01 March 2004

From the Editor…

Welcome to the New Statesman website. Whether you are a new reader or an existing one - online or via the magazine - I hope you'll enjoy the great writing, fresh ideas and provocative debate that make the New Statesman Britain's award-winning current affairs weekly

Jason Cowley, Editor, New Statesman

Cover story

Bush's martyrs

Michael Lind reveals who is really fighting in Iraq: southerners who, unlike the secularised Puritans of the American north-east and the Pacific coast, believe in dying for their country

By Michael Lind

Features

We shall not see their like again

By Paul Routledge

Paul Routledge reported the defining moment of British postwar history, the miners' strike that began 20 years ago. He cannot forgive "the bastards who did these things to our people"

Crisp sandwiches and pickets

By David Peace

In tracing his ancestry to Yorkshire miners, David Peace unearthed a community bound by socialism and sacrifice

Straight eye for the queer guy

By Simon Fanshawe

Gays have legal rights now, but no dress sense. So can they still do a make-over on other men? By Simon Fanshawe

Even the Swedes are at it

By Nick Cohen

Poor American employees are being shamefully exploited. By whom? Why, by European firms that cross the Atlantic to escape the social market. Nick Cohen reports

When even Monsanto has doubts

By Sue Branford

Argentina went overboard for GM crops. Now its farmers face a decline in production, reports Sue Branford

Nothing to sell but their bodies

By Barbara Gunnell

Everyone wants to stop people-trafficking. But in impoverished Nepal, the earnings of exiled workers, including prostitutes, are the biggest single source of foreign exchange. Barbara Gunnell reports

A migration that nobody objects to

By Alexander Monro

The Chinese are now the largest student minority in UK universities. At huge cost, they come to get qualifications which, to them, are beyond price

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

Why the Little Englanders are wrong

Darcus Howe recalls Broadwater Farm, 1985

By Darcus Howe

This film about Broadwater Farm fails to show the police as the brutes they were

Mark Thomas wonders why the police fear frisbees

By Mark Thomas

Were British protesters, armed with little more than a frisbee and a bag of plastic toy soldiers, really in danger of being shot by the US military in Gloucestershire? Asks Mark Thomas

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

A floating world

By Margaret Drabble

Prunella Clough relished the strange and ephemeral, preferring wastelands and industrial imagery to conventionally pretty landscapes. Margaret Drabble looks back at one of art's more elusive figures

Northern lights

By Peter Conrad

Music - Peter Conrad is dazzled by two new recordings of Scandinavian songs

Hot flashes

By Richard Cork

Art - Richard Cork marvels at the uncanny modernity of El Greco's vision

Knit wits

By Katharine Hibbert

Craft - Katharine Hibbert on why sewing is more sexy than it used to be

Theatre

Yes! Yes! Yes!

By Michael Portillo

Theatre - Michael Portillo finds an adaptation of When Harry Met Sally as good as the real thing

Film

The house of misery

By Mark Kermode

Film - Mark Kermode endures a gothic melodrama and a western to make you wince

Television

At the end of the day, it's early doors

By Andrew Billen

Television - Shane Watson is reminded how tricky it can be to pull off that Faking It magic

The Fan

The fan - Hunter Davies pays Gazza a visit

By Hunter Davies

I went to Gazza's flat, expecting it to be a dirty lads' den. It was pristine

Books

The cosmic dilemma. Terrorists may seem psychologically disturbed people who hate us for no good reason. Yet the wretchedness that drives them to kill is a direct consequence of our own lifestyles. It is more important for us to change, because we do greater damage

By Ziauddin Sardar

Terrorism for Humanity: inquiries in political philosophy Ted Honderich Pluto, 232pp, £15.99 ISBN 0745321348 The Roots of War and Terror Anthony Stevens Continuum, 264pp, £12.99 A War on Terror: Afghanistan and after Paul Rogers Pluto, 210pp, £12.99 No End to War: terrorism in the 21st century Walter Laqueur Continuum, 278pp, £16.99 Terrorism, Freedom and Security: a common-sense strategy for a democratic society Philip B Heymann MIT Press, 210pp, £16.95