SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
100 years ago: the anti-war movement comes under attack

IN June 1918 the Lloyd George government’s drive to stifle the public voice of the anti-war movement in Britain, which was powered by both socialist and pacifist convictions, continued to be extra-energetic against the background of the critical military situation on the Western Front.
Symbolic of this repression was the June 6 issue of the No Conscription Fellowship’s weekly paper, the Tribunal, which consisted of nothing more than its front page — though this itself was a statement of defiance.
Printing problems as a result of the government’s instructions to police to dismantle machinery, in preference to prosecutions for inciting disaffection, had taken their toll.
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