From golf and football to Formula One, the kingdom uses unprecedented investments in global sport to divert attention from its persecution of journalists, dissidents and women, write BELLA KATZ and ROGER McKENZIE
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An error occurred while searching, try again later.Forty years on from the Swann Report
Shocking institutional racism in the schools system was exposed in a 1985 report highlighting the over-representation of black children branded ‘educationally subnormal.’ Four decades on the fight for justice continues, writes JAYDEE SEAFORTH
With trade wars backfiring, allies resisting military demands, and approval ratings plummeting, Trump’s dangerous pursuit of colonial ambitions threatens to end the ‘American century’ with catastrophic conflict, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE
As Britain plans to increase military spending to 2.6 per cent of the GDP while health services face devastating cuts and drug costs soar, working-class Scots urgently need united resistance, argues DREW GILCHRIST
As the government moves to rein in academy freedoms, former darling of conservative education reform Katharine Birbalsingh cries ‘Marxism.’ Education columnist ROBERT POOLE examines how academisation has failed our children while enriching executives and empowering ideologues at the expense of democratic accountability
MAT COWARD recalls the occasion when the first man in space paid a visit to our shores in 1961
Communist Party of Ireland Statement on International Working Women’s Day 2025
Despite the harsh conditions they face, Iranian women have proved to be vanguards in the struggle for fundamental changes in our country, says Dr AZAR SEPEHR
THIS month marks 40 years since the Swann Report confirmed the suspicions of black children, teachers and parents in Britain — the British education system is systemically racist. Biologist Lord Michael Swann’s powerful report wasn’t the first or last to address racial discrimination in schools, but it was groundbreaking in its thoughtfulness and acknowledgement of the scandal of “educationally subnormal” (ESN) schools.
This often forgotten miscarriage of justice took place in the 1960s and ’70s, and saw hundreds of black children wrongly sent to schools meant for pupils with severe physical and mental disabilities.
Before World War II, these schools primarily served disabled children from wealthy backgrounds — but by the late ’60s almost 30 per cent of ESN pupils in London were black immigrant children, mainly from the Caribbean, compared to 15 per cent in mainstream schools.
