For the second time in three months, a High Court judge has condemned the immigration detention of a mentally ill offender as inhuman or degrading. Campaigners are calling for a thorough review of the detention of vulnerable people after the judgment in October 2011 that the detention of a mentally ill man for deportation violated
Cardiff cabbies to strike over violence
A mass strike is being threatened by Cardiff taxi drivers next week, in protest against the routine racism, abuse and violence that cabbies face and indifference by the police and local council. According to the chairman of the Cardiff Hackney Association (CHA), Mathab Khan, 731 CHA members could walk out next Friday, amid claims police
A tale of two cities
Recent outrages in Liège and Florence have received very different media interest. On the same day and just hundreds of miles apart ‘a lone gunman’ struck – at Liège’s Christmas market in Belgium and in Florence’s central squares on 13 December. In both cases they appear to have been completely unprovoked random attacks on innocent
From portrayal to reality: examining the record of the EDL
How can we marry the English Defence League’s professed liberalism with the reality on the ground? There is something of a disjuncture between how the EDL portrays itself as an organisation and how it actually operates. Though it states on its website that ‘[t]he English Defence League (EDL) is a human rights organisation’ that opposes
An extraordinary journey by a young Afghan boy
Michael Morpurgo’s story, Shadow, tells how Aman, a young boy, flees from the horror of war in Afghanistan and travels to England, in search of a new home. Living with his family in Bamiyan his father is, one day, taken by the Taliban. A strange, western dog shows up outside the caves where Aman lives
Protests over Ali Aarrass conviction
Campaigners in London are protesting a conviction based on torture evidence. On Friday 16 December, the Friends of Ali Aarrass London Support Committee will hold a gathering at the Moroccan Embassy where they will hand in a letter of protest at the conviction of the dual Belgian-Moroccan national Ali Aarrass after what his lawyers have
Remembering the victims of Germany’s neo-Nazis
Silent protests to mourn the victims of the National Socialist Underground will be taking place across Germany. On 26 November, anti-fascists in at least eleven German cities (Berlin, Bielefeld, Cologne, Essen, Frankfurt, Görlitz, Hamburg, Hannover, Kiel, Munich and Nuremberg) will come together to mourn the ten (currently known) victims of the far-Right terror group, National
Racism: on the pitch but off the agenda
What should we make of recent allegations of racism in football? Until recently, the narrative on racism in English football resembled something of a self-congratulatory redemption story. The forms of racist abuse that were explicit in the 1980s – fans throwing bananas at black players, spitting at them when they took a throw-in, making monkey-noises
Polling with pride
A researcher takes issue with the idea that one can assess the strength of rightwing extremism by polling attitudes of its members. In the Dark Ages of the 1970s and 1980s we knew who our fascist enemies were – we judged groups like the National Front and the National Party in terms of their deeds
New geographies of racism: Stoke-on-Trent
Research published by the Institute of Race Relations shows that the geography of racial violence is changing rapidly in the UK and yet the authorities show little interest in tackling the problem. Focusing on Stoke-on-Trent, which has been devastated by deindustrialisation, and where the proportion of the city’s Black and Minority Ethnic population has doubled