Prime Minister Tony Blair's public apology for Britain's involvement in the African slave trade is only part of our public commemoration of the bicentenary of its abolition. Exhibitions, books, television programmes and meetings are focusing on that event in March 1807 when parliament brought an end to the horrors of the forcible transatlantic passage of millions of black men, women and children from Africa to a life of servitude, mainly [...]

Washington's decision to abandon the US military base at Keflavík from 1 October may reflect George W Bush's belief that Iceland is no longer of strategic use in today's "war against global terrorism". But it is also a belated recognition that the cold war with the old Soviet Union is well and truly over.

For more than half a century, US forces used the base to keep an eye on [...]

"No mandate for a system shift," declared the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, and there was little doubt about it. The narrow election defeat of the Social Democrats does not mean the death of the famed "Swedish model", with its huge welfare state, that the party spent the past 70 years creating.

In a striking reversal of the political trends in most of the rest of Europe, the non-socialists owe their victory [...]

If you are one of those who believe that British trade unions are hostile to free markets and wedded to the tired old politics of state regulation and public sector job protection, prepare for a surprise.

From 11 September in Brighton, the Trades Union Congress will demonstrate its enthusiasm for the free movement of labour with a show of tolerance towards the current inflow of migrant workers, mainly from eastern [...]

For nine days in May 1926, Britain experienced the most dramatic industrial dispute in its history. Nearly two million workers took part in the General Strike, and a further four million were preparing to join them when the action was called off. Trains did not run. Buses and trams remained in their depots. Cargoes piled up in the docks, and little mail was delivered. Much of industry was threatened. Shipyards [...]

Last week's revelation in this magazine of the young Tony Blair's gushing letter to his party leader, Michael Foot, in July 1982, provoked a shrill cacophony. Anti-Blairites saw it as further proof of the man's intellectual lightness of being, while the dwindling band of spear-carriers saw wisdom and foresight in Blair's willingness to flirt with leftism in order to survive and advance in the party.

Of course Blair was never [...]

Tony Blair loves to portray himself as an impatient moderniser, keen to transform the "old" Labour movement into a formidable instrument of executive power by abandoning its socialist past. But his own election as party leader in 1994 did not mark Year Zero.

Blair, it seems, carries a Labour history with him as well.

While researching a history of the Parliamentary Labour Party since 1906, I came across an extraordinary, [...]

Deregulation and privatisation, free trade, low taxes, labour-market flexibility and low public spending - these are the painful but essential preconditions for national success in the high-tech, globalised world, right? Wrong. Such notions may hold much of the world in thrall (and have largely paralysed thought on the European left), but there is one country which has proved that it is perfectly possible to have economic success without throwing away [...]

The antics of anti-globalisation protesters, rather than traditional labour movements celebrating workers in struggle, may capture the May Day headlines nowadays. But all is not quite as it may seem. Over the next few weeks in Europe, we are likely to see evidence that the unions are back in a militant mood after years of defeat and decline. In Germany, organised labour is mobilising against Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's economic reforms; [...]

It is perhaps a sign of the times that no cabinet minister will address the tenth-anniversary conference of Unions 21 on 8 March. Unions 21 is a centre-left pressure group set up to keep Labour's mind on trade union issues. Yet only second-rank figures such as Ian McCartney from the Cabinet Office and Denis MacShane, the minister for Europe, will be in attendance. Relations between Tony Blair and the trade [...]