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
The fight against racist science
An interview with Steven Rose Why are we seeing a resurgence of racist scientific ideas now with books like The Bell Curve and The g Factor? Scientific racism has been around for a very long time. The last big wave began in 1969 and was tied up with people like Eysenck in this country and
Leftspeak/Rightspeak/Newspeak
Across Europe, as centre-Left parties are moving to the right, the centre-right parties are adopting issues associated with the Left. And in this game of musical chairs, immigration and asylum are key. There is nothing new in the mainstream political consensus on immigration and asylum issues. European Social Democratic parties have been quick to bring
Black America today
CARF spoke to Barbara Ransby, leading Black feminist and co-founder of African American women in Defense of Ourselves, about recent events in the US. What is your attitude to the Million Man March? I am worried by the way it has shifted the terrain of struggle – on the issue of sexism and women’s role
Deportations of Roma to former Yugoslavia
About seventy Sinti and Roma occupied the office of the EU-Commission in Bonn to draw attention to the fact that Germany is continuing to deport Roma to the former Yugoslavia despite the fact that the European parliament is considering an appeal by the Roma National Congress (RNC) against the deportations. On 24 October, the family