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
THERE is a recurring theme in liberal thought — seeing some dark and nasty ideas in circulation, then blaming this on social media.
Somehow, the same ideas circulating in mainstream media, with solid backing from “respectable” voices, get missed. So obscure social media figures called “@TallDave100” get singled out as the voice of evil, while pundits with a place on BBC talk shows or columns in the Times can say exactly the same thing with more authority and be indulged by the “commentariat.”
Take, for example, the Great Replacement theory. This is what the New York Times describes as “a racist and misogynistic conspiracy theory that holds that white people face existential decline, even extinction, because of rising immigration in the West and falling birth rates among white women.”
CLAUDIA WEBBE argues that Labour gains nothing from its adoption of right-wing stances on immigration, and seems instead to be deliberately paving the way for the far right to become an established force in British politics, as it has already in Europe
DIANE ABBOTT exposes the misconceptions, rumours and downright lies perpetrated around immigration issues
LYNNE WALSH reports from the Morning Star’s Race, Sex and Class Liberation conference last weekend, which discussed the dangers of incipient fascism and the spiralling drive to war


