Peter Lazenby

Campaigners from all over Britain united on October 25 to blockade the government’s nuclear bomb factory in Berkshire in England’s south-east, preventing the staff from entering the site.

The Trident Ploughshares activists locked themselves together across the site’s gates before work began at the Burghfield site. A private road leading to Burghfield was also barricaded at each end by cars with protesters fastened to them.

John McDonnell, Labour's shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, declared Marxism a “force for change today” as he addressed the closing session of a conference in London marking Karl Marx’s 200th birthday on May 5.

McDonnell, a close comrade of Labour's socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn, received stormy applause for a speech in which he paid tribute to the revolutionary thinker and noted that public interest in his ideas had soared since the bankers’ crash of 2008.

A desperate Conservative Party launched a vicious attack on Labour and the tens of thousands who have protested against its October 4-7 conference in Manchester — highlighting the government's fear of growing mass opposition. Wales Secretary Stephen Crabb accused protesters of spouting “venom and bile” because they dared to speak out against Tory cuts and oppose privatisation of public services and attacks on workers' rights.