MP repeats calls for inquiry into British role in 1984 storming of Golden Temple
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) referred to official documents released by the government in 2014 which showed the UK was aware of the plans by then- Indian president Indira Gandhi for troops to storm the temple to break up a protest by Sikh separatists who wanted an independent homeland to be formed, called Khalistan.
The documents indicated Margaret Thatcher's government sent an SAS officer to help the Indian government plan the attack in 1984.
Thousands of protesters gathered in central London on Sunday to call on the Government to honour previous manifesto commitments, and pledges by Sir Keir Starmer, to hold an independent inquiry.
Speaking at business questions in the Commons, Mr Juss said: 'I was in the House during business questions on January 9 when (Tan Singh Dhesi) referred to the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984, ordered by the then-Indian government.
'Documents revealed in 2014 said that the Thatcher government had helped their Indian counterpart by providing advice for Operation Blue Star. Since 2014, there have been many calls made and assurances given to establish the extent of the British government's involvement.
'So will the leader of the House please now agree for a statement to be given to the House for an independent, judge-led public inquiry, to get to the bottom of what happened, in her own words.'
After the protest on Sunday, Mr Dhesi, a Labour MP, told Sky News he had been informed by ministers and Downing Street that an inquiry was 'under consideration'.
After the release of documents in 2014, an internal government review found the UK's role was 'purely advisory' and given months beforehand. Then-foreign secretary William Hague said British military advice was given to India ahead of the deadly attack but said it had only 'limited impact'.
Official Indian figures put the death toll at 575 according to the former Tory leader, who now sits as Lord Hague of Richmond in the House of Lords.
Commons leader Lucy Powell said: 'It was raised with me previously a few months ago and I made clear what I hope would happen on that occasion. I absolutely understand the concerns of members across this House and from those from the Sikh community and many of those he represents as well.
'I did follow up when I was asked that previously, I have followed up these issues with the Foreign Office. I'm sorry to say I'm still waiting to hear about that from them, but I will ensure that when I do, he and other members are made fully aware of that and the House is updated.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
18 minutes ago
- The Sun
Plan to scrap two-child benefit cap ‘dead in the water' after Labour's £5billion welfare U-turn
LABOUR will not scrap the two-child benefit cap despite pressure from left wing MPs, according to Downing Street sources. Plans to shelve the rule have reportedly been binned because of Labour's £5 billion welfare U-turn. 3 3 3 Earlier this year Starmer told his cabinet he wanted to scrap the cap and asked the Treasury to identify ways to fund the plan. However, a No 10 source has now told The Sunday Times: "My assessment is that is now dead in the water." And a No 11 source warned MPs there has to be 'trade offs' for not introducing major welfare reforms, reports the outlet. 'Whether that's tax rises or not scrapping the two child benefit cap,' they added. Parents have only been able to claim child tax credit and for their first two children since 2017. Imposed in April 2017, parents can not claim child tax credit or universal credit worth up to £3,455 per year for more than two children. An exception is made for children born as a result of rape. Lifting the cap would cost an estimated £3.5 billion and the Labour party has long been divided over the issue - with Sir Keir Starmer ruling out scrapping the cap in 2023. He then said Labour wanted to remove it, but only when fiscal conditions allowed. Following Labour's landslide victory last July, the prime minister refused to bow to pressure within his party, and suspended seven MPs for six months for voting with the SNP to scrap the cap. Ministers have toed the party line for months, but the narrative started to shift in May, with Sir Keir reported to have asked the Treasury to see how scrapping it could be funded. Keir Starmer 'to BACK DOWN' on benefits cuts as he faces major revolt from MPs Labour MPs who forced Sir Keir Starmer into a U-turn last week had set their sights on lifting the benefit cap. But it looks like that plan is now set to be scrapped once and for all with a decision on the cap set for the autumn. Speculation has been mounting that ending the two-child benefits cap will be the third welfare U-turn after those relating to winter fuel payments and disability benefits, which have already cost Rachel Reeves billions. Sir Keir recently suffered the biggest blow to his leadership since coming into power a year ago after he was forced to abandon a key plank of his controversial benefit cuts in order to get them through parliament. Just minutes before voting began, ministers announced that plans to restrict eligibility for personal independence payments were being dropped. Sir Keir had already been forced into a U-turn the week before when more than 130 Labour MPs turned rebels and signed an amendment that would have effectively killed the bill off. Among the concessions announced then was a plan to impose tougher eligibility rules only on future PIP claimants, leaving existing recipients unaffected. It comes after analysis of official figures previously revealed that ditching the child benefits cap would hand thousands of pounds a year in extra benefits to 180,000 large families in which no one goes out to work. But critics of the cap claim it has worsened child poverty. The hard-hitting rule, which slashes payments like Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit, is costing struggling households an average of £4,300 each, according to a recent report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show a staggering 450,000 families were stung by the cap last year. Most of those hit - around 280,000 families – have three kids, while 120,000 have four, and 56,000 are raising five or more little ones. The DWP doesn't reveal exactly how much the biggest families are missing out on.
Telegraph
32 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Martina Navratilova is about to win her greatest ever victory for all women
I am fairly sure that nobody's idea of a good Wimbledon weekend is settling down with a cup of coffee and tucking into a story about the latest in the world of trans rights case law. Indeed, most people would be happier if they never had to hear of this harmful, strange and rather sad issue ever again. Live and let live, with a few exceptions, pretty much covers it in the eyes of the sane. And yet on and on it goes. The trans rights movement just won't give up. They refuse to see how their agenda might be seen to trample over the peace, safety and sense of fairness – the sense of right itself – of the much bigger, embattled group known once quite simply as women. In April our Supreme Court ruled that sex, within the context of the Equality Act, should be taken as biological. This was met with an enormous breath-letting of relief by a brave cadre of pro-woman activists and the very many who privately share that view. But the trans rights corps simply continued on regardless. Many organisations in Britain have simply ignored the ruling so it is beginning to feel like it never happened. Whitehall's own advert for the job of overseeing the implementation of single-sex spaces (what a weird world we live in) includes the role of making it easier to legally change gender. I mentioned 'exceptions' to the obvious live-and-let-live policy towards trans people. Those are not about being horrible to trans people or wishing or legalising harm to them. They are about imposing some basic ethics on trans people that we would expect of any group: their rights cannot come at the cost of loads of other people's. Their rights cannot amount to a perversion of fair play, making it unfair play. That's not how societies like ours work. The biggest, clearest example of this, the one that has exercised the most people – including those who would rather stay out of politics and the culture war – is trans women and girls in girls' and women's sport. The issue has been incredibly persistent despite the blinding, widely-felt obviousness of the right answer – that no, biological boys and men should not compete in girls and women's sport because they have an unfair advantage. But apparently it's not obvious. Which is why the US Supreme Court is now getting involved. It announced last week that it would consider an attempt by West Virginia and Idaho to enforce their state laws banning biologically male trans athletes from women's sport in public (state) schools and universities. There is a tortuous legal history to this matter already. State laws banning trans girls and women competing in sport in public schools and universities have been blocked in circuit courts of appeal. Now two trans runners who wanted to be on women's track and cross-country teams, one in middle school in West Virginia and one at the Boise State University of Idaho, have sued those states for discrimination and violation of their Title IX (sex-based) rights, with lower court judges eventually siding with the states, but the litigants allowed to keep competing while the case goes on. Indeed, in April of this year, the fourth US circuit court of appeals in Richmond, Virginia, threw out the lower court judge's decision, ruling that the law's exclusion of the middle school trans girl from girls' teams violates the Title IX law. The ruling was a bizarre thing. It said, in its decision against West Virginia state law, that it treats transgender girls differently from other girls, 'which is – literally – the definition of gender identity discrimination' and that it was therefore 'discrimination on the basis of sex' (Title XI). Er, yes. How the court came to use the idea that transgender girls were the same as other girls as the bedrock of its argument is hard to understand. It's as if the word 'transgender' simply isn't there, which shows how totemic the irrational beliefs about identity have become. At any rate, now the Supreme Court is needed to step in to decide whether the state laws are unconstitutional. Hopefully it'll be clever enough to argue what the vast majority of people already know. If the Court rules in favour of the states, the implications will be huge: 23 other states have now passed laws banning trans women in women's sport. Here in Blighty, the whole thing drags on terribly too. It's painful. Wimbledon is a feast of excitement, merriment and best of British strawberries and fizz, and yet it's part of a firmament that has been overshadowed by the still-confusing guidance around trans women in tennis. While trans women have been banned from some British events, under the Women's Tennis Association's guidelines, trans players can compete in WTA tournaments if they have signed a form saying they are female or non-binary and that their testosterone levels will remain below a certain limit for two years. Which is how Martina Navratilova, the tennis champion (who has won the Wimbledon singles final nine times) ended up taking on the same aggressive, homophobic, misogynistic lunatics as JK Rowling. You can understand her passion and her position. Would she have had the career she has with the WTA guidelines? Quite possibly not. Sports women have been feeling cheated out of what is rightfully theirs. Girls and women aspiring with all they are worth to be champions feel disillusioned. And then their confidence begins to ebb. This is what happened, as was well-chronicled, after the University of Pennsylvania welcomed barely disguised man 'Lia' Thomas onto the women's swim team. It was shocking to see, and even more shocking to see the abuse female swimmers faced in describing why it was wrong. 'Male bodies need to play in male sports,' the tireless Navratilova spelt out for the umpteeth time on Amol Rajan Interview s on the BBC last month. 'They just need to compete in the proper category, which is the male category. It's that simple. But by including male bodies in the women's tournament, now somebody is not getting into the tournament. A woman is not going into the tournament because now a male has taken her place.' In many ways, Navratilova encapsulates so much about Anglo-American culture today. Despite standing up for women's sport and being a prominent, inspiring example of a lesbian in a fairly heterosexual domain, she is hounded and ostracised by LGBT groups. We have never lived in times so obnoxiously drunk on their own progressiveness, while being blind to the actual authoritarian regressiveness that is really being peddled – and by the brave, fought. I was swimming at the Ladies Pond on Hampstead Heath not long after our Supreme Court ruling and I ended up speaking to a few young women about their thoughts on the matter. They were semi-professional athletes and while they didn't much like, but were not impassioned, about trans women at the pond, they were extremely angry and activated about transwomen in sport. This, they felt, was a huge moral sin, and undermined all that sport stands for: fairness of competition, the fruits of hard work, the pleasure of the win. America's Supreme Court has the chance to set a precedent. There is much I find sinister and wrong about Trump's America, but there is a better chance now than there was before that on this issue, the Supreme Court will make the right choice, and begin to undo some of the madness of the past decade.
The Independent
33 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘Biggest threat' to UK is extremism, says Home Secretary ahead of 7/7 anniversary
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has stated that Islamic and right-wing extremism continue to pose Britain's "biggest threats", as the nation approaches the 20th anniversary of the July 7 bombings. On 7 July 2005, four suicide bombers targeted London 's transport network, killing 52 people and injuring more than 770 across three Underground trains and a bus. A series of attempted bombings followed the attacks, and during the subsequent police manhunt for suspects, Jean Charles de Menezes was tragically shot dead at a tube station. Writing in the Sunday Mirror, Ms Cooper recalled how news of the attacks had emerged as she headed to a local government conference in her then-role as a junior minister. 'The anti-radicalisation programme Prevent became more important than ever,' Ms Cooper said. 'And communities across the nation were determined that hatred would not win. 'The work done at that time has endured and evolved. Islamist extremist terrorism remains the greatest threat, followed by extreme right-wing terrorism. 'But we also face threats from hostile states, serious organised crime, cyber criminals, and a rise in individuals radicalised online.' Ms Cooper referenced how the approach to tackling terrorism had continued to evolve in the wake of the tragedy. In April, legislation providing greater protection to help prevent and reduce the harm of terror attacks at event venues officially became law. The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, known as Martyn's Law, compels all UK venues expecting 200 or more people to be on site to prepare for the event of a terror attack. Larger premises expected to host 800 people or more also have to take steps to reduce their vulnerability to an assault, such as CCTV, bag searches or vehicle checks. Figen Murray campaigned for the law change in memory of her 29-year-old son Martyn Hett, who was killed in the Manchester Arena bombing at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017. Speaking when the Bill was signed into law, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: 'Today is a landmark moment for our security as my Government delivers on its promise to introduce Martyn's Law and better protect the public from terrorism. 'Figen's courage and determination in the face of such unimaginable loss is truly humbling, and it is thanks to her campaigning that Martyn's Law means her son's legacy will live on forever.'
