Stephen Spender takes up Litvinov’s idea first with Stuart Hampshire (the Oxford philosopher), a co-signatory of the telegram, and with David Astor (then editor of the Observer). They set up a committee along the lines suggested by Litvinov. Among its other members are Louis Blom-Cooper, Edward Crankshaw, Lord Gardiner, Elizabeth Longford and Sir Roland Penrose, and its patrons included Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Sir Peter Medawar, Henry Moore, Iris Murdoch, Sir Michael Tippett and Angus Wilson. The chosen name for the new organisation is Writers and Scholars International. This process takes approximately three years. 

In March the first ever issue of the magazine is published under the title Index (“on Censorship” is later added). From the beginning, Index declare its mission to stand up for free expression as a fundamental human right for people everywhere. It is particularly vocal in its coverage of the oppressive military regimes of southern Europe and Latin America, but is clear that censorship is not only a problem in faraway dictatorships. The first issue includes a never-before-published poem, written while serving a sentence in a labour camp, by Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to win a Nobel prize later that year. Articles are published from across the globe, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Greece, Portugal, USA, the Soviet Union, with poems from Natalya Gorbanyevskaya, a poet who had been confined to a mental hospital. It also includes the first publication in any language of a story by Milovan Djilas, who was unable to publish anything in his own country since his trial in 1963. Also included in the first issue is the Index “Index”, which is round-up of the main and most recent free speech issues around the world. Index Index runs in every issue until 2008. In the September issue, Nadine Gordimer, a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, writes her first article for Index. Gordimer stands firmly against apartheid in South Africa. She goes on to write for Index many times.

Index publicises the case of the tortured Iranian poet, Reza Baraheni, whose testimony subsequently appears in the New York Times.

The unofficial and banned Polish journal Zapis, mouthpiece of the writers and intellectuals who paved the way for the liberalisation in Poland, is published by Index. A translation of the Czechoslovak Charter 77 manifesto drafted by Václav Havel and others is also published this year. Tom Stoppard’s play, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, is first performed with the London Symphony Orchestra. It is set in a Soviet mental institution and is inspired by the personal account of former detainee Victor Fainberg and Clayton Yeo's expose of the use of psychiatric abuse in the USSR, published in Index on Censorship in 1975. Stoppard becomes a member of the advisory board the following year and remains a patron of Index.

Hugh Lunghi takes over from Scammell as the editor of Index. Prior to Index, Lunghi worked at the BBC World Service for many years, including being their lead commentator during the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.  When he left the BBC in 1980, he immediately became director of the Writers and Scholars Educational Trust, and with it took over the responsibility of editing the Index on Censorship from Scammell.

Index is the first to publish Samuel Beckett’s play Catastrophe, which is dedicated to Václav Havel. Václav Havel writes a play in response to Beckett’s, entitled Mistake, also published in Index for the first time that same year. As part of the campaign to raise awareness about persecuted writers in Czechoslovakia, a t-shirt is created reading: “If Samuel Beckett had been born in Czechoslovakia we’d still be waiting for Godot.”

In March, Index publish the World Statement by the International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie in support of “the right of all people to express their ideas and beliefs and to discuss them with their critics on the basis of mutual tolerance, free from censorship, intimidation and violence”. Rushdie goes onto be a regular writer for the magazine. That same year Index publish the Hunger Strike Declaration from three leaders in Tiananmen Square including Liu Xiaobo. Liu, whose work is published in Index several times after, goes onto win the Nobel Peace Prize. He dies in 2017 having spent years in prison in China. In November the Berlin Wall falls. Despite the change in geopolitics, the abuses to free expression continue and with that Index continue. Andrew Graham-Yool also takes over as editor of Index. In the 1960s Graham-Yool had joined the Buenos Aires Herald, a long-running English-language newspaper, where he later made enemies with the new leadership by reporting extensively on Argentina’s growing number of “disappeared” persons. In addition to publishing this information in Argentina, Graham-Yooll secretly sent information to Index and Amnesty International. Graham-Yooll faced both death threats from private individuals and a serious risk that the government would make him disappear. He escaped in part by being arrested and charged with condoning violence; at his trial, he was found not guilty, but the judge warned him to leave Argentina as soon as he could. Graham-Yooll fled to the UK and went to work for the…Read More

The journalist Judith Vidal-Hall becomes editor of Index. Prior to Index Vidal-Hall had a column in the TLS and had founded the Guardian Third World Review, as well as taught the advanced journalism course at City University.

Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya writes in the magazine of the threats made against her life when she began investigating Russia’s war in Chechnya. The article is published four years before she is assassinated in Moscow.

Imagine art after, an Index programme involving linking artists from refugee and migrant communities in the UK to artists from their country of origin, exhibits at Tate Britain. Former BBC current affairs producer Jo Glanville becomes editor of Index. 

Free Speech is Not For Sale campaign is launched in partnership with English PEN. A report done as part of the campaign highlights the problem of so-called libel tourism and English law of defamation’s chilling effect on free speech. As a result of debate following the report's suggestions, UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw pledges to make English defamation laws fairer.

Mirren Gutierrez becomes editor of Index, to be succeeded by Rachael Jolley, an award-winning journalist who had previously edited several magazines.

Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia is murdered. Index join a group of organisations to launch the campaign #JusticeForDaphne. Both the magazine and the website keep up the pressure and focus on Malta through publishing articles about the case and Maltese journalism more broadly. Index campaign regularly outside the Maltese Consulate in London.   The same year the magazine interview Mexican journalist Javier Valdez about difficulties of working in the country. “I’ve had phone calls telling me to stop investigating certain murders or drug bosses. I’ve had to suppress important information because they could have my family killed if I mention it. Sources of mine have been killed or disappeared… The government couldn’t care less. They do nothing to protect you. There have been many cases and this keeps happening.” Valdez is killed one month after publication.

Index celebrate the 20th year of their awards with an online ceremony hosted by BBC journalist Timandra Harkness. The winners are Russian artist Yulia Tsvetkova (arts); Turkish lawyer Veysel Ok and Bahraini activist Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei (campaigning); Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, also known as 7amleh (digital activism); and OKO Press (journalism).