A report on ‘apathetic children’ in Sweden is important for UK asylum campaigners for the light it sheds on a condition so far unrecognised here. This useful report from Sweden throws light on the authorities’ treatment of children in asylum-seeking families who have developed severe depressive devitalisation (‘apathetic children’). The children become extremely distressed and
Theme: Health
Download A. Sivanandan’s ‘From resistance to rebellion’
The Institute of Race Relations is releasing a free download of A. Sivanandan’s landmark essay, ‘From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain’, first published in Race & Class in 1981. Detailing the resistance of black communities to the discrimination of the British state, Sivanandan reminds us throughout that acts of resistance are
X-rays, surveillance and secret justice
X-raying migrant children to determine age and proposals to monitor all communications, as well as the proposed secret justice measures, further target ‘suspect communities’. The pilot x-ray scheme to assess the age of young asylum seekers whose claims to be children are disbelieved, which started at the end of March with virtually no notice, has
Incendiary black working-class heroes
A book on black British strugglers opens up new vistas. The other week I wandered down to Paradise Square, a vestige of Victorian Sheffield where the Chartists held their tempestuous meetings over a century and a half ago. There, on those cobbles, the black revolutionary William Cuffay, his parents from St. Kitts but he himself
The strange xenophobic world of Coalition integration policy
What does the Coalition’s new integration policy signify? According to Eric Pickles the Communities and Local Government secretary, 21 February, marked the death of multiculturalism in England. We are now entering an era of ‘integration’. The coalition policy statement, ‘Creating the conditions for integration’, was launched after being trailed by stories placed by think-tanks with
Calling the state to account
Liz Fekete examines the role and importance of grassroots monitoring groups today in Europe. This article was originally written as a contribution to a publication in which anti-racists across Europe marked the tenth anniversary of ReachOut, an anti-racist monitoring group in Berlin. Why do we need independent groups to monitor racist attacks?[1] On the tenth
Strangers in our own land
The close relationship between the English Defence League and sections of the media, at a time of growing nationalism, points to new dangers. An ideology of white victimhood is gaining ground. Alongside the media and politicians’ sustained attacks on multiculturalism and immigration has come a call to promote British culture and to defend British jobs. This
Remembering Christopher Alder
On Sunday 1 April, the family of Christopher Alder will hold a silent vigil outside Queens Road police station in Hull, where he died in custody in 1998. Fourteen years on, supporters and campaigners from across the UK will join the family, in marking Christopher’s death and making a renewed appeal for justice. Later that
Politicians reap what they sow – the contradictions of electoral racism
An examination of the contradictions in electoral racism in the UK. Across the Channel, Nicholas Sarkozy has been shamelessly courting supporters of the extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen ‘by proposing a referendum on illegal immigrants, threatening to pull out of the Schengen agreement, and calling for the labelling of halal meat’.[1] Of course, these are
Vigil for Christopher Alder
A vigil and meeting to mark the fourteen years since Christopher Alder died in police custody in Hull in 1998. Sunday 1 April 2012, 12.30pm Assemble at Queens Gardens, Hull, North Humberside HU1 3DJ for a silent vigil at Queens Road police station, starting at 1pm Followed by a meeting at 2pm at the Unison