Peter Lazenby

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

The Trident Ploughshares activists locked themselves together across the site鈥檚 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,聽declared Marxism a 鈥渇orce for change today鈥 as he addressed the closing session of a conference in London marking Karl Marx鈥檚 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鈥 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 鈥 highlighting the government's fear of growing mass opposition. Wales Secretary Stephen Crabb accused protesters of spouting 鈥渧enom and bile鈥 because they dared to speak out against Tory cuts and oppose privatisation of public services and attacks on workers' rights.