The first anti-racist interactive CD-ROM has just been created by the Institute of Race Relations. HomeBeats: struggles for racial justice is aimed at young people for use at home, school or youth centres. Focusing on the black presence in Britain and British struggles against racism, the CD connects slavery and colonialism to contemporary racism and,
News Service
Getting through? New approaches to tackling youth racism
At the front line of new initiatives are youth workers. The voluntary relationship between youth worker and ‘client’ (as opposed to the official relationship between teacher and pupil) provides a unique environment for tackling racism. An informal and more personal relationship can develop, giving the youth worker room for manoeuvre denied to the teacher. On
Prisoner left hanging
The vexed question of the privatisation of the British prison service has again come to the fore following the death of Peter Austin at Brentford magistrates’ court on 29 January. Disturbing evidence emerged at the inquest held in July, where the verdict was accidental death aggravated by lack of care by the guards. Securicor staff
Two Cultures of English Cricket
While football and rugby league authorities have at least paid lip service to the cause of anti-racism, the cricket authorities have up till now adopted a ‘hear no evil see no evil’ approach to the touchy subject. However, a new study from the Centre for Sport Development Research at Roehampton Institute has confirmed that cricket
Austerity hits migrants first
One of the principal concerns European campaigners are airing at alternative rallies during the Intergovernmental Conference in Amsterdam is the need to preserve the welfare state from draconian austerity packages in the run-up to the signing of the new Maastricht Treaty. But across Europe, migrant workers, many of them long resident, with children born here,
The ballad of the ‘sans papiers’
According to the National Coordination of Sans Papiers, the movement of undocumented workers, ‘This struggle is becoming a central issue in French politics and life.’ Thousands of sans papiers from 40 different countries have joined the movement with protests in Lille, Versailles, Toulouse, Essone, Brittany and Nantes. Twenty-four collectives have formed across France, the most
Law, order and the politics of convergence
On the street Police stop and search powers have been described by a senior policeman as ‘a contact sport for officers’. They have featured centrally in complaints of police racism. It was a vast stop and search operation, Operation Swamp ’81, which sparked the Brixton uprising of that year. Even the City of London ‘ring
Racism goes underground
It’s becoming very difficult to compile our annual review of deaths across Europe as racism has gone into the under-world of the undocumented. The brutal racism that characterises the lives of the ‘sans papiers’ is a theme that emerges again and again, crossing all categories, in this harrowing tale of murder and institutional indifference and
From refugee to terrorist
In April, a huge police operation, with marksmen and helicopters, was launched to raid a Kurdish community centre in Haringey, north London. Inside, embarrassed police found a Kurdish group rehearsing a Harold Pinter play about repression of Kurds. Someone had seen hooded armed men going into the community centre and the police, forgetting the advance
The truth about the human trade
Those who seek to aid refugees fleeing persecution are being tarred with the same brush as the profiteering human smugglers. Across Europe, the press is running salacious stories about illegal immigrants tricking their way into a country, aided by ethnic mafia. Anti-racists need to face facts about the trade in human beings and realise that