Students March against Fees Hardship

Workers' Daily Internet Edition : Article Index :

Students March against Fees Hardship

Asbestos Death Toll Now Over 5,000 A Year

Public Meeting: Stop the War on Dissent!

Letter of the Great Britain-Iraq Society

Ethiopia’s War on Corruption

Thousands of students marched through central London yesterday to take their protest about tuition fees to Downing Street, as new figures showed that many undergraduates would be better off on the dole. Early estimates say 16,000 students descended on the capital.

The National Union of Students (NUS) said that the demonstration was designed to highlight the poverty students are being forced into by having to pay tuition fees as well as living expenses while they are studying.

The NUS says the average student has just £29.11 a week to live on once rent has been paid. They say that means a student aged between 18 and 24 would be better off on the dole, where they could get a £42 a week Jobseekers Allowance as well as housing benefit payments to cover rent.

To symbolise the state of their finances, students turned out in red clothes. They marched along the most high profile route for generations. Following negotiations with both the police and the Greater London Authority, NUS secured a path that passed the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street, as well as ending with a rally in Trafalgar Square. Banging drums, blowing whistles and carrying banners saying "Kill the Debt", the students brought traffic around Parliament Square and along Whitehall to a standstill. The protest was supported by hundreds of people along the demonstration route who shouted encouragement.

As the march passed the gates of Downing Street, about 100 demonstrators staged a sit-down by the street's entrance and shouted the slogan, "Education for the masses, not just for the ruling classes."

Speakers at the event included London Mayor Ken Livingstone, NATFHE's Tom Wilson, the AUT's Natalie Fenton and Lib Dem MP David Rendel.

On the eve of the demonstration, NUS President Owain James delivered a petition of tens of thousands of signatures to Tony Blair's front door. It called for the Prime Minister to keep his promise and give students a fair funding system.

Tuition fees have been scrapped in Scotland after large protests, while the Welsh Assembly announced last week that student grants would be re-introduced.

Sally Hunt, assistant general secretary of the Association of University Teachers, said: "Staff and students are united in our opposition to the current divisive and failing loans system. There is public distrust of tuition fees and student loans that has spilled over from the doorsteps of middle England in the last general election and threatens to engulf the government's target to widen access. It is time for ministers to announce the results of their long overdue review into student funding."

Tom Wilson, head of the universities department at NATFHE, said: "Many potential students don't arrive in our universities and colleges for fear of debt. Many of those who get there turn up to lectures exhausted from their jobs – stacking shelves and suchlike. NATFHE believes young people and older people should get access to education on ability, not by virtue of wealth or background, and have enough to live on whilst they're there.

"The government should grasp the nettle in England and follow the lead of Scotland and Wales in tackling student finance."

Dave Prentis, general secretary of UNISON, said : "We hope this demonstration will act as a wake up call to this government, that students are the future of the country and we need to invest in that future. Fees leave students with long-term financial burdens and deter many talented young people from going to university.

"It is no good the government claiming that students will earn extra over their life time, because when a student nurse ends their training, not only are they in debt, they will still only be earning £15,000 a year. It is a disgrace that student nurses are expected to survive on bursaries which give them just £2.70 an hour, less than minimum wage for a full week on the wards. In addition they have no employment protection such as maternity pay, sickness benefit or industrial injuries benefits. The NHS needs to be able to attract young people into nursing, yet it is tragic that every year more than a third drop out of their courses. We are calling on the government to pay nurses a decent living wage and end the financial hardship which leads to many student nurses having to take on two and sometimes three extra jobs, just to make ends meet."

Student grants were abolished in 1998 by New Labour. The then Education Secretary, David Blunkett, replaced the grants with the loan scheme. He also announced plans to charge a tuition fee of initially £1,000, which today has grown to £1,075.

Questioned recently in Parliament about the need for funding system change, Education Secretary Estelle Morris said nothing to indicate the government intends to address student hardship in practice. She admitted that only a few minor changes are planned for the next academic year.

Owain James said that Estelle Morris’ remarks came "as a bitter blow to thousands of students and their parents. Last year, Tony Blair pledged to review the balance between student and state contributions – especially for those students from lower income backgrounds. NUS is extremely worried that far from making things better, current proposals will only make things worse. The government needs to act now to make student funding fairer."

Education is a right, and investment in further and higher education must be increased. This is the message which the demonstration reflected.

At least five thousand people died in 2001 of asbestos-related diseases, according to a TUC analysis of official figures. The figure is up from 3,000 a decade ago – so now 50 per cent more people die from asbestos than die on the roads every year. The TUC warns that the death toll will continue to rise if measures are not taken now to control asbestos exposure in British buildings. Asbestos: no hiding place, a new TUC/Hazards Campaign guide, tells workplace union safety reps on how to help prevent exposure to asbestos, in line with forthcoming asbestos regulations. It advises safety reps to: Take part in the selection of asbestos surveyors; identify the materials that need to be assessed; and participate in the development of plans to manage the asbestos found in buildings.

The Health and Safety Executive has confirmed that white asbestos (chrysotile) is a major health hazard. An HSE position statement says all asbestos can cause cancer and the vast bulk of scientific evidence in Britain and abroad regards the risk from white asbestos as proven. The safety watchdog estimates up to 4,000 lives could be lost over future years unless steps are taken now to manage the risks from the asbestos present in commercial buildings. It says building maintenance workers might be exposed to an estimated average of 0.1 fibres per millilitre of white asbestos over a working life and that this would create a risk equivalent to one death in 5,000 workers. The TUC warns the real risk could be "significantly higher, perhaps as high as one in 750".

Stephen Byers, Secretary of State for the DTLR, announced on the February 13 that he is extending the Pneumoconiosis Act 1979 to cover mesothelioma victims affected by a Court of Appeal decision. He said that this was an interim measure only and that discussions are taking place about a longer-term response to the decision, known as the Fairchild judgment. The Prime Minister also announced that victims of the incurable mesothelioma asbestos cancer would now be eligible for compensation under the Act.

The Fairchild judgment stated that a worker who had been exposed to asbestos dust by more than one employer could not succeed in a claim for damages against those employers unless he could show which one of them was responsible for the exposure that caused his illness. The appeal in the House of Lords against the judgment is to be held on April 22-24.

The TUC and general union GMB gave a qualified welcome to Tony Blair’s admission on February 13 that the Fairchild ruling was "widely seen as an injustice". TUC general secretary John Monks said: "We very much welcome this as an interim measure, particularly given the medical circumstances of these asbestos victims. However, the TUC believes that the House of Lords should restore sanity to asbestos compensation and ensure that it is the polluter – not the taxpayer – who pays." Nigel Bryson, GMB director of health and safety, welcomed the announcement, but added that the GMB "does not think it right that taxpayers should have to pay compensation on behalf of employers who have negligently exposed their workforce to lethal asbestos dust. We also think the levels of compensation available under the Act are far too low."

Victims groups also drew attention to the need to go further than interim government compensation. The Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group welcomed any early, interim payment to mesothelioma sufferers: many will have only a few months to live. But it made clear that mesothelioma victims and bereaved families do not want this payment to allow the employers and insurance companies to escape liability.

Tony Whitston of Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims’ Support Group said: "The problem with no fault systems like this is that no fault means no blame. These companies made millions, lobbied for and won poor asbestos exposure standards, knowingly exposed their workers to risks and now would have us believe that they are the victims. Why should a family lose a breadwinner and the company and its directors that committed this crime lose nothing?"

The Pneumoconiosis Act pays a derisory amount of money to mesothelioma victims. The average payment to mesothelioma victims under the Pneumoconiosis Act is approximately £12,000 compared to an average £60,000 through the courts. For the husband or wife or dependant of someone who has died from mesothelioma the average payment under the Pneumoconiosis Act is less than £3,000 compared to £60,000 through the courts.

Mesothelioma is a fatal tumour of the lining of the lung almost exclusively caused by mesothelioma. It is known to be caused by far less exposure to asbestos fibres than other asbestos related diseases.

The Court of Appeal judgment has been condemned by medical experts who say that changes to a cell, causing mesothelioma, cannot be explained simply by the effect of a single fibre out of many millions of fibres. Dr Alan Whitehead likened the judgment to six thugs kicking someone to death and all escaping liability because no one could say whose boot had delivered the fatal blow.

A public meeting was organised by the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CACC) in the Grand Committee Room, House of Commons, on February 12, 2002, hosted by MP Jeremy Corbyn.

The supposed war on terrorism was in reality a war on dissent and held inherent dangers for everyone's civil liberties. Even though select groups were targeted the entire public should be concerned about the drift towards authoritarianism which had been taking place since before 11 September. This broad message was forcefully put before a packed and diverse audience which encouraged the organisers CACC and drew words of congratulation from chair Jeremy Corbyn. Over 120 people were present representing a wide spectrum of groups including Women in Black, the African Liberation Movement, the Charter for Basic Democratic Rights as well as lawyers and activists.

Messages of support were read out from Harold Pinter, George Monbiot, Lord Avebury, Gareth Pierce, Denis Goldberg, union leaders Andy Gilchrist and Mick Rix, Jean Lambert Green MEP, Cynog Dafis of Plaid Cymru, MPs John Austin and Simon Thomas.

Barrister Stephanie Harrison, CACC chair, opened the meeting with a description of the campaign's aims and origins. She said that it had been a direct response to the banning order in the Terrorism Act 2000 which marked the start of the criminalising of dissent but began with an attack on certain vulnerable mainly immigrant communities. This step could expose people to arrest for wearing their traditional items of clothing, displaying political emblems or taking part in peaceful demonstrations. As such it was a clear attack on the right to free speech and association which was why CACC believed the law should not only be opposed, it should be defied. That had happened during the mass protests held last year outside the Home Office with largely Kurdish people and in Birmingham with Sikhs and Kashmiris.

Ms Harrison announced that CACC was preparing a comprehensive pamphlet exposing the implications of the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (ATCSA) 2001. Attacks on civil liberties across the world were increasing under the pretext of the war on terrorism, in Palestine, India and Turkey for instance. She stated that we must resist the attempts to marginalise those people who are resisting oppression and insisted that Britain should not persecute those who come here because they cannot operate freely in their own countries. She urged more support for the important work CACC was doing and appealed for funds.

Professor Conor Gearty, a human rights law specialist, lecturer and barrister, was inspired by the success of the meeting and felt honoured to be participating. He drew vivid parallels with the way the law had been used against the Irish community in the 1970s and today's legislation. He referred to the recent death of Sister Sarah Clark whose funeral he had attended along with many distinguished mourners. Her obituary had appeared in The Times and the Pope had given her an award. Professor Gearty reminded everyone that Sister Clark was not so admired when she had stood out as a lone voice in the ’70s offering aid to families of people detained under internment. As a fighter against the system she had helped raise awareness about the miscarriages of justice that were perpetrated. At that time she had been isolated and attacked for her stand.

Today, the state was taking the action against dissenters but its operations had become more elaborate, more controlled and pervasive. The fig leaf of legality and the repertoire of laws at its disposal were much more mature and sophisticated in 2002. The state's appetite for repression was evident in the Terrorism Act 2000 and ATCSA 2001, but where were the Sarah Clarks of today, he asked. There was an urgent need for a critique of what was happening. Professor Gearty traced the roots of the present crisis historically examining how the state had always mistrusted representative democracy in the past and had only in post-World War One decades accommodated itself to it. The successive crises of two world wars and the Cold War had enabled the state to manage dissent very effectively. The use of an enemy to manage popular opinion had become an effective method of social control. The new discovery of terrorism was now vital as a means of managing opinion in the aftermath of the collapse of communism.

Laws were enacted ostensibly as emergency measures during a time of crisis. Just as the Omagh bombing in 1998 had been used as an excuse to bring in laws that had nothing to do with preventing a repeat of that incident, laws were now being enacted which had nothing to do with resolving what had occurred on 11 September. What the attack in the US had done was simply to crystallise what had been already occurring in terms of anti-terrorism and anti-immigration policies. There was now a general move evident in the US and Europe away from the use of use of an impartial court system to try offenders towards what in America is called "court stripping", more easily controlled mechanisms and more secret forms of justice. It was significant that it had been the government that had resisted the move towards clearly defining what is meant by "terrorism" because what government wanted was to decide for itself who was to be criminalised. The police were being given additional powers on this basis to stop and search, to arrest and detain a wide range of suspects. Professor Gearty condemned how Home Secretary Blunkett had expressed impatience and anger at the legal system. The lack of respect for justice and legality was putting representative democracy at risk.

Professor Gearty warned against relying on the Human Rights Act as a defence against the current trend towards state control. Neither were the pronouncements of judges sufficient protection of our liberties, as some argued. In fact, he detected a paradox in the Human Rights Act, the derogation clause meant that it could be set aside by government and as such the Act actually legitimised the infringement of human rights. Professor Gearty proposed the broadest kind of political action to build up popular pressure to get the anti-civil liberties measures removed from the statute books. There was nothing inevitable about the drift towards repression, he declared to enthusiastic applause. At the suggestion of Jeremy Corbyn, the meeting stood in a minute’s silence for the memory of the late Sister Clark.

Tim Gopsill, from the National Union of Journalists, declared that the courage of lawyers and others who took up this campaign put his own profession to shame, although it was important to recognise that journalists did not actually control the press. He was particularly angered by lazy journalism seen in the constant repetition of the phrase, "the world changed forever after 11 September". The attack was not on the world, it was on the US; there was no crisis of terrorism in the UK, in fact what we were facing was an engineered crisis by government seeking to take advantage to encroach upon civil liberties. Mr Gopsill said no one should be surprised that it was the Labour Party that was doing this and he condemned the cynical way that the state of emergency was leaked to The Observer last November. The real problem was that people were simply going along with this trend; very few voices were raised in opposition. He defined this as a new cold war after the defeat of the Socialist bloc; the states had been looking for new enemies; neither Saddam, Milosevic, or Qadhafi had proved big enough; now they had terrorism. Political leaders like Bush and Blunkett were stating that this war was to go one for a very long time; recently ex-PM Thatcher had written an article calling Islam "the New Bolshevism". Nothing could be clearer; in the US, there was now a new "Patriot Act". All these new laws against our freedoms were a massive confidence trick whose success depended on our own silence and gullibility. He said that we as victims must state that we do not believe them, we are not at war and will not put up with these measures.

Dr Siddiqui, from the Muslim Parliament, commented on the case of an Algerian pilot held in the UK for months as a terrorist suspect, but released when the FBI failed to provide any evidence against him. In the past there had been a "red scare". Now there was a "Muslim scare" for the reason that the state needed its enemies, for example, to justify its military budgets. He described the present actions of the US, which had the might to control the world by land, sea and space in the interests of the corporate sector, as a conspiracy against humanity against which we must mobilise. He said that in 1998 the Muslim Parliament had opposed new terror laws and proposed instead as remedies for defeating social marginalisation and discrimination, policies on housing, education and jobs. These would remove the inequalities which were at the root of disaffection. The government had ignored the warning that extremism would be bred if government failed to tackle social exclusion. The government had only responded with the provision of Muslim advisors to prisons; the Muslim social agenda of schools, broadcasting and health had been ignored. In this respect, the government bore responsibility for the growth of extremism.

Dr Siddiqui warned that the war on terrorism was a danger to democracy, as was the present lack of interest in politics evidenced in low turnouts at elections. People felt that there was no point in elections anymore; politicians were more influenced by big companies like Enron. Our politicians in the UK and the US were thus perceived as hostages to corporate power and there was a need to fight this process. The new laws targeted people with no voice in society, such as Muslims who were now being harassed and imprisoned without even the right to a free and fair trial.

Nilufer Koc, from the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), warned that step by step the civil liberties in the UK were being removed and this concerned everyone not just the Kurdish community. However, the Kurds who had experience of such repression against human rights in Turkey ironically had now to fight the same battle in the UK. She then spoke of the impact on Kurdish people living here of the banning of the PKK. It had increased divisions in society, which should be removed. Many social problems were common to different communities and the Kurds only wanted to play their part. But to do this they had to be recognised as Kurds; right now the public authorities in the UK only saw them as Turks, Arabs or Persians. What Kurds needed above all was political recognition, which was their right. In response to the PKK ban, the community had held mass demonstrations and political campaigns; they were determined to exercise their right to speak out about the PKK and the need for action to resolve the problems in Turkey. Kurds suffered in the UK and especially when they travelled overseas they were frequently detained and questioned about the PKK. This was made worse by the terrorism acts whose impact was destroying Britain's peaceful multicultural democracy.

Ms Koc then informed the meeting of the recent news that the PKK had decided to cease all its activities in Turkey and Europe. This development should stop European governments using the excuse of terrorism to deny the Kurds their rights. The changed situation should present an opportunity for the winning of the rights for the Kurds who wanted to participate as equal partners in society. She expressed optimism about the eventual outcome.

Dr Ghada Karmi, writer and a senior figure in the Arab community in the UK, spoke passionately of the effects of new legislation on Arab people in Britain and especially Palestinians. There was an intense atmosphere of intimidation since 11 September and Arabs were the principal targets: they were arrested in large numbers and there were incidents of racial abuse and attacks in the streets. In the US, there was a witch-hunt going on, particularly against Saudi nationals. Although it was not as bad in the UK, there was still a dangerous situation developing. Dr Karmi reminded everyone that of the 21 groups banned, three were Palestinian. This was remarkable because these groups did not operate in the UK at all and had never done so. So why were they on the list?

The TA2000 dangerously sought to blur the distinction between terrorism and resistance to oppression. She described a meeting she had attended with Jack Straw when Home Secretary when he remained non-committal, but tended to concede that the distinction was a difficult one. Dr Karmi denied that any such concept as "international terrorism" ever existed; there was violence against individual states. On 11 September, it was the US that was targeted, not the world or the UK; America should ask itself why it was so targeted, but this was something that it would never debate or face up to. She said that the Arab world was angry at the US because it was seen to be supporting injustice by backing Israel’s occupation of Palestine. If political leaders worked towards solving the injustices in the world which lead to actions like 11 September, then the world would be a better place. The US would be better advised to do this rather than threaten countries like Iraq or anywhere else. The UK should stand up to the misguided policy of solving disputes by force currently being pursued in Washington. After 11 September the US had introduced a new concept into international affairs that force was justified if you don’t like something which rendered negotiations unnecessary. Such a lesson encouraged Sharon’s use of overwhelming force today. Dr Karmi said that the UK government should not blindly follow this line which was insane and immoral.

Lawyer Louis Charalambous from the Bar Human Rights Committee, who stood in for Mark Muller who was in Turkey, said he was not a believer in conspiracy theories until he became involved with what happened to the Kurds over recent years. He said it was three years since Ocalan was abducted in Kenya and taken to Turkey. The full role of the US in this would one day emerge, he thought. He had been a lawyer for MED-TY which had its licence hastily revoked for its coverage of the Ocalan events. He called this a disgraceful decision since the Kurdish TV station broadcasting to 70 countries was an important means of cultural expression for the Kurds. Mr Charalambous said that in Turkey the repression was still continuing with a ban only last week against the only Kurdish broadcaster in the country and legal action like the prosecution of the publishers of a book by Noam Chomsky (who were later to be acquitted). While this was going on in Turkey, Britain was banning the Kurds from wearing their national colours in the UK under TA2000.

George Binette, from the Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers, drew connections between the law against people claiming asylum and recent anti-terrorism laws. He felt that immigration laws in the UK were inherently racist. The government was now proposing its fourth asylum and immigration act in less than a decade and sought to double the detention rate and had now a target of 30,000 deportations per year. Detainees were neither accused nor convicted of anything, Mr Binette said, all they were doing was exercising their right to claim asylum. Racism in the policy was evident in the way the Home Office had given immigration officers the right to apply automatic refusals to people from certain countries such as Kurds, Iraqis who were branded as bogus. He gave notice of a conference in Manchester on 23 March when many of the campaigns working to support asylum seekers would come together to devise a common strategy to oppose the increasingly repressive government policies.

In discussion further issues were raised by a well informed and diverse audience. Barrister Frances Webber pointed to a sinister aspect of new laws which was that they were defining refugees out of existence; the use of terrorism blurred the distinctions and made it more difficult for people to claim political asylum. There was also the danger that anti-globalisation protesters were now even being targeted as terrorist suspects by new European proposed legislation, while torture states like Turkey were receiving support from European police forces in apprehending suspects. Her points were elaborated on by a spokesperson from Statewatch who referred to new screening policy of refugees, stricter border controls and a widening definition of terrorism to include protest movements. A representative from Women in Black expressed determination to keep up the protests against war and injustice even if this means such actions could lead to arrest. The link was made between UK domestic law and the collaboration of the UK with dictatorial regimes in the African continent. These trends should be seen in the context of the WTO and the economic exploitation of peoples. We should not forget how progressive leaders had been overthrown in the past by assassination and state terrorism carried out by the US and UK.

Simon Hughes MP, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, described the opposition from a few members during the passage of the Bill through Parliament. The imposition of the blanket ban on 21 groups on a take it or leave it basis had been an unjustified process and had been wrong in principle. He was concerned about the loose definition of terrorism, which meant that in certain circumstances even trade unionists on strike could be accused. MPs standing on a platform like the one tonight could also fall foul of the legislation. He felt that such laws should never be enacted indefinitely. In its increased state surveillance the law presented a threat to all of us.

Kathy Lowe, a journalist who had visited Turkey in solidarity with prisoners on the death fast, stressed that the law now made it more difficult to organise solidarity activities. A speaker from the Tamil Action Group said that the law sought to stifle the voice of dissent, the only outlet that the oppressed had to make their opposition felt. The need to widen CACC’s campaign to trade unions was also stressed.

Ursula Owen, Director of Index on Censorship, who apologised for her absence, sent a message of support, which we reproduce below:

"Index on Censorship, the magazine for free expression feels that the Anti Terrorism Act 2000 and the Anti Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 are both oppressive pieces of legislation unworthy of a state that holds itself up as a bastion of democracy.

"Furthermore the threat to freedom of expression that this legislation represents is a retrograde step against the advances made toward not just a civic society but a civilised society.

"The right to political freedom of expression is fundamental to any democracy and the provisions laid out in these Acts seriously undermine this right. More worrying still is the limited time allotted by this government to debate the legislation in the house, hours and days to debate principles that have taken centuries to come into being. The speed of debate and the secrecy of the laws create a dangerous precedent and further undermine the democratic process that the legislation purports to uphold. In the words of Mark Fisher MP, ‘This bill may give the devil no place to hide but in doing so it cuts down many trees.’

"Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of human rights and this legislation is in danger of crushing it to rubble, so Index on Censorship will stand shoulder to shoulder, as the current terminology goes, with all of you here in opposing the Anti Terrorism Crime and Security Act. Free expression is vital if we are to get the difficult balance between freedom and security right."

The following letter of February 21, 2002, is addressed to MPs.

We the undersigned write on behalf of the Great Britain-Iraq Society. But we believe we speak for a much larger section of the British population which wants to avoid the looming and potentially catastrophic outbreak of a new Gulf War.

The rhetoric of President George W. Bush and the steady stream of apparently informed newspaper articles makes it increasingly clear that the United States intends – alone if necessary – to launch a new devastating war in the Middle East, at a time when General Ariel Sharon has already set the Levant on fire. This, whatever Iraq does or says. In the words of one senior US official quoted in the New York Times: "this time the US won't take yes for an answer".

Here, brazenly, the unleashed unilateralists of the White House make clear that without even a pretext, without the authority of the United Nations and without any recourse to diplomacy, the war is on. And yet, such a war, which we are told will involve weeks of saturation bombing of an important Arab country followed by a ground invasion of 200,000 US troops and, if successful the installation of a puppet US-picked regime in Baghdad, will have seismic consequences throughout the region and the world. As it is stated to be a war to effect "regime-change" it is, of course, a "zero-sum game" as the Americans say. Thus no holds will be barred, no weapons withheld, no targets sacrosanct.

Such a war will certainly spread, create chaos in energy supplies and bring revolution in its wake. The "regime-change" intended for Baghdad may produce unintended consequences in other Arab capitals. Between the hammer of General Sharon's offensive against the illegally occupied Palestinian territories and the anvil of a simultaneous Gulf War 2, great forces will be conjured forth, a new radicalisation with militant "Islamism" the sure-fire winner.

Do British parliamentarians really intend to sit back quietly and see this chaos launched by the United States without trying to stop it? What is the "special relationship" for, if not to use any influence it has earned when it is most, vitally, necessary?

The launching of the second Bush war in the Middle East will shatter the "anti-terrorist coalition" asunder. Russia and China stand firmly against it, as do Germany and France. The Arab League has gone into overdrive, declaring "an attack by America upon any Arab country will be regarded as an attack upon all of us".

But where stands the United Kingdom? That is the question we and increasingly large numbers of your constituents will be asking. Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the crime committed on September 11th. Nor the postal anthrax attacks which followed it. Even the US government doesn't now claim otherwise. More than one million Iraqis have died, most of them children, during the last eleven years of the embargo. How many do we now intend to kill in weeks of bombing and a land invasion? How much more of Iraq will be destroyed? What will be the effect on the western economies of the consequent chaos? We would like to know where you stand on this, and if you would be willing to do anything to stop it.

We look forward to your reply ... before it is too late.

Yours sincerely, Harold Pinter, Nigel Jones MP, George Galloway MP, Lord Rea, Rt Hon Tony Benn, Andy de la Tour, Victoria Brittain, Stuart Halford etc

On behalf of Great Britain-Iraq Society

Ethiopia's Prime Minister said on February 19 that the Ethiopian government was stronger than ever after mounting a security crackdown and purging ruling party dead wood. Meles Zenawi said in an interview that there were no sacred cows in a war on corruption, and denied allegations of human rights abuses against political opponents and dismissed reports that he had hired thousands of spies to monitor them.

"Most countries would do what we did in similar circumstances," he told Reuters about a clamp-down after student riots in April 2001. "We did have disturbances. We felt that there was a misconception on the part of a small group of people that the government had been fatally wounded by the divisions in the party and was trying to spread chaos, so we felt we needed to clamp down strongly. We did indeed clamp down and things have stabilised."

In the months that followed the disturbances, Ethiopia’s intelligence chief was assassinated and the speaker of parliament's upper house fled to the United States accusing Meles Zenawi of persecuting the Oromos, the country's largest national group, and the country’s president stepped down after accusing the government of trying to emasculate an Oromo political party.

Meles Zenawi said that he had reshuffled the leadership of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and its component Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) to make them more responsive to the country's needs.

"The EPRDF was cleansing itself of some dead wood it had accumulated over a decade... Like all cleansing processes it tends to be turbulent while it is taking place but in hindsight it appears more of a storm in a teacup," he said. "The EPRDF is now on more solid ground than it ever was."

The Ethiopian Prime Minister denied accusations by critics that his government was dominated by the minority Tigrayan community. "We are not a minority government," he said. "We are a government of a huge number – 85 percent in the rural population backs us up and quite a significant proportion of the urban population."

Meles Zenawi said that a high-profile drive against corruption focused on senior officials, but denied opponents' accusations it was aimed at removing his political enemies in the TPLF. "We have been selective in the sense that we have tried to go primarily against the big fish. We are not in the end limited to the big fish but we felt it was necessary to go after the big fish first. Any revelations now or in the future against any person will only strengthen our government because we will immediately act as soon as evidence is found against any institution or person... There are no sacred cows."

Former Deputy Prime Minister Tamirat Layne is serving an 18-year prison term for corruption, and former Defence Minister Siye Abraha and his three brothers have appeared in court. Meles Zenawi said that Tamirat Layne had been a close friend. "But that did not prevent us taking action when we found he was a thief."