Lead story

Immigration lies confounded

by Daphne Liddle

EUROPEAN immigration into Britain between 2000 and 2011 benefitted this country by £20 billion, according to the results of research conducted by two University College economists and published last week.

This should confound all the scaremongering claims made by the United Kingdom Independence Party and the ultra-right wing Tories who are contemplating abandoning the sinking Tory party and heading for Ukip.

It should also confound David Cameron as a fool for trying to appease them by taking his party further and further to the right and becoming more and more hostile to immigrants.

And it is inexcusable for the Labour leadership to try to jump on the same xenophobic bandwagon.

The research also showed that the main benefit these immigrants from Europe brought with them was their generally higher standard of education.

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Novorossiya leaders sworn in

by our European Affairs correspondent

TWO LEADERS of the anti-fascist resistance in eastern Ukraine have been elected to head the breakaway republics of Novorossiya following elections that were dismissed as a “farce” by Kiev regime president Petro Poroshenko and branded “illegal and illegitimate” by his masters in the Washington and Berlin. But the Kremlin says they will recognise the results of the poll though the Russians have not recognised the formal independence of the two Donbas republics.

At the front the partisans had mobilised to stave off any attempt by the Kiev regime to disrupt the elections. But the expected offensive by the Ukrainian army did not happen and it was relatively quiet on election day.

The regular shelling of Donetsk and the clashes with Kiev regime forces and the fascist militias along the ceasefire lines only intensified after the results were declared. Though there’s little doubt that this static warfare will continue through the long Donbas winter many expect the Kiev regime to launch another big push in the spring.

Alexander Zakharchenko, a former mining electrician, won the presidential election in the Donetsk People’s Republic with 79 per cent of the vote. Igor Plotnisky, a former officer in the Soviet Army won the presidency of the Lugansk People’s Republic in a similar poll, with more than 63 per cent of the vote.

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Editorial

Imperial dreams and Libyan reality

The news that the Ministry of Defence has suspended a training programme for Libyan soldiers after the conviction of a number of Libyan recruits for sex offences should come as no surprise to anyone.

It all began in June with the arrival of the first cadets, many of them former members of the Nato-armed militias that brought down the Gaddafi government, as part of a British scheme to train some 2,000 troops for the national army.

But trouble soon started. Some of the officers simply walked out of the Bassingbourn barracks in East Anglia and went home. Twenty or so have applied for political asylum and others have been arrested on theft and rape charges. The police were forced to mount special patrols around the barracks which were also reinforced with Scottish troops to, as the MoD put it “bolster security and reassure the local population”.

Libya was once one of the most prosperous countries in Africa and the Arab world. Its oil wealth was used to provide full employment, free medical care, housing and education. Child mortality rates dropped from 70 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 19 in 2009. Life expectancy rose from 61 to 74 years of age during the same span of years. By 2010 that had risen to 77.

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