An examination of the contradictions in electoral racism in the UK. Across the Channel, Nicholas Sarkozy has been shamelessly courting supporters of the extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen ‘by proposing a referendum on illegal immigrants, threatening to pull out of the Schengen agreement, and calling for the labelling of halal meat’.[1] Of course, these are
A statement on the murders in Toulouse and Montauban from the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF). A murderer has struck down seven people in cold blood, in an organised, premeditated way: three soldiers, two of them Muslims, and a Jewish father and three children, shot at point-blank range. While their families mourn the dead,
The new issue of Race & Class features an article on ‘Malcolm X at the Oxford Union‘ in 1964. Saladin M. Ambar, who examines Malcolm’s speech and the context in which it was given, reveals a key change in Malcolm’s thinking on nationalism in response to the call for decolonisation in Africa and the extension
Human rights in Europe are at grave risk from the UK government, argues a leading human rights campaigner. In the wake of the furore over the European human rights court’s ruling that Abu Qatada could not be deported, a draft document leaked to the Guardian reveals that the UK government is determined to reduce the
For once, the supreme court has offered protection to those facing deportation on national security grounds. We are, unfortunately, all too familiar with the scenario where secret evidence is used against those, almost exclusively Muslims, whom the UK Border Agency (UKBA) seeks to deport for ‘reasons of national security’. But in a landmark ruling[1], the
On 10 March 2012, in the West Midlands, local activists met with representatives from the Traveller Solidarity Network and Europe-Roma to support European Roma. The meeting, held at Unite the Union offices in Birmingham and supported by the National Union of Teachers, opened with a short film by the Traveller Solidarity Network that examined the
Asylum seekers were the guinea pigs for all kinds of brutal and unacceptable policies that are now beginning to be applied more widely. Private security firms are in the news – a national contract worth £3.5 billion is being rolled out to privatise police functions. Eight public prisons are being market tested with future private
The Children’s Society has recently published a report on levels of destitution and poverty among asylum-seeking and migrant youth. An alarming rise in the number of destitute children seeking support through children’s centres in the UK has prompted research on the abhorrent conditions faced by young asylum-seekers and migrants. The report, ‘I don’t feel human’:
A controversial report from a cohesion think-tank suggests it is time the white working class was given a hearing. From Roger Hewitt’s justification of the racism of white youths in the 1990s as territorial struggle, to a study of London’s East End a few years ago describing hostility towards Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities
A recent TV programme on the English Defence League (EDL), created around an extremely problematic and dangerous framework, has won new recruits to the EDL. The EDL is boasting about its new recruits since Channel 4 aired Proud and Prejudiced on Monday 27 February, a documentary based on the shadowing for one year of Luton-based
