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
The latest return from the Electoral Commission shows that since 2014 Cend Ltd have given the Tories £300,000.
They are part of The Hut Group, a successful mail order business run by entrepreneur Matthew Moulding. £50,000 gets membership of the Tory “Leaders Group” whose members “are invited to join senior figures from the Conservative Party at dinners, lunches, drinks receptions.”
Moulding’s companies also fairly regularly appear in the Advertising Standards Authority list of firms with unfair or untrue advertising.
In part IV of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY tells how austerity minister Francis Maude’s attempt to destroy the PCS Civil Service union totally backfired
It is rather strange that Labour continues to give prestigious roles to inappropriate, controversy-mired businessmen who are also major Tory donors. What could Labour possibly be hoping to get out of it, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
SOLOMON HUGHES asks whether Labour ‘engaging with decision-makers’ with scandalous records of fleecing the public is really in our interests
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR


