We thought that, at long last, we were seeing change in how the system deals with racist attacks. Macpherson’s recommendations, we were led to believe, had set in place a systematic process through which racist attacks would now be taken seriously by the police, Crown Prosecution Service and courts. But now a judge has called
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How anti-trafficking initiatives criminalise refugees
The right of refugees to seek protection in Europe is under threat from anti-trafficking initiatives. The context in which refugee policy is framed within the European Union has changed dramatically since the 1980s. From being an issue of human rights and cold-war politics it had, by the early 1990s as the number of asylum claims
Prison for asylum seekers
The government has been drawing up secret plans to increase the numbers of asylum seekers held in prisons. With Ann Widdecombe proposing to lock up all refugees in what are euphemistically called ‘secure reception centres’, Jack Straw is responding with the promise of new immigration detention centres. But in the meantime he has ordered the
Killer politics
The season of goodwill? The month around Christmas 2000 revealed a level of racism hitherto practically unknown in the UK. Politicians playing the race card, papers headlining the asylum threat, decomposing bodies found in fields below flight paths, stabbings and assaults. But the most frightening thing about it all was the way in which this
Burying Macpherson
It took 50 or so years of struggle against racism in Britain to get the fact of institutional racism accepted. In that sense the Macpherson Report into the death of Stephen Lawrence was a milestone – for it vindicated the repeated claims of racism that black people had made against the police and the criminal
Hope or hijack? Racism and the Human Rights Act
The government parades it as an emblem of its own enlightenment. The Right sees it as yet another stick for criminals, asylum-seeking scroungers and their politically-correct allies to beat the liberal establishment with. How profoundly will the Human Rights Act change things in Britain, and more particularly, will it help the fight against racism? The
When they came in the morning
An asylum seeker from Tanzania (who has asked to remain anonymous) delivered this speech in Manchester in October 2000, as part of the Civil Rights Caravan tour. On Wednesday 2 February 2000, I was arrested in my house in Salford, Manchester, and detained. I was deemed to have contravened the laws of the land and
The dispersal of xenophobia – a new report from the IRR
According to research by the Institute of Race Relations’ European Race Audit the policy of dispersing asylum seekers, now being introduced into the UK and Ireland, but already practised in other European countries for some years, effectively means the dispersal of xenophobia. The outcry by residents of Over Stowey, Somerset, against a proposed asylum hostel
Refugees from globalism
Do anti-racists need new perspectives in the present fight for asylum rights? Writer and activist A. Sivanandan presents an overview and analysis. The distinction between political refugees and economic migrants is a bogus one – susceptible to different interpretations by different interests at different times. The West is quite happy to take in economic migrants
Asylum, popular racism and the local elections
Anti-racism has been largely an urban tradition, associated with towns and cities with settled black communities. But as William Hague, backed by the Tory press, targets seasides and shires, the need to address racism there is more urgent than ever. It was on 15 March that the editor of the Sun gave ‘timid’ William a