As new immigration laws come into force, human rights and immigration barrister, Frances Webber, gives her view on recent developments. Within days of the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act coming into force on 7 November, and even before it was published, the first Czech and Slovak Roma were being bundled out of the country
Theme: Violence and harassment
Asians do mix, say researchers
The idea that Asians ‘self-segregate’ has been challenged by researchers investigating housing in Leeds and Bradford. Since the riots in Oldham, Burnley, Leeds and Bradford, during the summer of 2001, a number of reports and commentators have promoted the notion of Asian ‘self-segregation’. What began as a racial myth – ‘Asians don’t mix’ – became
The contours of global racism
The following is the closing speech delivered by Dr A Sivanandan at the conference, Crossing Borders: the legacy of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, organised by Runnymede, JCWI, UKREN, 1990 Trust, London European Research Centre and the London Metropolitan University on 15/16 November 2002. Racism never stands still. It changes shape, size, contours, purpose, function,
The death of multiculturalism
The official response to the summer 2001 riots in the northern towns of the UK is now taking shape. December saw the publication of the Cantle report [1], titled Community Cohesion, which defines the government’s strategy for maintaining order in those towns. [2] At the same time, Home Secretary Blunkett announced that the government was
Crimes of NASS
The Home Office and the Scottish Executive ordered civil servants to carry out a thorough review of the dispersal system. Its conclusions are expected any day. But will the racial violence that claimed the life of Firsat Dag be on the agenda? A safe haven? As Europe’s overall approach to asylum seekers gets ever harsher,
The emergence of xeno-racism
A new racism directed at the displaced, the dispossessed and the uprooted ‘It is a racism that is not just directed at those with darker skins, from the former colonial territories, but at the newer categories of the displaced, the dispossessed and the uprooted, who are beating at western Europe’s doors, the Europe that helped
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
Hope or hijack? Racism and the Human Rights Act
The government parades it as an emblem of its own enlightenment. The Right sees it as yet another stick for criminals, asylum-seeking scroungers and their politically-correct allies to beat the liberal establishment with. How profoundly will the Human Rights Act change things in Britain, and more particularly, will it help the fight against racism? The
Refugees from globalism
Do anti-racists need new perspectives in the present fight for asylum rights? Writer and activist A. Sivanandan presents an overview and analysis. The distinction between political refugees and economic migrants is a bogus one – susceptible to different interpretations by different interests at different times. The West is quite happy to take in economic migrants