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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What a week for a curry
PETER FROST is celebrating Indian independence with just one contribution immigrants from the Indian subcontinent have made to the richness of life here in Britain
Curry spices
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
OVER the last few months I have been studying and celebrating the 70th anniversary of Indian independence and learning a lot more about that turbulent period in Britain’s shameful imperialist history.
Despite what you and I were taught at school and on various boy scout Empire Day celebrations, Indian independence wasn’t a benevolent gift from King George VI, the last Emperor of India or from Lord Mountbatten, last Viceroy of India but was in fact the result of a long-fought battle by the various peoples of the Indian subcontinent to throw off the yoke of British imperialism.
The result of Britain’s hurried and botched independence arrangements saw famine, mass migration, millions of violent deaths and three countries finally emerging from the chaos. Those countries were India and West and East Pakistan. East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971.
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