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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The EU always was – and still is – a rich men’s club
GEORGE GALLOWAY talks to the John Haylett at the Star about the fearmongering and overblown rhetoric on the European Union referendum, and why he decided to interview Nigel Farage on his TV show
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
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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
GEORGE GALLOWAY was an active campaigner in 1975, under the leadership of Tony Benn, for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Economic Community (EEC), as what is now the European Union was known.
“I believed then and now that the EU is a rich men’s club, that its purposes are neither internationalism nor the unity of the working people of Europe but a neoliberal economic club for the very wealthy,” he says.
Galloway, like many in the labour movement, accepted, during the period of Jacques Delors (the late 1980s) “when we all toiled and suffered under Thatcher regime here in Britain, that there was a sense that the EU could provide a little bit of protection and give some benefit to working people.”
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