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
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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
Uniting Against Globalisation
In June, the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations met at the G8 summit in Cologne. For a few days the city was swamped with government officials, press teams and camera crews. But in the shadows of the media spotlight different voices were struggling to be heard – the voice of the Inter-Continental Caravan, a
People vs. Corporations: the Inter-Continental Caravan in Britain
On 21 May, at ‘People vs Corporations’, a public hearing at Euston, London, activists from the Inter-Continental Caravan (ICC) and from other people’s movements from India and Nepal came together with campaigners in Britain. The Punjabi and Gujurati Farmers’ Unions and two representatives of INHURED (International Institute for Human Rights, Environment and Development) from Nepal,
From Schengen to La Linea: breaking down borders
The German campaign No one is Illegal is preparing to mount a week of action against Fortress Europe, organising camps at the EU frontier between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Dutch activists have also organised a border camp and in Poland anti-fascists will demonstrate at the central border police station and at the border
The Politics of Numbers: Police Racism and Crime Figures
The police forces of Britain are currently waging a public relations battle to regain credibility after the Macpherson Inquiry. Crime figures, produced by the police and released to the media along with the police’s interpretation of the figures, are playing a major role in it. The picture they give is one in which whites are
What welcome for war refugees?
By the end of 1998, around 250,000 of the 2 million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had fled Yugoslavia. Roughly 40,000 had gone to Montenegro (whose population is 640,000). Similar numbers had fled to Sweden, to Greece and to Germany, mostly illegally, and around 20,000 to Switzerland. No haven from ethnic cleansing But what reception had
Exclusion: New Labour Style
Central to the welfare provisions of the Asylum and Immigration Bill is the removal of everyone who is subject to immigration control (including taxpayers) from all mainstream benefits. This won’t affect those long settled in Britain but it will affect those who have been ‘sponsored’ by a family member. In future, a sponsor’s failure to
Will the Police Be Made Fully Accountable?
No-one doubts that the case of Stephen Lawrence has resulted in unprecedented public awareness of racism in institutions and in the police in particular. Even hostile commentators are no longer able simply to shrug their shoulders and talk about a few bad apples. Nevertheless the debate so far has been considerably less penetrating as to