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
IT WAS one of those gloriously serendipitous coincidences. In the Morning Star of December 28 late last year Nick Wright gave us an analytical obituary of spy and novelist John Le Carre and the writer’s undoubted deep understanding of the Cold War.
In the same edition, on the paper’s news pages was the report that George Blake, one of Russia’s best known spies in Britain, had died in his Moscow “dacha,” or country cottage at the age of 98.
The news item reported tributes to the former Soviet spy and Russian national hero George Blake and outlined the basics of Blake’s amazing story.
NICK WRIGHT returns to Berlin and finds a city in darkness and political turmoil
PETER MASON applauds a stage version of Le Carre’s novel that questions what ordinary people have to gain from high-level governmental spying
TONY FOX invites readers to come and hear the story of the remarkable Liverpudlian International Brigader Alexander Foote
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON


