As the Stop the War Coalition holds its annual conference, ANDREW MURRAY warns that Britain’s alignment with US foreign policy is fuelling global instability and diverting billions from welfare, wages and public services
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Billy Strachan – just ‘another bloody immigrant’
As Britain marks 100 years of the RAF defending the empire by dive-bombing and shooting freedom-fighting locals, PETER FROST remembers one RAF hero with quite different story to tell
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the tension between treating children as vulnerable dependants and recognising them as citizens with rights
The tightening of protest rights reflects a broader shift toward repression in Britain’s strained liberal democracy. Socialists and trade unionists must be ready to resist further attacks on our freedoms, warns JOHN McINALLY
Until ministers stop deferring to the market and start drawing hard lines, the public will remain at the mercy of private power, says MATT KERR
As the US intensifies its economic and political pressure it is now vitally important to demand the British government intervene to end US aggression, writes GEOFF BOTTOMS
SEVIM DAGDELEN argues that a legal framework exists for a closure of US and Nato military base in Ramstein
AS THE entire country celebrates the centenary of the founding of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1918 it would be all too easy to believe the airborne heroes of the defeat of nazism were all Boris Johnson lookalikes who took off from the playing fields of Eton.
In fact 574 Battle of Britain pilots came from countries other than Britain. Over 7,000 West Indian men and women served in the RAF and there were thousands of others of every nation who answered Britain’s call and helped to defeat Hitler and his nazis. Others of every race and colour came from Africa, the Indian subcontinent indeed almost every corner of the Earth.
Here we’ll tell the story of just one of them. It’s a great story, interesting enough that Lenny Henry once tried to make it into a film. Sadly his script — A Wing and a Prayer — never made it to the screen. A film about a black hero was fine, but not one about a black communist hero it seems.
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