While the government response to far-right street violence around the country in August has been to promise more resources for public order policing, it is impossible to characterise the shocking wave of racist and anti-migrant attacks as ‘protests’.
Instead, what we have seen is terrorised communities and numerous anti-fascist counter-demonstrations called to defend them. Community and anti-fascist groups have come together to defend homes, businesses and places of worship, sometimes…
On 19 June, Tell MAMA (‘Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks’) launched a Manifesto Against Hate ahead of the UK general elections on 4 July. They urged political candidates to address the increase in hate crimes across the country and to promote social cohesion.
Founded in 2012 with government support, Tell MAMA is a national service supporting victims of anti-Muslim hate through casework, counselling, advocacy, legal and signposting support.
Tell MAMA models itself on the…
On 20 February, INQUEST published an investigation into the procedures of both the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and the coroner system, with a focus on accountability for racism. As we head towards the third anniversary of the death of George Floyd on 25 May, PN is publishing extracts from the executive summary of the INQUEST report, I can’t breathe: race, death and British policing. INQUEST campaigns for truth, justice and accountability…
What has anti-racism got to do with nuclear weapons? They seem to belong in different worlds.
When we hear the word ‘anti-racism’, we might think about police violence, like the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba, the unarmed black 24-year-old killed by the Metropolitan police in South London last September.
Or we might think about brutal anti-immigrant policies, like the way the government crowded 4,000 asylum-seekers into Manston detention centre, built for 1,600 people.
…
Sometimes you discover a book which you just can’t believe slipped past you when it was published.
Marcus Rediker’s 2002 book The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (co-authored with Peter Linebaugh) has become a modern classic. So how could anyone with an interest in radical history fail to spot the publication of a new book by him – let alone one with this book’s subtitle?
Fortunately, it’s not too late to correct this oversight.…
‘There was a hierarchy of “Ukrainians first, Indians next and Africans last” in who was allowed to leave the war zone’, says Korrine Sky, a Zimbabwean British citizen who was a second-year medical student in Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, when the war broke out.
Getting out of Ukraine was extremely difficult for African students, but, according to Sky, it was the easy part compared to the challenge that followed: ensuring they can continue with and finish their studies.
Sky, who…
‘There’s a segregation that’s happening at the borders,’ Tokunbo Koiki* told ITV News on 27 February. The Nigerian Londoner added: ‘White Ukrainians have been allowed in[to neighbouring countries] with open arms, and blankets. This is the anti-blackness that is global. So even within a war, even within being under siege, we still have racism.’
Among the millions who have been fleeing Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on 24 February have been international students from Africa,…
Recently, Love Island star Molly Mae was forced to apologise after promoting her pet theory that ‘everyone has the same 24 hours in a day’ and so can achieve their goals. Her inept blindness to inequality and poverty is a good popular example of the topic of this book: Zakaria defines white feminism as those parts of feminism that claim to speak for all women, but which neglect to acknowledge the racially privileged positions that its proponents both assume and occupy.
…
This issue of Peace News from February 2021 brings together a collection of articles on racial justice.
‘The UK is not innocent’ became a rallying cry for thousands of anti-racist activists in the UK who took to the streets in the wake of George Floyd’s tragic death in the summer of 2020.
Over the past year, there has been an astonishing awakening, especially among young people, to the reality of racism in Britain. But while radical anti-racist politics has certainly been growing, there is still a widespread perception in the UK that racism is uniquely a disease of the United States.…
Peace News has recently launched a new survey of UK activists and campaigners, with the aim of encouraging them to share their stories of success in winning concrete gains for people targeted by racism – and in making their groups, events, spaces and projects more racially-inclusive.
By encouraging UK campaigners to share their stories of constructive anti-racist action we aim to create a peer-to-peer handbook, based on people’s lived experiences that celebrates our…
Press release, 15 February 2021
“HAVE YOU GOT A STORY OF SUCCESSFUL ANTI-RACIST ACTION?” NEW SURVEY ASKS
15 February: A new survey of UK activists has been launched today (Monday 15 February), with the aim of encouraging campaigners from across a broad range of social movements to share their stories of success in winning concrete gains for people targeted by racism – and in making their groups, events, spaces and projects more racially-inclusive.
Long-time radical…
It’s hard to keep up when the world lurches from pandemic to racial justice uprising seemingly overnight. After months of living in a quarantine pressure cooker, amidst a global pandemic that’s thrown millions out of work, exposed the vicious inequities of our current capitalist system and killed hundreds of thousands, masses of people hit a breaking point.
Fuelled by their righteous rage about the videotaped killing of George Floyd, people have flooded the streets and taken the fight…
My work as coordinator of the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) has kept me busy for some months now supporting the rights of Extinction Rebellion (XR) campaigners to exercise their freedom of assembly.
XR activists have been out on the streets since 7 October and over 1,400 have been arrested so far. Now the police have abandoned any pretence at facilitating their rights and have imposed a blanket ban on XR protests covering the whole of London.
As well as…
On 10 November 2019, it will be 24 years since the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni colleagues were hanged by the military government for campaigning nonviolently against the oil company Shell. It is over 60 years since Shell started drilling oil in the Niger Delta.
Home to 20 million people and 40 different ethnic groups, the Niger Delta is the largest wetland in Africa, and the recipient of frequent oil spills from pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms…
