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
Latest editorial
A new resource to keep Rodney Bickerstaffe’s legacy alive for current and future generations
JOHN STEVENSON introduces a new website in tribute to the late Unison general secretary, affectionately known as ‘Bick,’ that will remind people who he was and the importance of the words he spoke
Late Unison general secretary Rodney Bickerstaffe is congratulated by Arthur Scargill after a speech winning the TUC to support for a minimum wage
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
LEGENDARY Scottish miners’ leader Michael McGahey famously and often reminded us that “we are a movement, not a monument.”
It was a quote that the late Rodney Bickerstaffe, ex-Unison general secretary and president of the National Pensioners Convention, kept returning to in his wonderfully crafted speech at the unveiling of a memorial to McGahey in Bonnyrigg at the 2006 Midlothian TUC Workers’ Memorial Day.
In light of that, what would Bick (as so many knew him) make of the new memorial website launched this week by friends and comrades to celebrate his life and learn from his legacy?
Similar stories
MARJ MAYO recommends a well illustrated and very positive account of an extraordinary period in local government history
Through marches, music, schools and political debate, campaigners in Tower Hamlets are using the 90th anniversary of Cable Street to inspire resistance to modern racism. GLYN ROBBINS explains
LYNNE WALSH reports from last weekend’s moving remembrance of the International Brigades in London’s Jubilee Gardens where anti-fascists gathered to hear how even in the darkest of times we can build a vision of a better tomorrow, as the Brigaders fought to do 89 years ago
TUC Midlands marks 20 years of celebrating the 1910 chainmakers’ victory with a festival that connects historical lessons to modern struggles — because working-class history should inspire action, not just nostalgia, writes STUART RICHARDS