Asylum seekers in Britain are increasingly facing a system of imprisonment, detention and slave labour. Despite the government’s softer language on asylum at the Labour Party conference in September, when it feared a fight with the grassroots membership, more asylum seekers are being imprisoned. Then David Blunkett conceded that the practice of putting asylum seekers
News Service
The challenge of September 11
The events of September 11 and their aftermath, in terms of government policy, have thrown up a series of contradictions for anti-racists about freedom of expression, human rights, religion and Islam, in particular. CARF asked veteran campaigner and anti-imperialist writer A Sivanandan for some pointers. CARF: You have, for a long time, warned us against
Crimes of NASS
The Home Office and the Scottish Executive ordered civil servants to carry out a thorough review of the dispersal system. Its conclusions are expected any day. But will the racial violence that claimed the life of Firsat Dag be on the agenda? A safe haven? As Europe’s overall approach to asylum seekers gets ever harsher,
Terrorism: theirs and ours
We reproduce this address given at the University of Colorado, Boulder, on 12 October 1998 because of its relevance to the current world situation. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Jewish underground in Palestine was described as ‘terrorist’. Then new things happened. By 1942, the Holocaust was occurring, and a certain liberal sympathy with the
From Oldham to Bradford: the violence of the violated
From April to July 2001, the northern English towns of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford saw violent confrontations between young Asians and the police, culminating in the clashes of 7-9 July in Bradford in which 200 police officers were injured. The clashes were prompted by racist gangs attacking Asian communities and the failure of the police
The emergence of xeno-racism
A new racism directed at the displaced, the dispossessed and the uprooted ‘It is a racism that is not just directed at those with darker skins, from the former colonial territories, but at the newer categories of the displaced, the dispossessed and the uprooted, who are beating at western Europe’s doors, the Europe that helped
Poverty is the new black
The roots of this summer’s violence can be traced to the xenoracist culture of globalisation. Racism has always been both an instrument of discrimination and a tool of exploitation. But it manifests itself as a cultural phenomenon, susceptible to cultural solutions, such as multicultural education and the promotion of ethnic identities. Tackling the problem of
The summer of rebellion: special report
Youths in Burnley, Stoke, Leeds and Bradford have taken to the streets to defend their communities from racist violence. But it was in Oldham where rioting first erupted. CARF visited the town to report on a catalogue of police failures which never made it into the mainstream media, failures which led to the Asian rebellion
The Terrorism Act – embracing tyranny
On Tuesday 8 May, a crowd of a thousand ruptured the quiet of the street in St James’ where the Home Office has its headquarters. With drumming, dancing and chanting, with banners and placards, T-shirts, stickers and traditional Kurdish or Kashmiri dress, the demonstrators proclaimed their defiance of the ban on the twenty-one organisations, support
Licence to hate
Politicians are inflaming public opinion against asylum seekers. CARF reviews three months of racist campaigning and reporting and asks, what can be done? There are two racisms in Britain. The racism that discriminates and the racism that kills. But, whereas the racism that discriminates has long been outlawed through successive Race Relations Acts, criminalising the