The close relationship between the English Defence League and sections of the media, at a time of growing nationalism, points to new dangers. An ideology of white victimhood is gaining ground. Alongside the media and politicians’ sustained attacks on multiculturalism and immigration has come a call to promote British culture and to defend British jobs. This
IRR News 16-23 March 2012 (test2)
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Remembering Christopher Alder
On Sunday 1 April, the family of Christopher Alder will hold a silent vigil outside Queens Road police station in Hull, where he died in custody in 1998. Fourteen years on, supporters and campaigners from across the UK will join the family, in marking Christopher’s death and making a renewed appeal for justice. Later that
Politicians reap what they sow – the contradictions of electoral racism
An examination of the contradictions in electoral racism in the UK. Across the Channel, Nicholas Sarkozy has been shamelessly courting supporters of the extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen ‘by proposing a referendum on illegal immigrants, threatening to pull out of the Schengen agreement, and calling for the labelling of halal meat’.[1] Of course, these are
Change the climate of hatred
A statement on the murders in Toulouse and Montauban from the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF). A murderer has struck down seven people in cold blood, in an organised, premeditated way: three soldiers, two of them Muslims, and a Jewish father and three children, shot at point-blank range. While their families mourn the dead,
Race & Class re-appraises Malcolm X at the Oxford Union
The new issue of Race & Class features an article on ‘Malcolm X at the Oxford Union‘ in 1964. Saladin M. Ambar, who examines Malcolm’s speech and the context in which it was given, reveals a key change in Malcolm’s thinking on nationalism in response to the call for decolonisation in Africa and the extension
Xenophobia drives government assault on European court
Human rights in Europe are at grave risk from the UK government, argues a leading human rights campaigner. In the wake of the furore over the European human rights court’s ruling that Abu Qatada could not be deported, a draft document leaked to the Guardian reveals that the UK government is determined to reduce the
Algerian deportees win important secrecy ruling
For once, the supreme court has offered protection to those facing deportation on national security grounds. We are, unfortunately, all too familiar with the scenario where secret evidence is used against those, almost exclusively Muslims, whom the UK Border Agency (UKBA) seeks to deport for ‘reasons of national security’. But in a landmark ruling[1], the
Travellers and Roma organise
On 10 March 2012, in the West Midlands, local activists met with representatives from the Traveller Solidarity Network and Europe-Roma to support European Roma. The meeting, held at Unite the Union offices in Birmingham and supported by the National Union of Teachers, opened with a short film by the Traveller Solidarity Network that examined the
First they came for the asylum seeker …
Asylum seekers were the guinea pigs for all kinds of brutal and unacceptable policies that are now beginning to be applied more widely. Private security firms are in the news – a national contract worth £3.5 billion is being rolled out to privatise police functions. Eight public prisons are being market tested with future private