Jack Straw has made it known that racism is one issue that he feels strongly about. In an interview earlier this year, he said that: ‘If the only thing that could be said for me was that I made a difference on race, then I’d die a happy man.’ Perhaps racism is an issue where
Theme: Education
Free trade but unfree borders
The economic order established by the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank has given corporations increasing freedom to invest, produce and trade across the globe. At the same time the freedom of movement of people across borders has been curtailed. This contradiction is most apparent at the US-Mexico border or at the eastern frontiers
What welcome for war refugees?
By the end of 1998, around 250,000 of the 2 million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had fled Yugoslavia. Roughly 40,000 had gone to Montenegro (whose population is 640,000). Similar numbers had fled to Sweden, to Greece and to Germany, mostly illegally, and around 20,000 to Switzerland. No haven from ethnic cleansing But what reception had
Exclusion: New Labour Style
Central to the welfare provisions of the Asylum and Immigration Bill is the removal of everyone who is subject to immigration control (including taxpayers) from all mainstream benefits. This won’t affect those long settled in Britain but it will affect those who have been ‘sponsored’ by a family member. In future, a sponsor’s failure to
Institutionalised racism and human rights abuses
A special investigation into 45 deaths in Europe in 1998. Human rights abuses, we are told, occur in the Third World – certainly not in democratic Europe. But the 45 deaths we document here throw into question Europe’s respect for human rights. For the treatment of immigrants, asylum-seekers and ethnic minorities is the benchmark by
Globalism and the Left
If imperialism is the latest stage of capitalism, globalism is the latest stage of imperialism – and, yet, nowhere in the whole literature of the Left[1] is there any evidence of a systematic attempt to understand, let alone combat, the havoc being wreaked on Third World countries by capital in its latest avatar. Instead, the
Racism Goes Global
In May, the World Development Movement (WDM) launched ‘People Before Profits’, a campaign designed to expose multinationals’ abuse of human rights, workers’ rights and the environment. The activities of five multinational companies Nestlé’s, Rio Tinto, Shell, P&O and Premier Oil were highlighted through a week of direct action at the companies’ respective AGMs. ‘The idea
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
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