Proudly Anti-Fascist - An Open Letter to Clapton FC's Chief Executive

Yesterday, Forest Gate based amateur football club Clapton FC posted a statement from its chief executive Vince McBean on its website saying that “over the last 48 hours” it had “received several emails from individuals stating their concerns about some of the supporters at Clapton” - notably, that Clapton's fans are left-wing, anti-fascist and that as a result, they might provoke “EDL style demos” at the club's home ground. McBean's response is completely appalling and so this is the letter I emailed to him this evening.

Dear Mr McBean

Today I saw the 'AntiFa' statement posted on Clapton's website and I was so appalled by it that I felt I had to write to you.

I am one of the new supporters who, as you mention, are joining the club all the time. I've lived in Newham, within walking distance of the Old Spotted Dog, for nearly 25 years but my first game was only a month ago. Like so many others, I found my way to the club through word-of-mouth, after pressure from an old friend who raved about the brilliant atmosphere created by the supporters. When I eventually made it to a match, it turned out that everything I'd been told – about how welcoming the fans are, about their principled stand against racism, homophobia and fascist extremism, about the wit and lack of bigotry in the chanting – turned out to be completely true. That's the reason why I now have a Clapton FC scarf hanging up the front door of my flat.

Your statement issued yesterday mentioned the club's “strong ethos... of not tolerating discrimination or racism of any kind”. It is an ethos I share: since 1992 I have been a management committee member of the Newham Monitoring Project, east London's oldest anti-racist organisation based just down the road from Clapton FC on Harold Road. Our work involves the kind of community-based advice and support for local people suffering racist hate crime that rarely receives enough publicity but it does mean that discrimination and racism are issues I feel extremely qualified to talk about.

And I can tell promise you this: when a bunch of far-right keyboard warriors start making unsubstantiated e-mail threats intended solely to provoke a reaction, the last thing you want to do is take them at their word and issue an apology over some non-existent 'offence' or inappropriate conduct you haven't even investigated.

Actually, that's not entirely correct – the last thing you want to do is to damage and debase your club's reputation by insulting, supposedly in the name of intolerance to “discrimination or racism of any kind,” your loyal and genuinely anti-racist supporters in an desperate attempt to try and appease some obnoxious right-wing extremists.

At the very least, your statement needs removing immediately and amending so that it makes clear that, as far as the club is aware, there is no basis for any of the malicious claims made in the emails you have received. However, I think you also owe an apology to Clapton FC's fans, old and new – the implication that there might actually be some foundation to these ludicrous allegations is an affront to all of us.

I look forward to the removal and amendment of the website statement as a matter of urgency.

Why Is It So Hard To Find Out About The 'London Race and Criminal Justice Consortium'?

Every now and then Lee Jasper, once the Senior Policy Advisor on Equalities to former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, pops up in the press speaking on behalf of something called the “London Race and Criminal Justice Consortium” (LRCJC). Most recently it was in this article on the terrible experiences of one young man who had been repeatedly stopped and searched by the Metropolitan Police, but Mr Jasper has been quoted as its Chair in national press articles on racism in the Met, race in Britain in 2012 and the racist comments of David Starkey.

After Friday's piece by Guardian journalist Diane Taylor, I started to wonder: who are LRCJC's  members and what work does it actually carry out? I have been an activist campaigning in London on racism and policing issues for 20 years but know absolutely nothing about it. I asked some activist friends with similar interests and contacts but they were equally mystified. A Google search failed to find an LRCJC website and every reference to the 'Consortium' seems to relate directly to a Mr Jasper personally. I did learn, from a article by Operation Black Vote, that back in 2010, LRCJC could be contacted via www.leejasper.com and it planned to “represent organisations such as Metropolitan Black Police association, Society of Black Lawyers and RESPECT the black and ethnic minority prison staff association”. But there was nothing more illuminating than that. Moreover, there are a number of organisations carrying out excellent work on the misuse of stop & search powers – nationally, Stop Watch in particular and at a local level, groups like Newham Monitoring Project. I wondered why the Guardian hadn't asked one of them for comment, rather than the chair (albeit a well-known, high-profile one) of an apparently obscure organisation.

Stuck for answers, I put out a fairly sceptical request for information to followers on Twitter, asking if anyone knew more about LRCJC. Despite a further prompt, no-one replied and, with more interesting things to do over a busy Bank Holiday weekend, that would probably have been that.

However, Lee Jasper then got in contact via Twitter and his reaction to a simple question was so combative and evasive that I was suddenly really interested to know why he seemed so concerned about it.

Jasper demanded to know why I was publicly asking for information about LRCJC and why I hadn't contacted him personally. I guess the latter is a fair question but it had never occurred to me to approach someone I don't really have a great deal of respect for and who I probably haven't spoken to since the early 1990s, although activism circles are fairly small. For a decade I helped organise the United Families & Friends Campaign (UFFC) with custody death families but until 2008, Mr Jasper was still working at City Hall, busy praising the senior officer in charge of the botched operation that shot and killed  Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell station (taking a lead from his boss). So it's not as if we are remotely close (I don't even follow him on Twitter).

Just as importantly, what exactly is wrong with publicly asking about the membership of LRCJC when it is quoted regularly in the press?

Mr Jasper's responses to further questions about LRCJC were increasingly evasive and he adopted the classic tactic used by anyone trying to avoid giving an answer – attack the questioner:

As others joined the conversation, there was also an interesting allegation that I have a 'history of sectarianism with sections of black left', which came as news to me:

 In a request for more details, Mr Jasper added this:

I am really looking forward to Mr Jasper's blog post, if it ever appears (I guess this article may feature, as he mistakes 'sectarianism' for 'not accepting his word at face value'). But I'm still no clearer about who the 'London Race and Criminal Justice Consortium' actually represents or what work it has ever done.

In the circumstances, it therefore seems only fair to conclude that – at best – the LRCJC is nothing more than a name, a paper network of groups that Mr Jasper has links to (what the 'white left' might call a 'front organisation'), with no real purpose other than getting his name into the press.

If, however, the LRCJC is not a 'front' but a genuine consortium as Mr Jasper insists, then perhaps he can outline what actual work its members have together carried out on stop and search, or on last summer's riots, or in providing practical support to black students during recent student demonstrations? Other than speeches by its chair and sole spokesperson, what proposals have LRCJC members collectively developed on, say, the changes to the Educational Maintenance Allowance that have negatively affected so many minority students at FE colleagues? What campaigning has it organised against, for example, the abuse of anti-terror laws? What work, indeed, has the 'Consortium' ever undertaken on anything?

Lee Jasper once held a high-profile public position and as an individual, I'm sure he has an interesting point of view on some issues. That doesn't mean he speaks for anyone else but himself. So why don't journalists just ask him to comment in an individual capacity? Why insist on quoting him as a spokesperson of a grandiosely named 'Consortium' that sounds as if it might genuinely represent a wide range of opinion, when there is little evidence that it even exists?

Equally, why does the press insist on doing this, when there are plenty of other respected organisations with a proven track record of casework, research and campaigning on issues around racism or policing? Wouldn't it be more interesting to readers to speak to people in a position to offer something far more helpful than a few words of outrage? 

Guest Post: Race To The Line - The Continuing Clash Between Race And The Olympics

This is a second guest post by the sports writer and Philosophy Football founder Mark Perryman. It also appears at Red Pepper.. John Carlos is at Stratford Picturehouse at 6.30pm on Tuesday 29 May in conversation with journalist Dave Zirin. Tickets are still available and I will post a report on the event next week.

With John Carlos, one of the Mexico ‘68 podium protesters, on a speaking tour of Britain, author of a forthcoming book on the Olympics MARK PERRYMAN describes the continuing clash of race and the Games

United on the Mexico podium by their fierce opposition to racism Tommie Smith, Peter Norman and John Carlos used the medal ceremony for what has become an iconic moment of public protest. Its durability as an image of anti-racism in sport and beyond is testament to the global platform the Olympics provided. Even before satellite TV and digital media, the dignified audacity of the three medal-winners became an overnight world-wide news story.

The Sydney Olympics in 2000 offered another iconic Olympic memory of sport and race. As the twenty-first century began Eric Hobsbawm’s description of the role of sport in providing a popular expression of national identity amongst the debris of globalisation became increasingly relevant: “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of named people.” As part of this process a sporting contest can sometimes crystallise social or political changes within a nation. When Cathy Freeman, the Australian Aboriginal sprinter, streaked around the track to win the 400 meters gold medal, kitted out in an all-in-one skin-tight green and gold Lycra suit complete with hood, she was chased every inch of the way by the light of thousands of camera flashes capturing her moment of glory. This was more than an instant of supreme sporting achievement. For Australia’s Aboriginal community it represented recognition and inclusion from the majority white population - however temporary it ultimately proved to be. Inequality, discrimination, racism, and disputes over land rights didn’t disappear just because Cathy was a national heroine. Her success was the exception, not the rule, but for a moment it pointed to a different version of Australia.

These moments of opportunity provided by sport are vital in constructing any kind of progressive conversation around issues of race and nationality. Especially in the wake of London’s 7/7, one day after the city was selected to host the 2012 Games, a caricature of multiculturalism has been used as cover to break with the kind of celebratory diversity that the Olympics bid had seemed, at least for one of those moments, to represent. In Singapore, as the London bid presentation approached its climactic ending, Seb Coe welcomed on stage thirty youngsters, “Each from East London, from the communities who will be touched most directly by our Games. Thanks to London’s multicultural mix of 200 nations, they also represent the youth of the world...” And what a mix too. “Their families have come from every continent. They practice every religion and every faith.” Was there any box in the table of diversity these kids didn’t tick? It was a compelling image of London as a global city. But this was a flimsy populism, a kind of corporate multiculturalism, a presentation of a cosy team picture of unity through diversity which obscured the realities of representation.

As he paraded the youngsters ‘representing’ London across the Singapore stage it might have been useful to ask Coe, or even the kids themselves, a few questions: What was it like living in and growing up in Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney, among the poorest boroughs in the city? What jobs did their parents have, if they had jobs at all? What opportunities in terms of health, education and housing could they look forward to? How confident were any of them that they and their families would be able to afford the tickets to watch the Games they were on the stage to promote?

The forces of integration and difference reflect a set of power relations and consequential resistance which, like the national identities they help to define, are always in motion. These help to portray the ways in which all national identities are never entirely fixed but a process in motion. Sport plays its part, a very important part, in this process, but its role is partial and over-hyped at the expense of examining why the black athletes who represent Britain on the pitch, in the ring, or on the running track are not replicated in anything resembling equal numbers on Trade Union executives, or on the front benches, or on the committees that run sport’s governing bodies. Writer on race and sport Dan Burdsey provides a poignant and powerful observation of how the racialisation of sport is often experienced. Apart from the athletes on the track, “You will often see a significant presence of minority ethnic people in the stadium: they will be directing you to your seat or serving your refreshments. The racialised historical antecedents, and continuing legacy, of these roles - entertaining or serving the white folk - should not be lost within the contemporary clamour of positivity.” An Olympic Park built at the epicentre of three of Britain’s most multicultural boroughs which is experienced in this way will expose much of the inclusion and exclusion which persist in our society, or at least it should if anybody cares to notice.

Mark Perryman is the author of the forthcoming Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be available at a pre-publication 15% discount now from www.orbooks.com/catalog/olympics/

How the FBI Tried to Destroy Progressive Movements

Screening of COINTELPRO 101, hosted by Newham Monitoring Project and Stratford Picturehouse - Thursday 21 June 2012, 8pm

On 8 March 1971, activists from a group called 'Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI' broke into an FBI field office in Pennsylvania and stole over 1000 classified documents, which they sent anonymously to a number of American newspapers. Most refused to publish what these documents revealed: the existence of COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program), a series of covert and often illegal projects conducted by the FBI, who had spied on, infiltrated, discredited and disrupted a huge range of US political organisations included anti-Vietnam war protesters, Native American groups and especially the Black Panther Party.

But by 1976, what had been initially ignored by the mainstream media had been investigated by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the 'Church Commission'), which concluded:

Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.

The exposure of COINTELPRO revealed, in the words of Noam Chomsky, "a program of subversion carried out not by a couple of petty crooks but by the national political police, the FBI, under four administrations... aimed at the entire new left, at the women's movement, at the whole black movement, it was extremely broad. Its actions went as far as political assassination." US government counter-intelligence agencies had sought to deliberately destroy these movements for self-determination and liberation for Black, Asian, and Indigenous struggles, as well as attack the allies of these movements and other progressive organisations. 

Although the programme was 'officially' terminated in 1971, widespread surveillance and 'intolerable techniques' have continued, both in the US and in Britain and especially since the start of the ‘War on Terror’. So too have tactics designed to disrupt the right to protest, such as the use of agents provocateurs, entrapment, the misuse of stop and search powers and the creation of secret databases on known activists.

On Thursday 21 June, Newham Monitoring Project is hosting the screening of a documentary at Stratford Picturehouse, which examines the history of COINTELPRO and its legacy. Claud Marks, the director of 'COINTELPRO 101,' is over from San Francisco and will join a panel to discuss the experiences of the 60s and 70s and what lessons we can learn for the present - particularly the intensive surveillance of campaigners and activists as part of the massive security crackdown planned for east London during this summer’s Olympics.

Tickets are available directly from Stratford Picturehouse, Salway Road, E15 1BX - box office number: 0871 902 5740

Remember Altab Ali

A reminder that this Friday (4 May) at 6pm, there is a rally to mark the anniversary of the racist murder of Altab Ali and to celebrate the anti-racist movement that grew in the East End in the late 1970s in response to his death.

On 4 May 1978, Altab Ali, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi clothing worker, was murdered by three teenage boys near the corner of Adler Street and Whitechapel Road, by St Mary's Churchyard (now renamed Altab Ali Park). His death mobilised the Bangladeshi community against the National Front and led to the creation of the Bangladesh Youth Movement. On 14 May more than 7000 people, predominantly Bangladeshis, took part in a demonstration against racial violence, marching behind Altab Ali’s coffin to Hyde Park.

Speakers this Friday include  Bethnal Green and Bow MP Rushnara Ali, Tower Hamlets councillor Rajonuddin Jalal, Megan Dobney (SERTUC), the Rt Revd Adrian Newman (Bishop of Stepney), the author Mike Rosen and Dan Jones.

Newham Police Racism - NMP Calls For CCTV Cameras In Every Police Van

Today's news has been full of the ugly face of racism in Newham's police, following the report in the Guardian about a young black man who recorded officers racially abusing him after he was stopped in Beckton.

This case first came to light with a press release from the Independent Police Complaints Commission on 14 September last year, after which Newham Monitoring Project contacted the young man and have been supporting him ever since. His case has attracted publicity now because of the disgraceful decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to bring no action against the officers whose abuse had been captured on the victim's mobile phone.The Director of Public Prosecutions has now agreed to review this decision after the threat of a judicial review from the lawyers NMP arranged for him. One officer, named as PC Alex MacFarlane, has been suspended.

The incident itself took place on Thursday 11 August, at a time when police officers had flooded the streets to enforce a crackdown in the aftermath of London's riots. However, the young man's car had been stopped at 6pm in a quiet street close to the Asda in Beckton and he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs. He was taken to Forest Gate Police Station but no further action was taken against him for the suspected driving offence. The abuse he recorded took place in the back of the police van.

A spokesperson for Newham Monitoring Project gave the following comment:

"After years of re-branding its poor reputation on racial equality, the culture of racism within the Metropolitan police is still deeply embedded. Sadly, the shocking treatment of this young man at the hands of police officers, both the physical brutality he describes and the racial abuse he suffered are by no means unusual and quite illustrative of other reports we have received.

The CPS’ refusal to prosecute individual officers where such damning evidence of racial abuse exists is inexcusable. It is hard to think of what stronger proof could be provided and their failure to take action re-enforces the view that the police are still largely above the law.

Newham Monitoring Project has made the point that at times of increased tension, it is always black communities who seem to face the most repressive policing. With 12000 police officers again flooding the streets this summer for the Olympics, the failure of the CPS to send a message that racist policing will not be tolerated is astonishing - especially after the imprisonment of Liam Stacey for posting offensive comments on Twitter, when a senior CPS lawyer said "racist language is inappropriate in any setting" and cited the case as a warning to others.

NMP is calling for a far more robust approach from the CPS and for CCTV cameras to be placed in the back of all police vans. It says that without changes of this kind, people stopped by the police have no choice but to to take the risk of recording the police, even if this invites further assault and abuse. As their spokesperson said, "it's rare to capture and preserve evidence of this kind, it is highly risky and we commend the young man’s quick thinking and courage."

Some Thoughts On The Stephen Lawrence Convictions

Yesterday's announcement of the conviction of racist thugs Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 led to a busy afternoon of messages from activist friends and some mixed feelings, including a certain amount of ambivalence that I know others shared.

The phone calls came because Newham Monitoring Project played a key role in supporting the Lawrence family during the public inquiry. In May and June 1998, I remember dashing around the Elephant and Castle shopping centre, organising events, plotting in meetings and, memorably, carrying the massive iconic painting of Stephen (that was placed by the entrance to the inquiry) through the labyrinthine underpass tunnels between the New Kent Road and Hannibal House. However, the person who spent the most time with Doreen and Neville during that period and who worked for the Family Campaign was my old friend Gilly Mundy, who died in 2007 (pictured at the inquiry on the left of the picture above). Yesterday reminded me and his many friends of just how much we miss him and of the satisfaction he may have felt yesterday at news of the jury verdict.

Perhaps satisfaction is the wrong word, though. My surprising ambivalence about the verdict comes from the knowledge that the police had the names of the five suspects within 24 hours of Stephen's murder and that a successful prosecution could have happened years ago if police racism hadn't dismissed Stephen as a probable gang member. As a result of the botched investigation, Doreen and Neville have devoted a significant part of their life to fighting for justice and have paid a heavy price for doing so, including the breakdown of their marriage. The Metropolitan Police, inevitably, has been keen to rewrite history, emphasising that the convictions were the result of "previously unavailable scientific technology and techniques which led to the discovery of the new evidence". They would prefer the public to forget that a prosecution would never have been reliant on evidence from microscopic DNA samples if the original investigation hadn't been handled so disastrously and the subsequent Barker 'review' hadn't been a whitewash. It also has to be said that, considering the way exhibits were handled back in 1993 and the strong possibility of contamination, the CPS were extremely fortunate to have secured a conviction at all.

On top of that, the choice of Deputy Commissioner Cressida Dick as the senior officer speaking for the Metropolitan police yesterday was a particularly poor one: it was Ms Dick who had overall responsibility for the operation that led to the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes and she is about the worst person to praise a bereaved family for "campaigning tirelessly for justice" when the Met has denied any for Jean Charles' relatives. Equally infuriating was the way that certain MPs were so keen to emphasise the 'dignity' of the Lawrences, as if a refusal to express anger and disgust at the way they have been treated for so many years might in some way have been the deciding factor in their search for justice. Here are just a couple of examples:

Outside the Central Criminal Court yesterday, Doreen Lawrence was having none of this opportunistic bullshit or of the police's attempts at media spin. Her statement was overtly angry, political and pointedly blamed the failure to secure an earlier conviction squarely at the police:

How can I celebrate when I know that this day could have come 18 years ago if the police who were meant to find my son's killers (had not) failed so miserably to do so. These are not a reason to celebrate.

All I now feel is relief that two of my son's killers have finally been caught and brought to justice; relief that these racist men can no longer think that they can murder a black man and get away with it; relief that despite the defence being able to raise issues of contamination, the jury saw through it.

I feel relieved that, to some extent, I can move forward with my life. But mixed with relief is anger - anger that me and my family were put through 18 years of grief and uncertainty, not knowing if or when we would ever get justice.

Had the police done their job properly, I would have spent the last 18 years grieving for my son rather than fighting to get his killers to court.

Anger that despite the police saying that this case was so important to them, the exhibits were treated in such a way the defence could suggest contamination.

This result shows that the police can do their job properly but only if they want to. I only hope that they have learnt their lesson and don't put any other family through what we have been put through.

The fact is that racism and racist attacks are still happening in this country and the police should not use my son's name to say that we can move on.

So, leaving aside any my own hesitance to celebrate, where do yesterday's much-analysed events now leave us? Has Stephen Lawrence's death really 'changed Britain'? I argued in 2008 on the tenth anniversary of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report that the window of opportunity opened up by the inquiry, particularly around stop and search. has now closed. The stereotypical view of black communities within the police that was briefly suppressing after the inquiry's recommendations were published is once again a major cause of complaint, as we have seen in evidence from young people in Newham. And as Doreen said yesterday, racist attacks still continue every day in towns across Britain.

Meanwhile, three of the five original suspects - Luke Knight, Jamie Acourt and Neil Acourt - remain free. Yesterday was a victory of sorts - but in many ways it was still a hollow one.

Yesterday's Anti-EDL Protest In Whitechapel

There were around 1500 anti-fascist protesters out on the streets of Whitechapel yesterday, along with about 3000 police. Unfortunately I missed the eventual arrival of around 600 members of the English Defence League at Aldgate on the border of Tower Hamlets, the arrest of EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (dressed, bizarrely, as a rabbi) and the march by anti-fascists back along the Whitechapel Road, which proved that the Home Secretary's ban on processions in five east London boroughs is unenforcible if protesters have the numbers. But here are a few photographs at yesterday's 'static demonstration' at the junction of Vallance Road:

Why Calls To Ban Demonstrations Are Dangerously Shortsighted

Yesterday the Metropolitan Police finally confirmed that it is seeking the authority of Home Secretary Theresa May to exercise powers, under Section 13 of the Public Order Act 1986, to impose a banning order on an EDL march in Tower Hamlets. Approval is almost inevitable and a ban will therefore last from 2 September to 2 October and affect five London boroughs - and seem likely to affect all marches in east London, including a protest by Unite Against Fascism on 3 September.

This was always the likely outcome of the concerned campaign organised by Searchlight / HOPE Not Hate and backed by London's municipal establishment. Previous attempts by the EDL to march in Bradford and in Leicester led to blanket restrictions on demonstrations, including those by anti-fascists. However, the wider ramification of what the Met is actually asking for hasn’t worried 'HOPE Not Hate' coordinator Nick Lowles, who called yesterday’s announcement "great news" and "a victory for common sense."

Nevertheless, it seem even the police recognise a month-long blanket ban is likely cause significant disruption to life in east London and as Dave Hill has pointed out, some exceptions are expected for, amongst other things, funerals and processions that are "deemed part of local cultural custom and practice".

Even without a banning order, the police already have considerable public order powers to limit and contain marches on Britain’s streets. However, a protracted banning order would represent something new: for the first time in decades, the state wouldn’t need to negotiate with protest organisers but instead can pick and choose whether to sanction or flatly deny the right to freedom of assembly, depending on how innocuous, low-risk and 'cultural' it decides an individual procession might be. Anything spontaneous, anything urgent, anything likely to involved raised voices - anything political, in other words - is far less likely to pass an arbitrary 'acceptability' test

As yet, the east London boroughs affected have not been named but a banning order could potentially disrupt protests against the DSEi arms fair on 13 September (although after a decade, these may fall under into the category of ‘local custom and practice'). Ironically considering its organisers support for a ban on the EDL, the East London Pride parade on 24 September could also be affected. As cuts in local services are only now starting to hit home in London, it could also prevent local people calling, for example, any march in September against the closure of their local library or other services.

There is nothing that 'HOPE Not Hate' has said about the EDL itself that I profoundly disagree with. It is undoubtedly a “violent racist organisation that seeks to vilify Muslim communities" and the EDL's marches and pickets are clearly intended to "embolden local racists and seek a violent reaction from local Muslim youths, which in turn creates a new cycle of violence." However, these are also good arguments for physically confronting the EDL instead of calling for a ban. Having spent almost twenty years as an anti-racist campaigner in east London, working with Newham Monitoring Project, I therefore think it's worth picking apart some of the arguments made by those favouring a ban and seeing how they stand up.

For at first glance, the position of those supporting a ban seems to place no value on public protest at all. Last month, a letter from the great and the good in Tower Hamlets dismissed the famous Battle of Cable Street - when Jewish working class anti-fascists stopped Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts from parading in the East End in 1936 - as a failure, one of the "mistakes of history". This is an astonishing claim, considering that Mosley was forced to abandon the march through Whitechapel and his thugs were dispersed towards Hyde Park. Cable Street represents an important working-class victory, not a failure, one that gave enormous confidence to the East End’s Jewish community.

In mid August, I know that at one Tower Hamlets community meeting, Bengali 'leaders' adopted a different tack, reasoning that a ban was vital to prevent 'their' young people from getting involved in confrontation that might lead to arrest and criminalisation by the police. This is an admission that the borough has less of a “cohesive atmosphere” than Mayor Lutfur Rahman and the local MPs like to pretend, particular in the relationship between Bengali youth and the police. It also mirrors similar attempts in other parts of the country to stop young people, ‘for their own good’, from engaging with political ideas and taking to the streets in opposition to the EDL. It’s a fear, too, of the militancy of the young. As a Network for Police Monitoring report [PDF] pointed out in March, police in Leicester “strongly promoted a ‘stay at home’ message “ and “issued leaflets to young people advising them they could be picked up at the demonstration, held by police and referred to social services under provisions in the Children Act”.

Then this week, a collective statement from London Labour council leaders argued that an EDL march would simply be too expensive, a "drain on resources" after the recent riots in the capital. Placing a monetary value on the freedom to assemble is an argument that could (and, in the minds of Labour politicians, probably does) apply to any street protest and treats political processions as little more than a costly public nuisance, rather than an essential part of democratic participation. It's a dangerously illiberal position to adopt.

It strikes me that none of these arguments are really about trying to halt the growth of the EDL or defeat the racist ideas they propagate, but are instead about shutting the gates of the village and desperately hoping the EDL will simply disappear. It's a strategy that is likely to fail in the longer term. It seems highly unlikely that a ban will stop the EDL from seeking a future march in Tower Hamlets and almost inevitable that we’ll be back with the same demands for a ban again next year.

Collecting 25,000 signatures, as 'HOPE Not Hate' has done, is an admirable achievement – but imagine 25,000 people, from every community, standing on Whitechapel Road and inspired by the anti-fascist slogan ‘¡No Pasarán! (They Shall Not Pass)’. Then ask yourself if proudly taking to the streets in collective opposition to the EDL, rather than a police ban, is more likely undermine the vilification of Muslim communities and terrify, rather than embolden, local racist sentiment.

Update: according to Defend The Right To Protest, the ban will cover "Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney, Islington, Waltham Forest + possibly the City too"

A Peculiar Kind Of Britishness

Last week at a meeting I attended in Barking, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Trevor Philips was asked what he thought of the concept of ‘Britishness’ and his reply was interesting: according to my notes he said:

“We need to worry about Britishness less. It is less about institutions and more about manners, the way we treat each other. We ought not to get caught up in talk about ‘British Days’ and focus on this instead”.

For those who don’t recognise it, the reference to ‘British Days’ relates to a 2006 Fabian Society speech by this week’s unlikely anti-Murdoch crusader, the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who proposed that Remembrance Sunday should become a national day of patriotism. The idea was still staggering along in 2008, when it was condemned by Scottish nationalists as “desperate, motivated by self interest rather than national interest.”

For once (and it doesn't happen often), I agree with Philips – the notion of ‘Britishness’ is so completely confused, particularly in a multi-ethnic borough like Newham, that it has almost no real meaning, while the way we treat each other most certainly does. But Philips is wrong to suggest that we needn’t worry about it, for as I noted recently, Newham council’s Executive Member for Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour, Cllr Unmesh Desai, has taken to the pages of a national newspaper to extol the virtues of “building Britishness” and the development of “common values around a common agenda”. In Newham, it seems that some form of 'Britishness' is now council policy.

So what might this mean in practice? In May we heard that Mayor Sir Robin Wales' has removed foreign language newspapers from the borough's libraries because he feels they discourage local people from learning and speaking English. There are many who profoundly disagree, arguing that the decision is “illiterate and ignorant” and that bilingualism is an important skill “enabling cultural and commercial relations to operate well both within and between countries”.

A meeting on Tuesday of the campaign against the Mayor’s decision has revealed one particularly interesting fact, however: as well as community language newspapers and journals, the Mayor has chosen to cut English language publications serving Black and Asian communities, including The Asian Age, The Eastern Eye, The Voice, Ebony and Pride. However, both the Irish Times and Irish Independent have been spared.

Coming, as I do from a family that traces some of its roots to County Cork and having a keen interest in Irish politics and current affairs, I naturally have nothing against either of these papers. But what does it say when Newham’s libraries stock material aimed mainly at the borough’s 2500 White Irish people, 1% of the local population according to 2007 figures, but removes those serving the 84,500 (33.85%) Asian and 49,100 (19.67%) strong Black communities?

Trevor Philips last week was keen to promote the new Equalities Act 2010 and in particular the new ‘equality duty’, which is designed to place an obligation on public authorities “to demonstrate that they are making financial decisions in a fair, transparent and accountable way, considering the needs and the rights of different members of their community.”

Newham council claims it has carried out an Equality Impact Assessment but now it has to be prepared to actually prove that it has made decisions based on evidence and that its decision-making process is transparent.

Having scrapped all the newspapers that happened to be written and published by Black and Asian communities and kept the ones that aren't, apparently on nothing more than the whim of the Great Helmsman himself, how on earth does the council expect to be able to offer, if required to, that kind of convincing proof to the EHRC?

Fire In Babylon

This is the trailer for the brilliant Fire in Babylon, which I saw last night at Stratford Picturehouse. It is the story of the West Indies cricket team's rise from nowhere in the 1970s, which was as much a blow against racism, colonialism and inequality as it was about sport. Check it out when it goes on general release:

The Fantasy World Of Newham’s Counter-Terror Experts

After two decades of activism in Newham, I’ve almost become immune to the council making claims it can rarely substantiate, especially about how wonderful its work is. It is exactly this tendency towards concentric circles of fantasy and bullshit that made a meeting on Tuesday, about the controversial ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ (PVE) programme, all the more fascinating.

PVE (also known as ‘Prevent’) is one part of the government’s counter terrorism strategy and targets mainly young people who are at risk of radicalisation by extremist groups. Around £53m has been spent on PVE since it started in 2007 and in 2010-11, 94 local authorities were given £24m. Those involved in delivering Prevent activities like to describe them as a nothing more than a crime prevention programme aimed at making it less likely that young people will be drawn in terrorism, but its critics say it is "the biggest spying programme in Britain in modern times", one that has helped fuel the perception of local Muslim populations as a 'suspect community'.

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) in its report “Spooked: how not to prevent violent extremism”, alleges that youth workers have become “increasingly wary of the expectations on them to provide the police with information on young Muslims and their religious and political opinions”, whilst the emphasis on “depoliticising young people and restricting radical dissent is actually counter-productive because it strengthens the hands of those who say democracy is pointless”.

The government has repeatedly denied that Prevent involves spying but acknowledges that one part of it, known as the Channel programme, does identify people thought to be at risk of radicalisation, who may then receive some form of intervention. However, it is almost impossible to identify people who are not terrorists but might become so at some point in the future. Instead, young Muslims with 'extreme' opinions as marked out as what the IRR calls a 'pre-terrorist', their details held on counter-terrorism databases as a potential violent extremist in the eyes of the police and the intelligence services, with no way of having this data removed.

Many of the criticisms come not only from civil liberties campaigners but from within parliament. In March 2010, the Communities and Local Government Select Committee attacked Prevent, saying it was “stigmatising, potentially alienating, and fails to address the fact that that no section of a population exists in isolation from others”. Its chair, Dr Phyllis Starkey said:

"The misuse of terms such as 'intelligence gathering' amongst Prevent partners has clearly discredited the programme and fed distrust.

"Information required to manage Prevent has been confused with intelligence gathering undertaken by the police to combat crime and surveillance used by the security services to actively pursue terrorism suspects.

"These allegations of spying under Prevent will retain widespread credibility within some communities until the government commissions an independent investigation into the allegations."

In November 2010, Home Secretary Teresa May acknowledged that Prevent was not working well and announced a review, which is due to report next month. She refused, however, to allow an examination into allegations that Prevent is a fundamentally a spying operation.

On top of the controversy over motives and delivery, there is also concern about the lack of transparency and accountability in local decision-making on Prevent activities. In May 2010, I recounted my efforts to find out how Newham council has spend more than £1.3million in funding for its local Prevent programme. Eventually I received some scant details (PDF) but these say very little about what this money has actually been used for. I know that others have had similar difficulties with Freedom of Information requests on local PVE spending.

Clearly Prevent has has deeply alienated Muslim communities and raised such serious concerns about the way it operates that it faces an complete overhaul. All of which brings me to the meeting in Newham on Tuesday, where I had been asked at the last minute to present a personal overview of the Prevent strategy and its consequences for community cohesion.

This is where I heard the fantastic claims of the officers responsible for delivering Prevent in a borough with one of the largest Channel caseloads in the country. And what a story they had to tell – one where there is nothing whatsoever to concern anyone about the way the programme is delivered locally. In fact, everything is uniquely excellent in Newham, apparently, with none of the unfortunate problems that have all occurred in other parts of the country. However, in reality it is impossible to know what impact the programme makes - an October 2010 report by the Office for Public Management on Prevent in Newham has never been released publicly. And having briefly worked for Newham council, I can tell you: nothing is ever perfect.

Council officers claimed that the local decision not to fund single faith groups and instead keep the funding in-house is a positive advantage, but were just as opaque in providing more information on how their funding is spent as they have been in the past. Questions were hastily skipped over. They also insisted that there is absolutely no discrimination against Muslims and that Prevent is concerned about all forms of terrorism, including dissident Irish Republicanism, Sikh fundamentalism and support for the Tamil Tigers – but refused to confirm the proportion of Muslims within Newham’s Channel programme. That in itself speaks volumes.

When asked how decisions about individuals are made and the factors used to determine risk of radicalisation, they skipped over this too, saying that they often spend time rejecting vindictive allegations of extremism. How nice and fluffy is that? But what this reveals is the extraordinary level of power that a small group of obscure officers have to investigate and potentially brand someone as calls a 'pre-terrorist' with almost no scrutiny or oversight, but with potentially huge consequences. Indeed, I had the feeling that the meeting on Tuesday was the first time that their upbeat and rosy view of Prevent had been challenged at a local level.

No wonder so many officers turned up en masse to a small community event. But attending to say little or nothing isn't likely to reassure anyone, whilst pretending everything is perfect is itself deeply suspicious. What, one wonders, would real transparency and accountability uncover?

Cameron And The Multiculturalism Ritual

Like some kind of tired ritual that every governing party must periodically tick off, David Cameron has got around to making his "multiculturalism is bad, promoting Britishness is good" speech. His predecessor said much the same about 'integration versus separatism' in 2007, but at least this Prime Minister has added a note of novelty by more forthrightly attacking 'state' multiculturalism.

Being Cameron, this was really a speech about making cuts in public spending, although I'm sure that he must know that any genuinely 'radical' organisation that rejects universal human rights would never take funds from the state in the first place. The rest of Cameron's argument is just as muddled - the real reason why the state has chosen to work through self-appointed "community leaders" over the years has been an attempt by mainstream political parties to depoliticise multiculturalism, to remove its dynamic element of resistance to state racism. This is elegantly summed up by Ambalavaner Sivanandan in his 2005 essay "Race, Terror and Civil Society" ^[1]:

1. In itself multiculturalism simply means cultural diversity. But, in practice, that diversity can either be progressive leading to integration, or regressive leading to separation.

2. The force that drives multiculturalism in either direction is the reaction to racism and, in particular, the racism of the state which sets the seal on institutional and popular racism.

3. The reaction to racism is either resistance (struggles) or accommodation. (Submission is not an option, nor is terrorism.)

4. Resistance to, or struggle against, racism engenders a more just society, enlarges the democratic remit and provides the dynamics of integration that leads to a pluralist society.

5. Accommodating to racism engenders a retreat from mainstream society into the safety of one's own ethnicity and leads to separatism.

6. Anti-racism is the element that infuses politics into multiculturalism and makes it dynamic and progressive. (Note that the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968 and 1976 were the result of anti-racist struggles of the '60s and '70s).

7. Remove the anti-racist element and multiculturalism descends into culturalism/ethnicism. (Witness the post Scarman settlement that reduced the fight against racism to a fight for culture and led to ethnic enclaves).

The problem with multiculturalism is not the 'radicalism' it supposedly creates by support for conservative ethnic 'leaders'. The problem is that multiculturalism is no longer radical enough in resisting state racism.

But that doesn't mean that our diversity isn't worth defending against attacks from first Labour and now Conservative politicians.

^[1] this essay is not, as far as I'm aware, available online but can be found in 'Catching History on the Wing' by A. Sivanandan, published in 2008 by Pluto Press

Mickey Fenn on Fighting the Fascists

From a BBC Open Space programme from 1992, the much missed Newham anti-fascist activist and dockworker Mickey Fenn talks about the 1970s, when the most militant elements of the Socialist Workers Party and the Anti-Nazi League formed fighting ’squads’ to physically confront the fascists. The squads, which were later disowned by the leadership of the SWP, were the forerunners of Anti Fascist Action.

Condemning US Anti-Muslim Racism Is Not 'Anti-Americanism'

Writing yesterday in the Telegraph, the columnist Janet Daley flung a familiar accusation against the 'British liberal establishment': that of anti-Americanism.

Commenting on the Qu'ran-burning stunt planned by the previously obscure Pastor Terry Jones, Daley argues that the actions of "one publicity-crazed loony" has been used as an excuse "for casting America as a cartoon country whose heartland is dominated by bigoted know-nothings" and suggests that "the failure to make any serious attempt to understand the United States and its political culture is now more than smug, stupid and cynical (although it is certainly all those things)". She goes on:

The perverse ignorance which allows the British liberal establishment to caricature America’s obsessive concern with its constitutional integrity as simply a front for bigotry (note the BBC’s derisive treatment of the Tea Party movement) is beyond silly: it now presents a real threat to the common cause which the nations of the Enlightenment must make if they are to see their way through the present danger.

Apparently this "dominant anti-American mythology" is the result of all the optimists heading for America and all the pessimists staying in Europe, a debating point that surely carries a far greater claim to being 'beyond silly'.

There's always something strange about right-wingers, usually so ready to lambast victimhood as a hiding place for whingers and malcontents demanding special treatment, who nevertheless claim that the most powerful nation on the planet is itself a 'victim' - in this case of bigotry and ignorance. The problem with Daley's argument, of course, is that hostility to Islam and contempt for Muslims is not the preserve of "one publicity-crazed loony" and not even necessarily of the American right. Daley clearly hasn't read the extraordinary piece written by Martin Peretz of the New Republic magazine, a mainstay of America's centre-left liberal establishment.

In a vile attack, Peretz, who is the magazine's editor-in-chief and a supporter of the Democrats, claimed victimhood for the majority of his fellow (non-Muslim) citizens by insisting that "Americans are so fearful of being accused of bias" that they are too terrified to demonstrate against "Muslim or Arab interests or their commitments to foreign governments and, more likely, to foreign insurgencies and, yes, quite alien philosophies." Praising the racist anti-Islam parties of Europe, he says:

This is certainly not the situation in Britain and France, Germany and Denmark, Holland and Spain where a demo against the Arabs or the Pakis or the Algerians or the Moroccans or the Turks and Muslims more generally is a regular feature of the political landscape and where parties win parliamentary seats precisely because they campaign with Islamists and Islam as the targets.

I have no idea whether using the word 'Paki' has the same jarring cultural connotation in the United States as it does here, but the disgraceful racist tone is still clearly evident. Peretz continues with another, very familiar argument about Muslim hypocrisy, one commonplace amongst the 'Decent' left in Britain:

Why do not Muslims raise their voices against these at once planned and random killings all over the Islamic world? This world went into hysteria some months ago when the Mossad took out the Hamas head of its own Murder Inc.

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Yes, you read that correctly: the 'liberal' New Republic's editor is arguing that seven million Muslim-Americans are unworthy of protection from infringements on freedom of religion, speech and assembly, or the right to lobby for redress or over grievances, because they apparently can't be trusted. Imagine the uproar if the same had been said about African-Americans or Jewish-Americans. How, one wonders, can such arguments in a mainstream political journal be reconciled with Janet Daley's assertion that "reverence for and constant appeals to the Constitution are not an excuse for prejudice, but the precise opposite"?

America risks slipping into a dark period, one that it has experienced before against Jews and Japanese-Americans, when racism against a tiny minority of its citizens (Muslims make up just 1% of the population) becomes increasingly acceptable. Saying so is most certainly not some form of European anti-Americanism. That doesn't mean Europeans shouldn't show some humility and self-awareness about their own shortcomings, for the same attitudes are gaining popularity across Europe - I have serious doubts whether the still enouraging Pew Forum figures showing 62% of Americans favouring the right of Muslims to build places of worship in local communities would be matched by public opinion in the UK.

But the United States is still the world's principal military superpower with an assertive insistence on its global entitlement and privilege. There's no point pretending that US right-wingers, busy defending back home the entitlement and privilege of white, conservative, middle-class America by encouraging people to believe their President is a secret Muslim (nearly one-in-five Americans now believe this) are not having a negative impact - even on liberal 'opponents' like Peretz.

And precisely because they provide powerful ammunition to Muslim religious fundamentalists worldwide, they need to be vigirously condemned by the left, whatever the likes of Daley might say. Not just the antics of Pastor Terry Jones, but all anti-Muslim racism.

Gareth Peirce & Moazzam Begg - Dispatches From The Dark Side

At the start of the year, former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazaam Begg and the organisation he founded, Cageprisoners, came under a sustained attack within the press from those who described Begg as only a 'so-called' victim of the War on Terror and someone who was "committed to systematic discrimination" - although nothing but smears and innuendo were ever offered to back up these claims.

I'm therefore delighted that Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) has a opportunity to show a little solidarity with Moazaam, by inviting him to discuss British collusion in torture and rendition with another ally, the brilliant human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce. On 12 November, Newham Bookshop and NMP are hosting an event at Stratford Circus to publicise Gareth' s new book, Dispatches From the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice.

In a series of devastating essays, Gareth argues that, just as pressure from the US anti-war movement has forced the release of (albeit carefully-selected) evidence in the United States concerning the widespread use of torture, the time has come for the British government to be held accountable for its own activities. Exploring a number of cases, including those of Guantánamo detainees Shafiq Rasul and Binyam Mohamed, she argues they provide evidence of a deeply entrenched culture of impunity toward the new suspect community in the UK - British Muslim nationals and residents.

The book shows how the New Labour government colluded in a whole range of extrajudicial activities – rendition, internment without trial, torture – and has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal its actions: its devices for maintaining secrecy are probably more deep-rooted than those of any other comparable democracy. Gareth argues that if the British government continues along this path, it will destroy much of the moral and legal fabric it claims to be protecting.

Gareth Peirce and Moazzam Begg:
Dispatches From the Dark Side

Friday 12 November
7 pm at Stratford Circus, Theatre Square, Stratford E15 1BX | Map
Tickets are £6 from Stratford Circus - telephone 0844 357 2625
or visit www.stratford-circus.co.uk

Dispatches from the Dark Side is out in hardback this month and published by Verso

Leap of Faith

The Independent's Christine Patterson has responded angrily today to the criticisms made against her article 'The Limits of Multiculturalism', which a week ago took Stamford Hill's Hasidic Jewish community to task for its lack of manners.

The original piece has been ably dissected over at The Third Estate, which has questioned the way Patterson has leapt from her own feelings about the insularity and suspicion of one conservative minority community and generalised this into an attack on another, the Muslims inevitably, with the biggest leap being a causal link between religious obscurantism, the wearing of the niqāb and the vile practice of female circumcision. Patterson's own liberal cultural isolation is apparent from her belief that there is widespread support within Muslim communities for such amoral and criminal conduct. There isn't, but let's not let the facts get in the way of sweeping generalisations.

I've discussed before how those who are most irate about, say, a woman wearing a veil, angry enough to demand a rethinking of multiculturalism, have a great deal in common with those religious conservative men who seek to police the customs and behaviour of 'their' communities. By way of an example is this letter in support of Patterson's first piece, which reaffirms her basic argument and includes the following gem:

For some reason, it is acceptable to condemn genital mutilation yet not the wearing of the burka, despite the clear links between the two. Obviously, not all wearers of the burka support female circumcision; some do actually choose to wear it.

But the ideas that underpin female circumcision – female sexual pleasure is taboo; women are the sum total of their sexuality – and the burka are very similar. These practices are tolerated in the name of religious acceptance.

Try substituting genital mutilation and female circumcision for sexual violence, burka for mini-skirt and religious for secular and you get the following:

For some reason, it is acceptable to condemn sexual violence yet not the wearing of the mini-skirt, despite the clear links between the two. Obviously, not all wearers of the mini-skirt support sexual violence; some do actually choose to wear it.

But the ideas that underpin sexual violence – female sexual pleasure is taboo; women are the sum total of their sexuality – and the mini-skirt are very similar. These practices are tolerated in the name of secular acceptance.

The niqāb may well be a a symbol of patriarchal oppression and, when it is strictly enforced , an instrument of oppression as well. But unless you can prove there is a direct link between a heinous criminal act and any item of clothing, you'll inevitably end up sounding like the granddaughter of Mary Whitehouse - just as conservative and narrow-minded as the people you point your finger at and accuse.

What Not To Wear?

I've always suspected that most people who get so upset about a woman wearing a veil, so angry that they demand it is banned, also happen to live in areas where seeing a Muslim woman, never mind one whose face is covered, is incredibly unusual.

Even living and working around Forest Gate and Upton Park in east London as I do, a full Afghan burqa is still a rarity, although the niqāb (face veil) is fairly common, so much so that now it barely registers (see here for the differences in terminology). The only time it always does, or at least it did until March when I was knocked off my bike and forced through injury to walk everywhere, is when I'm cycling around the borough. I'm sure that other cyclists are, from experience, wary of niqāb-wearing pedestrians stepping out in front of them due to the restrictions the garment places on peripheral vision.

The controversy about the niqāb really took off with Jack Straw's remarks in 2006 and has rumbled on ever since. Rarely has it been constructive and overwhelmingly it has used by racists as a convenient means of expressing anti-Islamic prejudices. It has be reignited by last week's vote in the French parliament's lower house to ban face-covering veils, a decision expected to receive approval in the Senate in September.

Now the new government in Britain seems divided on the issue. First the Tory MP for the predominantly middle-class, rural constituency of Kettering, Philip Hollobone, is conducting a futile attempt to introduce a Private Member's Bill that would make it a criminal offence to wear a veil in public. Now today, the press has reported comments by the new Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, which appearing to describe the choice to wear the veil as "empowering".

I'm sure that Spelman, with the best of intentions, was simply trying to counter the bigotry that exists in her own party, hamfistedly expressing the view that banning the veil would run counter to the freedom to choose what to wear. But her comments about empowerment are still rubbish.

Even if the decision to chose to wear a niqāb is made freely and without pressure, it can never be truly 'empowering', because it is based on a deeply conservative cultural view of the position of women in society, one that restricts personal, social and economic freedom outside the confines of the home. Face-covering is not simply a fashion statement, as Spelman's comments seem to suggest, but a religious one that encourages a separation between the supposed world of men (the public space or the community) and that of women (the private space or the family). It is therefore a symbol of patriarchal oppression and, where it is strictly enforced by men in conservative communities, an instrument of oppression too.

That doesn't mean that the veil should be banned, although it does mean that anyone who chooses not to wear a niqāb must receive legal protection from those who try and insist that they should. Once the state starts deciding what its minorities can or cannot wear, it can target anyone: the garb of the Hasidic Jews of Stamford Hill, for example, or Sikh turbans, or the plain dress of the small German sect based in Forest Gate (when it comes to appearance, one of the most diverse communities in London is even more diverse than you might expect).

I've always thought it is revealing that most people who get so upset about a woman wearing a veil, so angry that they demand it is banned, have an awful lot in common with those men who seek to police the customs and behaviour of 'their' Muslim communities. Both have a rigid, narrow view of what a a religious and cultural identity represents and both fail to understand that within broad religious perspectives, people interpret their beliefs in a variety of different ways - sometimes regrettably by embracing oppressive customs and more often by creating new codes and traditions.

When it comes to religion, it's not about needing to understand the views of others, but about tolerating them, no matter how absurd they may sometimes seem. I'm sure plenty of Muslims find my atheism incomprehensible - but if people don't tell me what not to think or say then I won't tell them what not to wear.

Daily Express Translation Service - "Beware The Blacks"

The warning, appropriately on the right, from today's Daily Express is its sensationalist interpretation of an allegedly "explosive report" on research by the University of Leeds. This predicts an increase in the proportion of black, Asian and other ethnic minorities to 20% of the population by 2051. The story has also offered another chance for the Daily Mail to provide a platform for Sir Andrew Green and his right-wing pressure group Migration Watch, who repeats their call - yet again - for cuts in migrant numbers.

However, the BBC points out that one of the report's authors, Professor Philip Rees, has made it clear that predicting population movement is "not an exact science" because it is "impossible to predict exactly how people will move into, out of and within the country... as all of these trends are influenced by a whole range of socio-economic factors." One would imagine that the forthcoming scorched earth policies of the ConDem government might well be one such factor.

Equally, the study's computer modelling suggests that whilst white British and Irish populations are expected to grow slowly, the "other white" ethnic group may expand extremely quickly - as a result of predicted high levels of immigration from Europe, Australasia and the US. But for some reason, the Express is rather less concerned about the 300 000 Russians, 200 000 Yanks, 120 000 Poles, 39 000 Germans, 41 000 Aussies, 27 000 Kiwis or 38 000 French - and these are mainly the figures for London alone. About the only good thing you can say is at least the paper doesn't loathe the Irish any more, although on its past form I'm not so sure the same applies to the eastern Europeans.

But then 'ethnics' isn't even coded language in the way that, say, 'Muslims' is often used to mean Asians. The meaning is absolutely clear - people who aren't white and who Express readers should therefore be afraid of. That's not even subtle - it's nothing but the most base-level racist shitmongering.

There's another obvious conclusion from the report that is worth mentioning- 4 out of 5 people in this country will still be white in 2051. Such a lack of vibrant diversity seems woefully inadequate and is the main reason why I definitely prefer London to the paleness of the provinces.

The final word goes to Charlie Brooker on Twitter:

Remember the Dover 58

Photo: Paul Wells at Doverpast

A decade has passed since the horrifying discovery of the bodies of 58 Chinese immigrants trapped inside a sealed lorry container in Dover.

To mark the tenth anniversary, I've reproduced this article on the Dimsum website by Jack Tan, from July 2001.

Immigration On The Back Of A Lorry

In the 1920s a young Chinese woman got ready to perform the Tea Ceremony, the last and most important stage in the marriage ritual. She did not know her husband-to-be but she counted herself lucky to have found a family willing to accept her and was content to be a good wife to him. But as soon as the Tea Ceremony ended, he left immediately on a long trip overseas. She wept and waited for his return. After a year without word from him, and obviously being unable to produce a son without him, her standing in the family was in jeopardy. There was no choice for her but to go in search of her lost husband. She boarded a ship bound for Singapore and left her home province of Fujian for good. She was my mother's mother.

Fortunately for her in those days, there were no immigration restrictions in the British Empire. There was no question of her needing to go to criminal gangs like the Snakeheads to arrange transport. She merely sold what jewellery she had and bought her passage on a trade ship. After a long, uncomfortable and maybe even unhygienic journey she arrived at least safely in the British colony of Singapore as one of the ship's passengers, as a human being. Eight decades on, on 19 June 2000, 54 of her fellow Fujian Chinese arrived in England on the back of a lorry, sealed in like cargo, dead.

The finger of blame has been pointed at many parties: the shipping company, European customs, the Fujian authorities, the Snakeheads, and of course the British government for not ensuring stricter controls. But I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of English xenophobia.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, in response to popular racism, there have been higher and stronger legal walls built around Britain to keep foreigners out. The effect of these laws has been to keep non-white Commonwealth citizens out, while ensuring that white Commonwealth citizens were freely allowed to immigrate into Britain. In fact, today, the laws are so tough that it seems unless you are fleeing genocide you would be classed as an illegal (economic) immigrant.

Restrictions have made it much harder for people to come to Britain, and for some reason we feel a safety and satisfaction in that. However strict controls do nothing to reduce the desperate need for people to emigrate, and where there is a real need, legislating against it does nothing but to drive people to find illegal ways of meeting that need.

But what is the answer? Reduce immigration controls? Surely if we were to ease restrictions Britain would be flooded with foreigners, so the xenophobic argument goes. But is this true? Would people flood into the UK if there were lighter restrictions?

The truth is that people do not willingly leave their home country unless they have to. If we think that people leave their families, friends and life they are used to in order to come to Britain where they cannot speak the language, find difficulty acclimatising, and are treated with hostility, then we think too much of ourselves and of Britain. People do not uproot themselves and emigrate unless the situation at home is so desperate that they have to leave.

As it is, EU citizens have the right to settle in the UK, but there is no flood of Europeans in our towns and villages. Last year, citizens of British territories in the Caribbean were given full settlement rights as British citizens. But as a Cayman Island journalist said "Nobody's going to up and move to the UK." (The Guardian, 1999). If controls were eased, immigration might increase initially but there would be no flood. What there would be is the prevention of awful tragedies like the one on 19 June in Dover.

For my grandmother, she did not have to escape Fujian in a goods container. But so great was her need to leave that she would have if there was no other way. Fortunately for me and my family, there was no need.