A new book examining the development of racism in English culture via the depiction of slavery and Black characters in Victorian popular theatre has just been published. Hazel Waters, an editor of the quarterly journal Race & Class and librarian at the Institute of Race Relations for over thirty-five years, has written a unique historical
Theme: Managed migration
Human rights advocacy graduates speak out
Two days before Human Rights Day, sixteen asylum seekers and refugees graduated from an intensive human rights advocacy course. On Friday 8 December, Amnesty International hosted a graduation ceremony in London, which was attended by family, friends, activists and sympathetic MPs. After hearing speeches by Cameron Bowles of Education Action and Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty,
Tributes paid to James Ozigi
Most Senior Apostle James Ozigi, general secretary of the Council of African and Caribbean Churches and chair of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church in the UK, has died in Nigeria. On 8 November he was travelling in a car from Lagos to Ibadan, when a tyre on the car burst and the car crashed. He
And Still I Rise
A frank and affecting account of the enduring destruction wrought on a mother and her family, first by a racially-motivated murder and then by the racist reaction of the Metropolitan police that meant it was not investigated properly. The Lawrence family’s compounded tragedy eventually resulted in a landmark admission in the form of the Macpherson
Students dance their way to cultural appreciation
Two UK schools have embraced Bollywood in an attempt to open up cultural conversation amongst students and to encourage the exploration of cultural difference. Methodology The Reel Bollywood initiative, run by British Asian Chix Chandaria, aimed to discover whether exposing students to an unfamiliar culture and involving them in that culture would result in a
Tribunal of sacked refugee researcher reconvenes
Rhetta Moran, a researcher into refugee issues at the University of Salford, is about to face her twenty-fourth day of an industrial tribunal against dismissal. Dr Moran has, since Spring 2004, been battling to defend herself and her research against her employer, the University of Salford in Greater Manchester. Her colleagues, students and supporters believe
Meeting the needs of refugee children
A new book explores the diverse situations of refugee and asylum-seeking children in the UK – and the hostile reception that very often creates barriers to their educational success. Mahmut is a 12-year-old Kurdish boy. He leads a complicated life. Since arriving in London four years ago, he has lived in five different houses and
‘Defending the defenceless’: churches working on asylum issues
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) has produced a document entitled Asylum Principles: a Statement for Churches Working on Asylum Issues. The group recognises the duty of churches to help those facing social alienation and hardship. Asylum seekers are seen by CTBI as occupying an especially weakened position, as they are being targeted and
No escape
According to a recent report, discrimination on the basis of caste is one of the most insidious and unacknowledged forms of discrimination in the UK today. It may well come as a shock to those who associate racism in Britain with White views of racial or ethnic superiority that an older form of discrimination within
Research with refugees
A new publication examines the methodological challenges in doing research with refugees. Three decades ago, the issue of how to conduct research on Britain’s Black communities (BME had not yet been coined) rocked academia and caused a palace revolution within the Institute of Race Relations and threw a spanner into the works of race relations