Economists estimate extreme poverty could be drastically reduced for a fraction of global defence spending, yet military budgets continue to expand year on year, says JON TRICKETT MP, ahead of the Stop the War International Conference on Saturday
Latest editorial
Nazis who got rich from deformed baby drug
Much has been written about the drug thalidomide but not much about the nazi roots of the company who made it says PETER FROST
As Unison launches its Year of Women Workers, ANNIE COGAN-THOMAS argues that stronger organisation and collective bargaining are essential to winning equality
Trade unions, trades councils and community organisations must work together to build lasting solidarity and resistance to the far right, argues DREW GILCHRIST
Recent violence in Belfast was not spontaneous — it was built on years of failure and political neglect, argues STIOFAN O NUALLAIN
As delegates meet in Brighton this week, Unison faces pressing questions about pay, organising, workers’ rights and political representation, explains ANDY CHAFFER
Andy Burnham’s growing stature has fuelled hopes of a Labour revival – but ALAN SIMPSON warns that Britain’s crisis runs far deeper than just its leadership and traces its roots to decades of financialised capitalism
THE scandal of thalidomide started to become public in 1959, sixty years ago.
The German drug company Chemie Grunenthal — part of the Wirtz Group — had launched the drug just two years before and as the tablets were prescribed for more and more pregnant women with severe morning sickness, the terrible consequences it would have for newborn babies and their parents started to become known.
Who were Chemie Grunenthal? Today we know that in the immediate post-war years this drug company had become a bolt hole for nazi chemists, some of them convicted war criminals and at least one of them a convicted mass murderer.
Similar stories
WILL PODMORE admires an account of the liberation of Berlin that overthrows the conventional US army-inspired account
Politicians who continue to welcome contracts with US companies without considering the risks and consequences of total dependency in the years to come are undermining the raison d’etre of the NHS, argues Dr JOHN PUNTIS
The decision highlights the tension between freedom of expression and the state’s role in shaping historical memory at former concentration camps, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI