The roots of this summer’s violence can be traced to the xenoracist culture of globalisation. Racism has always been both an instrument of discrimination and a tool of exploitation. But it manifests itself as a cultural phenomenon, susceptible to cultural solutions, such as multicultural education and the promotion of ethnic identities. Tackling the problem of
Theme: Climate
The summer of rebellion: special report
Youths in Burnley, Stoke, Leeds and Bradford have taken to the streets to defend their communities from racist violence. But it was in Oldham where rioting first erupted. CARF visited the town to report on a catalogue of police failures which never made it into the mainstream media, failures which led to the Asian rebellion
Licence to hate
Politicians are inflaming public opinion against asylum seekers. CARF reviews three months of racist campaigning and reporting and asks, what can be done? There are two racisms in Britain. The racism that discriminates and the racism that kills. But, whereas the racism that discriminates has long been outlawed through successive Race Relations Acts, criminalising the
Racial motivation: now you see it, now you don’t
We thought that, at long last, we were seeing change in how the system deals with racist attacks. Macpherson’s recommendations, we were led to believe, had set in place a systematic process through which racist attacks would now be taken seriously by the police, Crown Prosecution Service and courts. But now a judge has called
Killer politics
The season of goodwill? The month around Christmas 2000 revealed a level of racism hitherto practically unknown in the UK. Politicians playing the race card, papers headlining the asylum threat, decomposing bodies found in fields below flight paths, stabbings and assaults. But the most frightening thing about it all was the way in which this
Burying Macpherson
It took 50 or so years of struggle against racism in Britain to get the fact of institutional racism accepted. In that sense the Macpherson Report into the death of Stephen Lawrence was a milestone – for it vindicated the repeated claims of racism that black people had made against the police and the criminal
Race investigations: the families’ perspective
On the face of it, it looks as though a lot has changed. More people appear to be reporting racial attacks, cases like that of Howard and Jason McGowan get on to the front pages of the national press, the new Racial and Violent Crimes Task Force has had a major success in the conviction
Wasting the Macpherson opportunity
The Macpherson report seemed to be a break with old ways of looking at racism and a break with old remedies. And it also signalled the acceptance by ‘the establishment’ of what ‘the community’ had been saying for years: racial violence was endemic and a serious problem, the police were part of the problem of
Learning the lessons of Dover
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
Evidence submitted for Part 2 of the Lawrence Inquiry
Institute of Race Relations Evidence submitted for Part 2 of the Inquiry into Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence The Context IRR believes that it is essential to place the events surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent police investigation in the context of organised racial violence and relations between the