Secret consultation documents finally released after the Morning Star’s two-year freedom of information battle show the Home Office misrepresented public opinion, claiming support for policies that most respondents actually strongly criticised as dangerous and unfair, writes SOLOMON HUGHES

IT WON’T astonish Morning Star readers to hear that in the great houses of the Victorian and Edwardian period the use of broad beans was governed by the class system.
The family — that is, the employers — would eat the broads just for the first few weeks of the season; as soon as the beans grew much bigger than peas, they became food fit only for the workers.
They would no longer appear on the family table, but there’d be plenty of them in the staff kitchen. You can’t help suspecting that this daft rule of snobbery was invented by a cunning member of the below-stairs classes.

Edinburgh can take great pride in an episode of its history where a murderous captain of the city guard was brought to justice by a righteous crowd — and nobody snitched to Westminster in the aftermath, writes MAT COWARD


