The Milburn review presents itself as a plan to help young people into work, but Dr DYLAN MURPHY argues it is laying the groundwork for a harsher benefits regime
Latest editorial
George Abendstern June 1 1930 – April 29 2019 Life-long campaigner for socialism, peace and justice
George Abendstern
Campaigners from across the continent will gather in Brussels on June 14 to oppose Europe’s accelerating militarisation and cuts to public services, write MAGGIE SIMPSON and BOB ORAM of No Cold War Britain
National co-ordinator for General Strike 100, HENRY FOWLER, continues his nationwide tour of partner organisations by visiting the Modern Records Centre at Warwick University
GEOFF BOTTOMS recalls meeting Fidel Castro in the ’90s after joining a Pastors for Peace caravan to Cuba, and reflects on how international support is still vital to help the island withstand economic warfare
The Ivors Academy’s hike in entry fees could turn this respected peer-assessed event into an exclusive preserve for those wealthy enough to compete, warns BEN LUNN
Peter Murrell’s weakness for the allure of prestige goods is symptomatic of modern consumer culture, says MATT KERR
COMRADE, friend, much-loved husband, father and grandfather George Abendstern will be sadly missed by all those whose life he touched, and these were many. He was a man who gave himself fully, heart and mind, to many political and personal causes and passions.
Having fled nazi Germany with his parents and younger brother in 1938, initially spending nine months in Luxembourg, George found himself in Lancashire, aged eight, where his father, a leather chemist, was one of a small group of Jewish refugees who came to work in the newly opened Lancashire Tanning Company in Littleborough, just outside Rochdale.
The promise of work and sponsorship by the company’s German-Jewish owners, Adler and Oppenheimer, secured the family’s refugee status and entry visas.
Similar stories
Maggie Bowden was a trailblazing campaigning lawyer at Birnberg and Thompsons, women’s organiser of the Communist Party, and general secretary of Liberation
The EIS president who defended Marxist politics in the 1980s fought Thatcherite educational policies while organising Teachers for Peace rallies and ensuring Morning Star circulation in Scotland’s pit villages and factories, writes JOHN FOSTER
Millions of ordinary English people of all backgrounds consider the cross their own — abandoning it, and its left-wing history that includes the peasants’ revolt, concedes vital ground to the right, argues SIMON BRIGNELL
NICK MATTHEWS previews a landmark book launch taking place in Leicester next weekend