As Colombia approaches presidential elections next year, the US decision to decertify the country in the war on drugs plays into the hands of its allies on the political right, writes NICK MacWILLIAM

THE Communist Party was once a powerful force on Teesside, with a distinguished record of local campaigns and public agitations, influential in the shipbuilding, steel, railway and local government trade unions.
In the 1920s, the party led the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement in a bitterly fought struggle to hold public meetings at Stockton Cross.
In the 1930s, communists led the campaign against the British Union of Fascists on Teesside.

ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician


