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LIBERIA IS a typical colonial country. A few tens of thousands of the population are "Americo-Liberians", Negroes whose ancestors were once slaves in America but returned and settled in the country during the early days of its colonisation. After the First World War America found herself confronted with the necessity of competing against the British rubber monopoly.

REFUGEES WHO hoped to find peace and justice in Britain have been grilled by prosecution lawyers in the Yarls Wood trial taking place at Harrow Crown Court. Yarls Wood is New Labour's refugee detention centre in Bedfordshire. After a fire destroyed most of the centre on 14 February last year the refugees were arrested and faced charges including violent disorder. They could be sent to prison.

ONE MILLION of Britain's poorest families are to lose money the government says they are entitled to. The government could snatch back up to half a billion pounds it had pledged would go to the poor. Chancellor Gordon Brown promised his new tax credit system would lift millions of people with children out of poverty.

THE SPIRIT of the international movement against war and capitalism surged through the Marxism 2003 event in London last week. There were thousands of trade unionists and activists present from all over Britain, and hundreds from other parts of the world.

JOHN BOMBA, a leading Zimbabwean socialist and pro-democracy activist, should have been speaking at this year's Marxism 2003 event in London. Instead he was refused entry to Britain by the UK High Commission in Harare. Here John talks angrily about his experience.

ONE OF THE most shameful injustices in Britain's dirty legal history was back in the news last week. In Cardiff Crown Court a man pleaded guilty to the murder of Lynette White in 1988. This is the same crime that Yusef Abdullahi, Tony Paris and Stephen Miller were convicted of in 1990.

THE LATEST British contribution to peace and stability in Iraq is to send one of Northern Ireland's top policemen to run policing in the city of Basra. Stephen White is an assistant chief constable in the Northern Ireland police force. His "achievements" include policing "flashpoints" like Drumcree.

MARK SERWOTKA, general secretary of the civil servants' union PCS, spoke to Socialist Worker as part of our series on the future for the left.

The four local Unity marches took place in areas where the British National Party (BNP) have won council seats. Over 300 people marched through Halifax.

DELEGATES gathered in Blackpool for the last AEEU engineers' and electricians' union conference last week. The union is to officially merge with the MSF union to form Britain's second biggest union, Amicus.

THE RMT rail union delegates at their conference on Monday signalled an uncompromising struggle against the British National Party (BNP) and other Nazis.

FREE TRADE was attacked by thousands of protesters across Britain last Saturday. Events ranged from rallies and marches to fairs. The main focus of the day was to lobby MPs to make them aware of how unfair the present trading system is to poorer countries. Many of the marchers and protesters held "scales of justice" and tugs of war with unequal sides to illustrate the unfairness of the world trade system.