Over the last two years, tabloid attacks on asylum-seekers have grown in frequency and ferocity, spreading from the open hatred of local newspapers in Dover to national press ‘exposés’ of spurious refugee crime waves. In March this year, with the government’s asylum-seeker dispersal plans set to take effect and with this year’s round of council
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Race investigations: the families’ perspective
On the face of it, it looks as though a lot has changed. More people appear to be reporting racial attacks, cases like that of Howard and Jason McGowan get on to the front pages of the national press, the new Racial and Violent Crimes Task Force has had a major success in the conviction
Macpherson and after
‘We taught Macpherson and Macpherson taught the world’ was how a black activist, who had given evidence to the Commission Inquiry, greeted its findings. For her, it was not just the Report’s conclusions that mattered – ordinary black people, who had borne the brunt of institutional racism in the police force and other public bodies,
Dispersal and the new racism
When the UK government proposed to institutionalise forced dispersal and no-choice accommodation for asylum-seekers, CARF predicted that asylum-seekers would be dumped in slum areas and would become sitting targets for racist campaigns and attacks. Up and down the country, that’s what’s happening. Reports indicate that as predicted asylum-seekers are being dumped in the worst run-down
The politics of stop and search
Much of the recent debate in the press over stop-and-search is more to do with a campaign to re-establish its political legitimacy as a policing tactic than reforming its use. And, if the prime minister’s public endorsement of greater use of stop-and-search is anything to go by, it is a campaign in which the least
Wasting the Macpherson opportunity
The Macpherson report seemed to be a break with old ways of looking at racism and a break with old remedies. And it also signalled the acceptance by ‘the establishment’ of what ‘the community’ had been saying for years: racial violence was endemic and a serious problem, the police were part of the problem of
Adding racism to the criminal justice system
Limiting race legislation Anti-racist campaigners were shocked to find that the Queen’s speech, heralding the legislation for the next parliament, effectively went back on the government’s promise (in the light of Macpherson) to extend race relations legislation to cover all public bodies, including the police and prison service. For the new bill will only relate
Learning the lessons of Dover
The Dover Express calls it ‘Shanty Town’ or ‘Asylum Alley’. The busy main Folkestone Road is not one of Dover’s pretty affluent tourist streets. In this traditional working-class part of Dover, asylum-seekers are cramped in bed and breakfast hotels, the line of which is only broken by the presence of several high-rise housing estates. If
Straw’s war
Jack Straw has made it known that racism is one issue that he feels strongly about. In an interview earlier this year, he said that: ‘If the only thing that could be said for me was that I made a difference on race, then I’d die a happy man.’ Perhaps racism is an issue where
Free trade but unfree borders
The economic order established by the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank has given corporations increasing freedom to invest, produce and trade across the globe. At the same time the freedom of movement of people across borders has been curtailed. This contradiction is most apparent at the US-Mexico border or at the eastern frontiers