TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about
The mass uprising in Bangladesh and the fall of Sheikh Hasina
NISAR AHMED, former chair of the Bangladeshi Workers Council and long-time community activist, talks to Jamshid Ahmadi, editor of the Liberation Journal, about the momentous struggle that toppled a 15-year regime
People gather in front of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) headquarters during a rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 7, 2024
DIANE ABBOTT exposes the misconceptions, rumours and downright lies perpetrated around immigration issues
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Reversing outsourcing is the pre-election promise the government must honour, says Unison general secretary CHRISTINA McANEA
EMAN ABU ZAYED reminisces about the perilous time her family and neighbours endured in northern Gaza and how they were forced, in fear of their lives, to flee south
The EIS president who defended Marxist politics in the 1980s fought Thatcherite educational policies while organising Teachers for Peace rallies and ensuring Morning Star circulation in Scotland’s pit villages and factories, writes JOHN FOSTER
Jamshid Ahmadi: Can you briefly outline the background of the student movement that led to the recent mass uprising in Bangladesh?
Nisar Ahmed: The background to the student movement lies in the quota system of allocating 30 per cent of government jobs to children and grandchildren of freedom fighters of the 1971 national liberation war that established the state of Bangladesh. After 53 years had elapsed, such a scheme did not make any rational sense to the students.
Moreover, in the past 15-year rule of the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina, it was misused to benefit party members and to politicise the state machinery. With acute unemployment among youth following two decades of neoliberal economic policies, it was a ticking bomb waiting to detonate.
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NISAR AHMED analyses the likely course of events under the interim regime of Muhammad Yunus, with progressive forces attempting to ensure genuine national sovereignty, but where internal or external military intervention remain distinct possibilities
by Nisar Ahmed
