Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO says assessing a Labour leader whose mission was to smash the left must involve addressing the delusions that fuelled his rise
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The Great Strike of 1842: Halifax’s Peterloo?
Finally, more is being done to commemorate this momentous event in labour history, when half a million workers in Yorkshire carried out Britain’s first ever general strike, reports DAN WHITTALL
LANDMARK: Statue commemorating the 1842 Plug Plot Riots outside the Corn exchange, Preston
Rebuilding Labour’s working-class roots and organising power is essential if the party is to recover, says MERCEDES VILLALBA
ANDREW MURRAY looks back at a damaging career marked by dishonesty, incompetence and revolting complicity in war crimes
Britain’s historic vote to leave the EU was a rejection of the political Establishment and the strategic direction pursued by Britain’s ruling class since the second world war, writes ALEX GORDON
Over 1,000 hostile US sanctions remain in place on Venezuela, while Britain continues its colonial theft of gold, writes MATT WILLGRESS
MARY DAVIS says the centrality of the Jewish community and the Communist Party to anti-fascism in the 1930s is too often overlooked on the left
ON SUNDAY July 17 over 70 people gathered at a sold-out event in Calderdale Industrial Museum in Halifax, to discuss and reflect on the history of the Great Strike of 1842, sometimes referred to as the Plug Plots or Plug Riots.
The event was put on as a partnership between Calderdale Trades Council and Calderdale Industrial Museum, with support from the Society for the Study of Labour History, as well as local and regional trade unions. It follows a previous meeting on the topic in September last year.
Working-class unrest in 1842, which began among colliers in north Staffordshire and would ultimately involve workers and communities in at least 32 counties, was the first general strike in a capitalist country.
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