CHRIS HALL recalls the life of a genuine, nice guy, ILPer and Spanish Civil War veteran Stafford Cottman.

I feel very honoured to write a brief biography about Staff Cottman – ILP activist, Spanish Civil War veteran, socialist, internationalist, trade unionist, personal friend of George Orwell, Labour Party activist, and a genuine, nice guy.

I would like to draw your attention to a letter in the Independent on Sunday on 3 February about the Gerald Scarfe cartoon published in the Sunday Times the previous weekend.

BARRY WINTER reviews a new history of Namibia, where the struggle for social justice continues.

Successes for left parties in France and Greece are welcome signs of resistance to the right’s austerity measures. But the legacies of the economic crisis mean there are no easy choices for Europe’s social democrats, argues WILL BROWN.

Electoral advances for the left in Europe are long overdue coming after a succession of defeats and capitulations in recent years. But a review of the events of the past 18 months, and longer, show a world still in the midst of deep, intractable economic and political problems.

In the past week, the ‘Stop Kony’ campaign, aimed at the arrest of African ‘warlord’ Joseph Kony, leader of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, has become an unlikely internet phenomenon. There is an undoubted justice to the campaign to the extent that, as the LRA leader, Kony is responsible for crimes against humanity stretching back many years. He ought to face justice, whether in Uganda or in the International Criminal Court.

However, argues WILL BROWN, the Kony campaign simplifies to the point of misrepresentation the complex political problems that underlie such conflicts.

JAMES BRYAN wonders how the Turkish government’s humourless approach to public art fits with its supposed commitment to secularism.
Though his pronouncements insist that Turkey’s Kemalist secularism remains undiluted, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan can’t seem to shake off innuendos about his past and that of his party. He and the Justice and Development party (AK) [...]

JAMES BRYAN asks why it took so long for the Socialist International to expel Mubarak’s party.
When faced with adversity we often find out who our real friends are. Despite being deserted by his own people, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak can for now put his trust in the police and the top-tier of the military. In [...]

We must reject the lies and misrepresentations in this phoniest of elections, says HUGO RADICE
This week’s major intervention in the election campaign has surely been the call by the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the major parties to ‘come clean’ about their strategies for reducing the public sector debt, if elected. The IFS report has chimed [...]

Iraq could work if the steady success of its Kurdistan Region is supported and spreads throughout the country. GARY KENT reports from a fact-finding mission
The Kurdistan region of Iraq enjoyed a head start over the rest of the country. Its 1991 uprising ousted Saddam’s genocidal forces which had murdered nearly 200,000 Kurds at Halabja and [...]

WILL BROWN reflects on the disappointing outcome to the climate change talks in Copenhagen
The USA can’t commit to meaningful cuts in carbon emissions; China and other developing countries refuse to budge before industrialised countries have addressed their historic legacy of pollution; the small island, least developed and African nations insist on the need to do [...]