From Chartists and Suffragettes to Irish republicans and today’s Palestine activists, the treatment of hunger strikers exposes a consistent pattern in how the British state represses those it deems political prisoners, says KEITH FLETT
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Spotlight on private school child abuse in Scotland
The significance of the Scottish historic child abuse inquiry is in how it reveals the workings of British elites that fill the ranks of the government and professional classes, writes ANGUS REID
GRIM SIGHT: Light is shone on Edinburgh Academy
[Macumba /CC]
In the aftermath of the illegal US operation against Venezuela, a deliberate misinformation campaign has been waged to sow doubt about the survival of the country’s revolution, warns MANOLO DE LOS SANTOS
A statement from the Parti Communiste Francais
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines our laws concerning the treatment of animals and their rights
THE Committee for the Defence of Iranian People’s Rights (Codir) welcomes demonstrations across Iran, which have put pressure upon the theocratic dictatorship, but warns against intervention by the United States to force Iran in a particular direction
In a stark warning of things to come JOHN ELLISON invokes the ideological splitting of hairs that weakened any and all opposition to the unravelling WWI when 22 million of mostly Europeans lost their lives and 23 million were maimed
THE trial, which will begin soon, of an 88-year-old former junior school teacher, housemaster and deputy head teacher on 18 counts of child abuse may seem like a local affair, particular to a strangely rotten private school in Edinburgh, and of interest only to Scottish tabloids and the Tory press, and not to readers of the Morning Star.
But this would be wrong. This case is highly revealing of the ruling-class culture that fills the ranks of the government and professional classes that hold sway disproportionately in Britain, and it demonstrates uniquely both how vulnerable this culture is, and how the ruling class itself deals with the revelation of the abuse that lies at its heart.
It also shows that socially engaged and democratic oversight of schools, that has a track record in Scotland, points the way forward.
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While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID