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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The Watling Estate: 100 years of a working-class housing experiment
Former resident LEO WOODLAND looks at the first century of a visionary project that saw almost 4,000 homes built in a vast pastoral setting in the suburbs, home first to exiles from central London’s slums to waves of migrants today
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
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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
THE neighbours weren’t happy, of course. Mill Hill’s leafy mansions had provided two mayors of London, plus William Wilberforce — and Sir James Murray, who founded the Oxford English Dictionary.
Now, they were to have thousands of London’s impoverished working class on their doorstep. Children used to tenements would lead gangs of thieves, they insisted. Their parents would create a Little Moscow.
It’s true that Burnt Oak was an unlikely choice. It’s the last but one stop on London’s Northern line and then so remote that its station opened only in 1924, and then just at weekends.
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