Comment

Which way forward on racial profiling?

A review of the major development in initiatives against racial profiling in European policing. Black and Asian kids from poor neighbourhoods repeatedly stopped and searched by police in the UK, identity card checks on people of Muslim appearance in central Paris, or of Muslims outside mosques in Germany, round-ups of migrants without papers in Greece,

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Comment

Where anti-Muslim sentiment leads

Mainstreamed anti-Muslim sentiment creates the climate for attacks and harassment. Condemning the presence of Muslims in Britain is now routine. Media darling and quintessentially English TV chef Clarissa Dickson-Wright (full name Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Dickson-Wright) wrote in her new book  (published a few months ago) of her terror, when once visiting

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Comment

Dismantling racial justice

The coalition’s proposals to restrict judicial review and to abolish measures which safeguard race equality amount to a further assault on migrants, asylum seekers and BME communities, in the guise of promoting economic growth. Prime minister David Cameron used the unlikely setting of a speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference on 19

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News

Cartoon and article deemed racist by NGO

Below we reproduce a letter from the editor of the Travellers’ Times  to the Metro newspaper on a recent racist article and cartoon on Gypsies. ‘Presumably you expected Richard Herring’s piece ’Beware the gipsy (sic) curse‘ (Metro, 9 November 2012) to raise cheap laughs, but we Romany Gypsies, and those who work with us, would

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Comment

Grooming: an open letter to Nick Lowles

HOPE not Hate have initiated a debate on grooming, here Liz Fekete, long-time anti-fascist campaigner responds. ‘We have known each other for a long time (as anti-fascists in the 1990s) and I approached your article ‘Grooming – an issue we cannot ignore’, with interest. Like you, I am very concerned at the way in which

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Comment

Why Ireland needs anti-racism

The Dublin-based Anti-Racism Network (ARN)[1] co-founded by Luke Bukha Kasuanga is taking on new challenges. The ARN was launched in August 2010, but recently, in the light of yet another asylum death (in direct provision) and an increase in brutal deportations, it has expanded its remit, launching a sister organisation Anti Deportation Ireland. A new

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News

Another death at Harmondsworth

On 30 October, a man was found dead at Harmondsworth removal centre in west London. The deceased has been named as 31-year-old Prince Kwabena Fosu from Ghana. The Home Office released a one-sentence statement and refused to answer any questions: ‘This death is being investigated so it would be inappropriate to comment at this stage. We will

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News

Azelle Rodney Inquiry

This week, the Azelle Rodney Inquiry heard from the police officer, known only as E7, who had shot 24-year-old Azelle six times, (including twice in the head), as he sat in the back of a car in Edgware, north London in April 2005. Echo 7/E7, now retired, told the inquiry that he had also killed

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Comment

Localism, populism and the fight against sites

Action groups and ‘residents’ associations have, in recent months, been using all kinds of legal technicalities to stop Gypsy and Traveller settlements, in some cases with the express backing of local authorities. Using the Localism Act, local ‘residents’ groups[1] are emerging to fight, usually successfully, against Traveller and Gypsy attempts to establish legal sites –

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Review

Creative new books for young people

Two challenging new books to inspire young people in these grim, austere and unjust times. The description of William Cuffay (1788-1870), his father an ex-slave from St Kitts, his mother a Kentish woman, from the November 1849 ‘Convict Description List’ after his arrival from transportation from Wakefield Prison to Hobart in Tasmania, is lucidly set

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