdie was on a train and it pulled into a station,” he began. “He saw Yasser Arafat and his entourage of bodyguards and was so overcome with the emotion of seeing his great hero, he raced to embrace him. But the bodyguards weren’t very well versed in modern literature and had no idea who he was.
“So they shot him dead, thus proving the value of that old adage: never go for a Shi’ite while the train is in the station.”
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