IAN LAVERY MP says an immediate focus on raising wages and reducing costs must be part of a strategy to show Labour can deliver for workers again
WEST Africa, which had been largely under French colonial rule, never saw decolonisation of the sort that, say, India did.
For a start, the erstwhile French colonies’ currency continued to be linked to the French franc at a fixed exchange rate, which meant that they could not pursue any fiscal and monetary policy of their choice (for that would have threatened the fixed exchange rate).
Not only were their foreign exchange reserves kept by France, as had been the case with colonial India where its gold reserves, acquired through enforced borrowing (since all its annual export surplus earnings were taken by Britain) had been kept in London; but France also effectively controlled their fiscal and monetary policy despite formal decolonisation.
MOHAMMAD OMIDVAR, a senior figure in the Tudeh Party of Iran, tells the Morning Star that mass protests are rooted in poverty, corruption and neoliberal rule and warns against monarchist revival and US-engineered regime change
Western nations’ increasingly aggressive stance is not prompted by any increase in security threats against these countries — rather, it is caused by a desire to bring about regime changes against governments that pose a threat to the hegemony of imperialism, writes PRABHAT PATNAIK
As the Alliance of Sahel States and southern African nations advance pan-African goals, the African Union must listen and learn rather than parroting the Western line on these positive developments, writes ROGER McKENZIE


