National News
Riots rooted in economic and social crises
by Gao Jian, Global Times
The UK is currently experiencing its most serious violent riots in 13 years, which were sparked by an incident on 29th July. A 17-year-old boy armed with a knife entered a children’s dance workshop and carried out an attack, resulting in serious injuries and three fatalities. False information quickly spread on social media, incorrectly claiming that the attacker was a radical Muslim immigrant. This led to anti-immigrant protests breaking out in various towns and cities. The truth is, the suspect was a legal immigrant who was born in the UK and whose parents had immigrated from Rwanda legally. This incident has brought to light a deeper social crisis in the UK.
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Free Ukrainian political prisoners!
by New Worker correspondent
Activists from International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) and the newly created Scotland Against NATO Action Committee (SANAC) held protests in Glasgow and London last week calling for the release of thousands of Ukrainian Political Prisoners, many of whom have been falsely convicted of acting on behalf of the Russian and Donbas forces, beaten or tortured, and sentenced to years in prison with confiscation of all property. The protesters also called for the restoration of full political and media freedoms in Ukraine after almost all political parties and dozens of media outlets have been banned.
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No arms for Israel!
by New Worker correspondent
Hundreds of thousands of Palestine solidarity supporters took to the streets across the country on Saturday to demand an end to genocidal war in Gaza and an end to British arms sales to Israel. In London demonstrators marched through the heart of the capital to call on the new Labour government to stop arming the Zionist state.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
Scotland has, so far, been spared the disorder that has swept some towns and cities in the north of England. But while the police battle to contain racist mobs there are growing fears that the shadowy organisers of the far-right violence are hoping to spread it to Scotland.
The “Patriotic Alternative” and the “Scottish Defence Group” are believed to be planning what they call “peaceful protests” next weekend
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International News
Russians advance on Donbas front
by Ekaterina Blinova , Sputnik
The Russians are approaching one of Ukraine’s most important logistics hubs in Donbas – Toretsk – from several directions. Why is Toretsk so crucial and what’s behind the Ukrainian military failures there?
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Media lies and prisoner exchanges
by John Catalinotto, Workers World (USA)
Twenty-four prisoners were exchanged at Ankara airport last week. Sixteen Western prisoners held in Russia were exchanged for eight Russians jailed in America, Norway, Germany, Poland and Slovenia.
The exchange of 24 prisoners held on various charges in Russia and a number of NATO countries grabbed headlines in the corporate media. The prisoners included spies and/or journalists charged with being spies, and others.
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Features
South Africa 30 years on
Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as president of South Africa in May 1994 was seen as heralding the creation of a new non-racial and more equal South Africa. But although there was some progress in the early years and South Africa has a progressive foreign policy, it is still the world’s most unequal society. Thirty years after the end of apartheid, DAVID KENVYN examines the balance sheet and looks at how ACTSA (Action for Southern Africa) is still working for justice and equality in Southern Africa.
Thirty years ago, apartheid ended. There is much to consider about what has happened since then. It has been a bumpy road, like many of the Eastern Cape’s rural roads and, without doubt, not all of it has been good and some of it has been very bad indeed.
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James Baldwin: on his centennial
by Jenny Farrell, People’s World (USA)
James Baldwin, the important left Black author and activ- ist, was born 100 years ago in Har- lem, New York on 2 nd August 1924. Baldwin’s stepfa- ther David, a Pente- costal preacher, was a factory worker, earning too little to provide for his fam- ily of nine children. His mother Berdis, a migrant from the South, worked in domestic service. The young James’s first encounter with police at the age of 10 brought home to him the realities of racism. David’s preaching initial- ly led the teenage Baldwin to become a young minister.
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The Rise and fall of Erich Honecker
Book review by Alan Stewart
The Rise & Fall of Erich Honnecker: The Man Who Built the Berlin Wall by Nathan Morley. Pen & Sword: Barnsley, 2024. Hardback: 272pp, rrp £25.
Erich Honecker was born in Saarland in 1912. In 1922, when he was 10, he joined the Communist youth organisation, the Young Spartacus League. Then from 1929 onwards he was active in the German Communist Party, the KPD. He was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1935 and was subsequently jailed by the Nazis.
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Fifty years since the fall of the Greek junta
by our Balkan affairs correspondent
On 24th July 1974 the military dictatorship that had ruled Greece collapsed. Seven years before, on 21st April 1967, a group of farright army officers led by Brigadier-General Pattakos and Colonels Papadopoulos and Makarezos seized power after a coup d’état. In the early morning of that day, tanks marched onto the central streets of Athens while small mobile units of the army were arresting politicians, government officials and prominent figures who were regarded as having left-wing sympathies.
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