Migration policy, racism and inequality in Scotland

“It strikes me that too often we seek comfort in a Scottish consensus that we are all Jock Tamsons’s  bairns – citizens of a fair and equal nation. We like to think we are free of racism and other inequalities because we prefer that to the truth.  In order to live up to our own [...]

Is it because I’m white? Or because I’m working class?

The white working class; Britain’s forgotten race victims?
The Runnymede Trust has published a new study on the white working class and ethnic diversity in Britain.
The report, Who Cares about the White Working Class?, disputes the claim that white working class communities have been directly losing out to migrants and minority ethnic groups, and concludes that [...]

The picture is grim for Europe’s Roma

David Mark, co-ordinator of the European Roma Policy Coalition, writing in EUobserver
With global markets shattered and far-right groups gaining strength across the continent, anti-Gypsism has risen dramatically this past year. Living often on the fringes of society, Roma have been the target of racist violence across Europe, with attacks this autumn in Italy, Czech Republic, [...]

Sham Government ruled illegal on weddings

The Government has been found to be acting illegally again, as the House of Lords rules the marriage laws targeting couples where one or both is not British to be an arbritary and unjust breach of human rights.
Shortly before being forced to resign for obtaining a dodgy visa for his extra-marital lover’s nanny, twice-disgraced [...]

State of the Nation – Race and Racism in Scotland 2008

Institutional racism continues to pervade most sectors of Scottish society, despite concerted efforts to eradicate it, according to a new publication.
With the lack of information on race and racism increasingly recognised, Glasgow Anti Racist Alliance (GARA) has launched its “State of the Nation – Race and Racism in Scotland 2008” report, a collation of statistics [...]

Demonstration at High Court for Southall Black Sisters

Demonstration 17th and 18th July 2008.
From 9.30am onwards at the High Court on the Strand, London
This is no longer simply about the funding of SBS. The case represents a key moment for the third sector.
Many of you are already aware that SBS has been locked in struggle against Ealing Council with regard to its [...]

Latin American leaders condemn ‘racist’ EU law

reported on EUobserver.com
Latin American leaders have sharply criticised as “barbarous”, “xenophobic” and “racist” new European Union legislation on clandestine immigration that allows extended detention of undocumented workers.
“It hurts us deeply that there is no respect for the human rights of Latin American immigrants, who had to leave and seek elsewhere what they don’t have in [...]

Watching Migration Watch

The anti-immigrant pressure group Migration Watch UK is in the news again. So I thought it might be useful to republish an article from last year, by the writer Teresa Hayter, written to highlight a campaign by Oxford University students to raise awareness of the rather questionable morals behind the dodgy statistics of this [...]

Integrating rivers of blood

On the occasion of the anniversary of the infamous “rivers of blood” speech by Britain’s arch-xenophobe Enoch Powell, Trevor Phillips has called for an open debate on immigration policy.
Forty years after Powell predicted disastrous social consequences if immigration levels were not reduced, the reformed multiculturalist and chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission took [...]

Was Powell right? Of course not

Darcus Howe, writing in the New Statesman, 17 April 08
When Powell delivered his speech, Europe was awash with revolutionary zeal. Thousands of young Europeans rose in revolt
Forty years ago, the Conservative MP Enoch Powell delivered a speech in Birmingham aimed at mobilising “the British working man” against those of us who had arrived on these [...]