The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
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Colombia: a bogus peace process?
Despite Farc communist rebels signing a peace deal and giving up the gun, social justice activists are still being murdered by the other side, writes NICK MACWILLIAM
Colombian Army snipers cover the Venezuela Aid Live concert on the Colombian side of the Tienditas International Bridge near Cucuta, February 22
In the wake of Ann Widdecombe’s murder, JOHN GREEN wonders whether the government will really get to grips with the root cause of these attacks on our MPs
The new PM’s opening addresses offered hope, council homes and reform — but little detail on how any of it will be delivered, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE
Despite the screeching from the right-wing media, Burnham’s speech chimed with the public mood - and socialists should take advantage, says Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO
Scotland's Labour leader cannot continue to evade responsibility for the party's decline, argues LAUREN HARPER
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
THE SUN had barely risen on 2019 when the year’s first killing of a social activist took place in Colombia. Gilberto Valencia, an African-Colombian musician and peace campaigner, was shot dead after leaving a New Year’s party in Cauca, southern Colombia.
Several more killings occurred in the following days. Community organiser Jesus Parafan died, like Gilberto, on New Year’s Day, rural leader Jose Solano Gonzalez and trade unionist Wilmer Miranda on January 4. A day later, 60-year-old Maritza Quiroz’s murder sparked indignation across social media and shocked even those accustomed to bloodshed.
Like so many poor Colombians, Maritza suffered terribly during the country’s long conflict: years earlier right-wing paramilitaries displaced her family and murdered her husband. Now a campaigner for African-Colombian women conflict victims, she was killed by intruders at the rural home she shared with nine other women in Santa Marta, northern Colombia. Photographs showed a gently smiling woman at ease tending the group’s crops or livestock.
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