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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Manchester is red
Manchester remains a Labour bastion, but there are forces stirring beneath the party's formidable machine, writes SAM WHEELER
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
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
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
MANCHESTER remained the largest Labour group in the country last week, with 93 of 96 seats. Even on a rather poor night for the party nationally, the Liberals were confined to a single ward. That was West Didsbury, successor to the Didsbury Ward of Manchester’s last elected Tory councillor, Peter Hilton, who finally left the town hall in 1996.
Even more worrying perhaps for those that imagine a Liberal revival in the city of Bright and Cobden, they only came second in a further seven wards. Rather, it was the Manchester Green Party who were runners up in 13 of the city’s 32 wards despite having almost none of the campaign architecture of the other parties.
Further, the closest margin of the night came not from Manchester’s erstwhile opposition, but from Independent Ken Dobson in the staunchly working class Clayton & Openshaw division, where he ran Labour’s Sean McHale within a dozen votes.
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