Institute of Race Relations News

Veteran campaigner Martha Osamor talks to about her experiences in political struggles.

Martha Osamor

Martha Osamor, now 75-years-old is one of the many unsung heroes of Britain’s black community, yet she has spent almost all her life fighting to better the position of people in Tottenham and beyond – in the community, through the unions, women’s movement, local council and Labour Party (which, controversially, deselected her from standing for a safe seat in 1989). Undeterred, Martha is still fighting, most recently over the treatment of Mark Duggan’s family at the hands of the police. IRR News staff met her in a shop front rented by the African Women’s Welfare Association above Edmonton Green covered market, where she still helps to provide information and advice, to talk over her life and political times.

When did you come to the UK?

I came to the UK in 1963, three years after Nigeria became independent, to join my husband who was here to study. In the colonial days you came to study and then you went back. So I wasn’t really supposed to come at all. But when he got here, things weren’t the way we’d been told – three years became four going on six years. As a student, he didn’t have resources to do what he wanted and whatever qualification you had in the colonial country, when you came here, you had to re-do.

I had studied in Nigeria and became a teacher and he was a teacher and that was how we met. But he insisted now that I come to join him, so I set off. When I got here, I realised what he was going through. He didn’t have proper accommodation. We had one small room in Tottenham with one little like kitchen but there was no bath and the toilet was outside in the garden. And this was an improvement, he had ‘upgraded’ because I was coming. (Where he was living before, with students, the landlords divided one room up and there was a cooker on the landing and you had to pass two small rooms before you got to his room.)

Sign saying ‘Rooms to Let – No Coloured’

We had to adjust for him to finish his course. I had to find a job and work sometimes in the night and sometime in the day and then he could go to study. And then we had the children and looked to move out of this small room to get a place and then the plan of going home meant that he had to qualify, settle and then we would join him, again. But, in between, things started changing: in Nigeria there was a military coup; then we have one child, second child, third child, fourth child. You can’t uproot your family when things aren’t settled. He did go home and we’d planned for the two big children to go and see what it was like, in ’71 or ’72. Then there was another coup, so they didn’t go. Between that September and December he had a car accident and we lost him. I’m here with four children. To go home to Nigeria, as a woman on my own with the children, after you’ve been living here, I knew would be so hard.

How did you get involved in political community activities?

Well my Dad was a lot more conscious politically than the rest of the family or the people around him. For example, he believed that every one of his children must have education, therefore we, the girls, were educated as the boys. And then he had to fight the things people were saying, ‘Why are you educating the girls?’ ‘This one is grown and should be married.’ And he was always explaining to us what was happening under colonial rule, the way the white people treated Africans, Nigerians and how they used divide and rule around tribal differences. I am from the then Mid-West now Delta State, the Ibo side of the Niger River. So I was aware then of what was happening, but not involved as such.

But being here, meant that I could see and hear what was happening. When we went to look for a bigger place to rent, there would be a sign in the window saying who they didn’t want. You are looking for a job and there’s a sign that says who they don’t want and you can see and hear that you are not wanted. All those years we saw this place as the Mother Country and thought there we will be better off, we will improve ourselves, and then go back. You never imagine that you are so not wanted; that also forms how you react and what you do about it. We lived on a council estate, in Campsbourne; and if you ever lived in a council estate in those days you could see the divisions in the things that are provided and the attitude towards you as black people on the estate. The attitude to the education of the children, immigration issues, housing - the accommodation the black people on the estate were given - you could see it was second best because we didn’t know any better. If you are living in one small room and you are given two bedrooms for you and your four children you take it. If you knew better, you would be arguing that that was overcrowding, that you wanted more space …

United Black Women’s Action Group flyer (credit: IRR Black History Collection)

But, as time went by, we had to get together and talk. Those colonial divisions that we had from back home meant that when we came here somebody from the Caribbean had already been told things about you and everybody had a reason not to come together. Those from the Caribbean’s bigger islands looked down on other islands and so on. But just getting people together to talk about issues of concern meant you could bridge those gaps. So we called a meeting. When you are taking your child to school or looking for someone to mind your child when you are going to work, when you see a black person or white person who looks likely (because you can tell who wants you and who don’t) then you start to communicate about the issues – ‘come for tea’ you say and you begin to talk. It could be about overcrowding, or, if you are talking about the politics of living in a council estate, who has access to the tenants’ room. The tenants’ room was just a drinking club for the older people and the children were not welcome; we had to do something about it. For if the children were not welcomed, then they played around outside and then there’s conflict because the police will be called to control their movements.

It’s the 1970s, you are on your own, are you working as well as organising?

I taught until I had my third child, then I couldn’t do it anymore and started doing what I was doing before, working in different factories and looking after the children.

I didn’t join the Labour Party to start with, I joined the Socialist Workers’ Party because they were the ones taking up the kind of issues on the estate that we were talking about. They would bring the papers round, tell you the things that were possible, give us advice. On Campsbourne Estate there was a small piece of land and nothing built there. We wanted a tenants’ room and after-school club because children coming back from school needed somewhere and many of us were having to work. To sit down in the front room and articulate those things and then to involve the other tenants, including white tenants – some of whom don’t want black people in the estate anyway – and to help build something that black people wanted, was a struggle. We weren’t passive anymore, and so the place was built and we had our first after-school club.

We started learning how to lobby and how things worked. After we got the place, other people began to see what could be done and came to pick our brains. Gradually, we became an organisation producing things and talking to people … There was the education of our children, racism in school meant they were being suspended, excluded and sent to the ‘sin bin’ [units or schools for the supposedly educationally-subnormal]. So we have to take that on as well and there was a community centre and we would meet there every third Sunday and other people, who worked say for the council or taught or nursed who really wanted to do something about race, about women, about children and heard about the group, came to ask ‘is there anything we can do?’

Did you have a group name by then?

We were the United Black Women’s Action Group and, I remember, there was a squat somewhere in Euston that made a banner for us. And UBWAG became the organisation not only for us on the estate but for many others. For example, those with older children who were having a really rough time with the police came and we started looking into exactly what was happening. That’s how we bumped into the ‘Sus’ law and then we got into the campaign to repeal the Sus law [a section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act which was used to prosecute young black men before any offence had been committed, repealed in 1981]. And then we had a black pressure group in education that was just looking into exclusions We didn’t know that you could appeal if a child was excluded so people who knew would tell us what needed to be done and how you could help people prepare for those things.

Scrap Sus flyer (credit: IRR Black History Collection)

Then there was a fight around the new census form [1976 sample] which included a question on ‘race’. We were doing a bit of work on housing needs and we knew that the information we were giving them in the form would not be used to help us. That’s why we were opposing the census. We said, you have to assure us that this data will be used to improve our lot. We put pressure on the council to use information on needs, the size of the family … And it worked because the council began to look at why we were located in certain estates and not by choice.

I was involved in doing these things with lots of other people of course. And in 1977 when the law centre down the road was looking for a community activist who would reach out to black tenants, I got a job in Tottenham Law Centre, which became part of the Sus campaign so all the other law centres joined in.

Was UBWAG working then with the national black women’s movement, the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD)? 

Stella Dadzie [its prime organiser] lived two roads from the estate, and she was thinking, with a university group of black women interested in politics, about getting a black women’s movement together. So Stella heard about our supplementary school and she thought we should all get together to see what we were doing on the ground. The Sus law, that we were dealing with, was the issue on the Brixton side, the Deptford side, in different parts of London. We realised that what we thought was only happening to us was happening all over the place. The idea grew of linking what we were doing and making a network to be an effective force. If you are going to have a law repealed you are going to have to galvanise quite a lot of people. So that’s how we at UBWAG became part of OWAAD.

OWAAD flyer (credit: IRR Black History Collection)

How did you come to join and be so active in the Labour Party?

I didn’t want to join the Labour Party because I felt it wasn’t strong enough in terms of defending our position [ie radical black people’s] but, like everything else, you look at who is where you want to make change and the Labour Party was winning the elections and had the councillors. In those days when local government ran the schools, everything that had to be done was by the council and it was in the hands of the Labour Party. Therefore the wise thing to do was to be part of that. It was no use speaking to one councillor about this and one about that. We had to look at how we could be effective in the labour movement and in political parties. I joined the Labour Party in ‘79 or ’80 and was working with Bernie [Grant, later leader of the council and an MP] and Norman Atkinson, our local MP, on issues like the Sus law, the police, schooling.

The Law Centre legitimised what I was doing; I was paid to do what I’d been doing without pay. And it allowed me to link that work we did in Campsbourne Estate to people who lived in different estates, including Broadwater Farm. People could see what we had done and ask can we try it? So those women who were part of the United Black Women’s Action Group who came from Broadwater Farm told us about the police. Some of their children were already in prison, some had come out. Our children were younger but theirs had real brushes with the law.

So was Broadwater Farm already central to your concerns, long before the death of Cynthia Jarrett, the riot in 1985 and the harassment and miscarriages of justice after PC Blakelock was killed?

Broadwater Farm News (credit: IRR Black History Collection)

Yes. I don’t know exactly when we started in Broadwater Farm to identify who was who and having meetings in the front room like we had done . We weren’t imagining then that there was going to be the terrible backlash. [She is meaning the police operation in 1985 and the miscarriage of justice against three men convicted of the killing of PC Blakelock, and later freed on appeal.] We were just looking at what these youths that had grown up, needed. They had to be doing something and so we set up the Youth Association in 1981. We got all the youths together to say what they wanted from this estate – jobs, training, to run businesses and so on. We set up a co-op to get people together, get the council involved because by the time we started most of the places were closed as it was seen as a bad estate. Whoever was alone in the laundry or the fish shop didn’t want to run it. The grocers didn’t want to run it because they were afraid of the young people around. When we realised a big space meant for a pub in the estate was forever boarded up, we asked for it to be opened as a centre for activities: to have the enterprise downstairs, a nursery, to have a women’s centre. Downstairs, there was a tenants’ room and the constitution was changed and we encouraged people to come and participate and say these are the programmes we need, this is what we’re going to be using this place for. We wanted to get people involved in their local school, become governors of the school and to look after the elderly. Mostly, these were young black families and there was a situation where somebody would die in their home because nobody was looking after them. So the youth would cook, go to identify the elderly, bring them out. That’s the way things were moving.

Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign flyer (credit: IRR Black History Collection)

The Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone and others understood and supported and funded some of those projects later on, but they started with nothing – from just educating people to be conscious and to do what needed to be done. When we realised it was all upsetting the system, including the police, we hoped they would see the light and appreciate what we were doing. But it didn’t because after Cherry Groce was wounded in Brixton in 1981, young people were not happy because, remember, already people in Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester have connections and the understanding is that we’re not going to allow things to carry on just as they were before. [Cherry Groce’s wounding prompted the anti-police riots of 1981 which took place in over thirty cities.] So when the incident happened with Mrs Jarrett, who was killed by the police during a raid in 1985, the police reacted very badly, which we criticised. [Controversially, Bernie Grant said after the 1985 Tottenham disturbances that: ‘The youths around here believe the police were to blame for what happened on Sunday and what they got was a bloody good hiding.’] And the Labour Party, which by then I’d joined, its leadership wasn’t happy with us particularly over the international connections we were making by inviting Martin McGuinness and Bernadette Devlin from Ireland, the Black Consciousness Movement from South Africa, over Mandela linking up with Palestine, everywhere they’re hurting people we are saying ‘What are you doing to us?’ So we weren’t just an ordinary tenants’ association, we were building it as an international solidarity movement.

Broadwater Farm Youth Association flyer (credit: IRR Black History Collection)

When did you become a Labour councillor in Haringey?

I got into the council in 1986/87 and Bernie Grant had become the leader of the council in 1985 and I was in the same ward. Then Bernie got a place in Parliament in 1987 and I became deputy leader. By that time the Black Sections [a pressure group of BME people within the Labour Party to press for more black people to be selected to stand in elections] was active. It wasn’t a conscious decision that it’s got to be black sections or white, the issue was thrown up out of the injustice we found. So when we agreed to do something like a newsletter we would also deal with abortion or gay rights because you can’t say you can free yourself when other people are not free. We thought that most of the things that we were doing were benefitting the Labour Party – we got rid of three Tory councillors on Broadwater Estate, we did not allow the National Front to meet. We would hear about a proposed secret meeting, at the Law Centre we had built a network around a phone tree: I phone my five people, you phone your 5 people. Their meeting is going to be at 6 o’clock, by quarter to six the place is full of us. So we got rid of them. And you’d think the leadership would be pleased but they were not. So we didn’t have that support when they came for us and they came with a vengeance.

Broadwater Farm News (credit: IRR Black History Collection)

You mean when you were deselected by the central Labour Party from standing for election in the Vauxhall constituency in 1989? 

Yes. In Black Sections we decided that we wanted to have at least thirty black MPs (and when we say black it’s a political word – anyone who is not white). [In the 1987 general election Labour fielded twelve ‘black’ candidates of which four were elected.] So we were like a pain in their side and the leadership wanted to deal with us; so first they said we has to have something like 5,000 members for us to be officially recognised as a Section and we started battling to get members. Then they got a few members who were Asian to say they didn’t want to be called black. So they supported that and then the name had to change and there was a battle as to whether it was going to be Asian, black this and that. I was vice-chair of Black Sections then. There was a by-election because Stuart Holland, MP for Vauxhall, got elected to the European Parliament. I had eight party nominations, Kate Hoey had one. At first the Labour Executive didn’t believe that any black person would get any nominations; when I did, then they started flogging the idea that a black person couldn’t win a by-election and certainly not a person like me, who was defending people who had smashed up the Farm and all that. That is how the Labour leadership decided they were going to impose Kate Hoey on the local constituency instead of me. The rest is history.

You have always stayed very rooted to your locality, of Tottenham, in your politics compared with other people, haven’t you?

Well I think it could be that I’m not very good at moving! But it’s true. That’s all I’ve known since I’ve come to this country, I’ve lived in Tottenham or Haringey, and, besides, there’s still work to be done. Each time our building is smashed, I still have to involve myself. As I get older, I don’t do too much of the hard work because others can do that. But I think that because of the way the establishment attacks whatever is built to help ordinary working people, we need people like me around to remind others, especially young people, of the struggles – that something wasn’t given and that, if you don’t hang on to it, they take it away.

Broadwater Farm Youth Association flyer (credit: IRR Black History Collection)

How do you feel though, say about the police shooting of Mark Duggan in 2011, when you see history repeating itself?

Like I said when I stood outside the police station that day, you know things are bad and you know a lot of bad things have happened but sometimes you just think that after all these years it can’t continue happening. Then the lies, you think to yourself how can this continue to happen? So it’s depressing you know, really, really depressing because the young man grew up on the Farm and to know that he can be shot down like that after all these years, that we can still have that kind of thing … Now you have to have inquiries, to get evidence, you have to defend but that’s how it goes. But we just hope that it’s going to get better but the way things are going … the whole of Tottenham is being gentrified so gradually prices will be so high that the young ones can’t even afford to be there and the parents can’t even afford to maintain those houses that they bought with difficulty years. We had it bad but at least we had a bit of a ladder to say OK you’re working, you’re saving, you can buy, you can get a council place, you can get transferred to a bigger place, those were our campaigns. There’s none of those things for young people to even campaign … It has to change.

Perhaps the change is when someone like your daughter, Kate, wins a seat as she just did in Edmonton, a little progress since Vauxhall?

Yes, she’s working hard, she’s got her head screwed on. Well you know they grew up on those picket lines, in this meeting and that meeting, that’s the only thing that they knew … it’s a different kind of progress isn’t it? Jeremy Corbyn was a councillor in Haringey in the ’80s and was part of our struggle. In 2015, my daughter Kate Osamor MP nominated him for leader of the Labour Party and worked hard to get other MPs to nominate him. The backlash demonising, witch-hunting of Jeremy brings back memories of what we went through.

Jenny Bourne, long time anti-racist campaigner and editor of the IRR’s journal Race & Class,  writes about the 1965 Race Relations Act and assesses the fifty years since it was passed.

How should we be evaluating the impact of the race relations acts, the first of which became law fifty years ago?

Fifty years ago, on 8 December 1965, race discrimination was outlawed in Britain from clubs and pubs. Fifty years on, black women are mounting a campaign against DSTRKT club for barring their entry on grounds that they are ‘too fat’ and ‘too dark’. So nothing has changed? Plenty has, but for good or ill?

Linking race and immigration

It is fashionable now to insist in political circles that ‘race’ and immigration are not linked. But this was not the case historically. In fact black critics used to argue that every race relations act presaged a new immigration control act. The government of the day could, on the one hand, appear to be non-discriminatory when bringing in immigration controls, by emphasising its willingness to work for the ‘integration’ of those already here, while on the other hand ignoring the fact that those same immigration controls, directed specifically at New Commonwealth immigrants (i.e. ‘darker’ people), were enshrining discrimination in statute.

That immigration controls and anti-discrimination legislation were linked in the government mind was quite clearly set out in the announcement on 9 March 1965 by prime minister Harold Wilson. It had three prongs: intensified immigration controls, proposals for central coordination of integrative activities and equal treatment for Commonwealth immigrants once in Britain. The 1965 White Paper on Immigration cut down on the issuing of employment vouchers (established in the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act) and extended checks and controls on dependants. The Race Relations Bill, published subsequently in April 1965 was ‘to prohibit discrimination on racial grounds in places of public resort; to prevent enforcement or imposition on racial grounds of restrictions on the transfer of tenancies; to penalise incitement to racial hatred; and to amend section 5 of the Public Order Act 1936.’

Leading up to the Act

The legislation had been announced in the 1964 Labour manifesto. But party thinking dated back to 1952 when the Commonwealth Sub-committee of the National Executive Committee asked for advice from a former solicitor general and an anthropologist Professor Kenneth Little (author of one of the first books on ‘race’ in Britain). The latter was keen on the type of machinery such as the Fair Employment Practices Commission in the USA. From 1950, private members had pressed for anti-discrimination legislation, and in 1956 radical anti-colonialist Fenner Brockway introduced the first of nine annual Bills. All failed.

Brockway (later Lord Brockway) himself was influenced by the community-based lobby against what was then termed a ‘colour bar’ in Britain. It was spearheaded by people like Frances Ezzreco who, with Claudia Jones, led a deputation of black organisations after the killing of Kelso Cochrane, to lobby Rab Butler, Conservative home secretary, in 1959 about racism. Claudia Jones, in November 1961, was to write a lead article in the West Indian Gazette denouncing the impending 1962 Immigration Act as a colour bar, i.e. discriminatory, as it would be applied to black people, not white. Prophetic indeed!

In 1964, when Labour started drafting the Race Relations Bill, incitement was seen as the main subject and stern penalties were suggested as well as making discrimination in public places a criminal offence. Meanwhile a minority group within the Society of Labour Lawyers, led by Anthony Lester, called for civil laws to cover all areas of discrimination, drawing on the US and Canadian experiences. These suggestions were also adopted by the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) the main lobby group. Eventually the 1965 Act, instead of imposing stringent criminal penalties, brought in a Race Relations Board to act as a conciliatory body, without full investigative powers and enforcement powers remaining with the Attorney-General. The scope of the law was not enlarged to cover crucial areas of discrimination in housing and employment. Effectively by restricting the scope of the Act to public places, it gave the green light to discrimination in all other areas.

Effect of the Act

Of 309 complaints received between the implementing of the Act and 31 March 1967, only eighty-five actually fell within its scope, the rest relating to employment, housing or financial services.[1] The result was an immediate campaign by the newly-created Race Relations Board and groups like CARD to strengthen the Act and extend its scope. CARD created a Complaints and Testing Committee in 1966 to increase complaints to the Board and used black and white students in a Summer Project to provide proof of discrimination via how a white and a black person were treated at factory gates and in housing provision.

The Race Relations Act was in fact derided by activists, for whom it was a great let-down. Many people like IWA organiser Vishnu Sharma, who had lobbied through CARD, described it as ‘toothless’. Sivanandan in an interview called it not just toothless, but gumless.

Strengthening race legislation

But it was not until 1968 that race legislation changed and this time as a sop to the notoriously racist 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants’ Act which was passed in a record seven days (in March) by a Labour government to prohibit British passport-holding Asians expelled from Kenya (as the country became ‘Africanised’) from coming to the UK on the grounds that they were non-patrial (ie did not have a father or grandfather born here). Which raised the question as to when a British citizen was not a British citizen. Caught in a cleft stick, the government passed the 1968 Race Relations Act extending the scope of the 1965 Act by making it illegal to refuse housing, employment, or public services to a person on the grounds of colour, race, ethnic or national origins and created the Community Relations Commission (CRC) to promote ‘harmonious community relations’. Note that it was the second reading of the 1968 Bill on 23 April, that occasioned Powell to make his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in which he cited a constituent who worried that ‘the black man’ would now ‘have the whip hand over the white man’. (Read an IRR News article: The beatification of Enoch Powell.)

Sections of the Labour Party and their affiliates, including black organisations, had lobbied for extending race legislation, but, with the passing of what became termed the Kenyan Asian Act, many anti-racists despaired of Labour. And in the years to come, pressure to strengthen anti-discrimination legislation was by and large to come from within the quasi-governmental set-up of the CRC and Race Relations Board. The Act brought in in 1976 outlawed indirect (as well as direct) discrimination, and combined the functions of the Board and CRC into one Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). And the 2000 Amendment Act (brought in as a result of the Macpherson Report which found institutional racism in the police) extended the outlawing of race discrimination to public authorities, till then excluded from the scope of anti-discrimination laws, and placed on them a general duty to promote race equality.

The downward path

That was indeed the heyday of legislation and its enforcement, especially when Herman Ouseley was chair and chief executive of the CRE from 1993 to 2000. He told IRR News: ‘During my stint at the CRE, we were not afraid to use the 1976 Act in a very elastic way to support individuals in the Tribunals and courts, to challenge employers and public bodies, to undertake formal investigations fearlessly into bodies such as the MoD and generate support to fund public awareness advertising campaigns focused on the effects of racism.’

The big shift came around 2004/5 with Blair’s new-found enthusiasm for ‘light touch regulation’. By then, Ouseley says, the government felt ‘that they had discharged their responsibilities for implementing the measures arising from the Macpherson report into the killing of Stephen Lawrence’ and wanted ‘to demolish the CRE and absorb it into the Equality and Human Rights Commission … a symbolic edifice for equalities’ high-level blue-sky waffling’.

Now that one organisation is there to act (or not, its budget fell from £70 million in 2009/10 to £17 million in 2014/15) over a whole host of discriminations – age, disability, gender, gender realignment, sexual orientation, religion and race – the specificity of each is lost in the general and the fight against racism undermined. According to Lord Ouseley, ‘there is no relationship with local BME communities or support for individuals’. What support there is consists of a helpline (which does not provide legal advice) subcontracted by the EHRC to the Equality Advisory Support Service which is itself run by the private company Sitel, a telemarketing and outsourcing business headquartered in Nashville. (Fairness is now a global commodity.)

Ouseley describes ‘the deathbed Equality Act of 2010’ as ‘a Labour legacy of lost opportunities, light touch regulatory activity and a deficient framework for tackling discrimination across all the equality characteristics’. It provided, he feels, the basis for the Coalition and present governments to do what they like, without challenge, rolling back the gains made in tackling discrimination in the workplace. ‘Employees now find it almost impossible to challenge discriminatory behaviour by an employer through the Tribunal process without attrition and desperation, unless they have a lot of money and time to fight for justice or are not afraid to be bankrupted in pursuit of justice!’ The fees imposed by the coalition government to bring a Tribunal case are well over a thousand pounds – £250 when submitting a form and £950 for a hearing.

Changing the climate

But as Sivanandan had pointed out anti-discrimination laws were not so much ‘to chastise the wicked or to effect justice for the blacks’ as to change public attitudes and thus pave the way to ‘integration’. The 1968 Act, he wrote, ‘was not act but attitude’.[2] In that sense of attitude, the defeat of a strong race body and lobby by 2010 allowed for the establishment’s turn away from multiculturalism. And the defanging of the CRE took place on the watch of Trevor Phillips, head of the organisation from 2003. His position was perhaps summed up in his controversial 2005 ‘sleepwalking into segregation’ speech in which he seemed to place much of the blame on some BME communities for their self-segregation, rather than institutions for their discriminatory practices. The mood music had changed, providing prime minister Cameron the opportunity in 2011, during a speech on security in Munich, to publicly attack ‘the doctrine of state multiculturalism’ and stress the need for ‘British values’. It may not have had the crudity of the ‘black whip hand over the white man’ but it smacked nonetheless of the cultural whip hand.

The changed cultural whip hand, and of course the unchanging obsession with appearance in the seeking after profit are arguably exactly why a chic London nightclub might, as of nature in 2015, pick and choose its clientele.

Where are we then after those fifty years since the first Race Relations Act? Without doubt the educative function of race laws has worked: generally speaking the threshold of what is tolerable in a liberal society has risen. But at the same time, and as liberal society gives way to market values, there is an insidious creep of the idea that we are now in a post-racial world. There is a largely unspoken view from politicians and opinion-formers that we have done our bit, in fact we may have gone too far in allowing them their rights. Now their demands risk changing society as we want to see it.

Meanwhile and make no mistake about this, in areas where racism and poverty intersect, discrimination is still palpable. In March 2015, while 5 per cent of white working-age people were unemployed; 13 per cent of black working-age people, 9 per cent of Asian and 10 per cent of those from other ethnic backgrounds were unemployed.[3] In March 2015, the proportion of 16-24 year olds from BAME communities unemployed for over a year had increased by almost 50 per cent since the Coalition government was formed. For their white counterparts, there had been a decrease of 2 per cent.[4] In 2015 the ethnic group least likely to be paid below the minimum wage was white males (15.7 per cent); and that which was most likely was Bangladeshi males (57.2 per cent). 38.7 per cent of Pakistani males were paid below the minimum wage, 37 per cent of Pakistani women, and 36.5 per cent of Bangladeshi women.[5] On 30 June 2013, 26 per cent of the prison population was from a minority ethnic group, though they comprise around 14 per cent of the general population. Muslim prisoners accounted for 13.4 per cent of the prison population while they represented 4.2 per cent in the 2011 Census. There are proportionately many more young BAME male prisoners than older ones, with BAME representation in the 15-17 age group the highest at 43.7 per cent.[6]

Demonstration against the 1962 Immigration Bill, with Vishnu Sharma (fifth from left) and Ernie Roberts, MP (sixth from left)

Cameron’s recent answer to such deep inequality is name-blind application forms!

The fight for racial justice that the Claudia Joneses, Frances Ezzrecos and Vishnu Sharmas began some sixty years back, goes on – and now in a context where the dominant discourse makes it that much harder to argue for equality, justice and an acceptance of difference. Back to the future.

Chris Searle introduces Return to Streets of Eternity, a book of poetry by the late Guyanese writer and activist Jan Carew.

On 27 November, the life and works of Jan Carew – writer, activist and scholar – will be commemorated in London with the release of two new books. Episodes in My Life: the autobiography of Jan Carew tells the story of the multiple lives of this extraordinary writer, activist and revolutionary, godfather of Black Studies in the US, and the personal advisor to several heads of government, including Cheddi Jagan, Kwame Nkrumah and Michael Manley. Return to the Streets of Eternity brings together, for the first time, poems writted during a lifetime of passionate engagement in anti-colonial, civil rights, black power and liberation movements, including many previously unpublished tributes to nineteenth and twentieth-century revolutionary leaders and writers. Below we reproduce Chris Searle’s introduction to that collection.

Reading through Return to Streets of Eternity is like re-living the greater part of a century of struggle and for betterment in many crucial places in the world, and the moments which seized their people’s dreams and strivings. These are poems of hope and optimism, of the movement forever forward, a part of ‘the long march from breast to death’ along those streets,

and resurrection
must renew itself
with every new day
on a calendar of victory. 

So within them are protagonists and heroes like Tiho the Carib, the Ghanaian slave descendants and confederates of Kwame Nkrumah, Cubans, Angolans and Jamaicans, Fedon and Bishop of Grenada, Toussaint L’Ouverture of Haiti, like the child-martyrs of Soweto, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Allende of Chile, Cheddi Jagan and Walter Rodney of Guyana, Claudia Jones of Trinidad, New York and London, Mumia Abu-Jamal of the USA. They are all celebrated as essential to the poet’s life and utterance, his imagination and experience, and many of them are his contemporaries, living inspirations and exemplars.

Jan Carew and Cheddi Jagan

Thus Return to Streets of Eternity is poetry as a chronicle and history of the poet’s life-imagination, made, word by word, from real events transformed by images for all time, so that, as Carew writes in his ‘Requiem for Cheddi Jagan’:

the torment of the poor and despised
must be redeemed forever. 

These ‘poor and despised’ are the people who are the earth of this poetry: their hopes, lives and struggles. And its words, drenched with aspiration and direction, anticipate the dawn when their freedom will be realised, when

the night of vampires must give way to day-clean,
warriors will return to long cool evenings
and the wine jars and the children
chanting poem-hymns and dancing 

Carew writes many poems to his comrades of poetry, for they open up the people’s struggles to themselves and to the world beyond. Robin Dobru of Surinam, Dennis Brutus of South Africa, Agostinho Neto of Angola, Andrew Salkey of Jamaica: they are all here, all eternalised too in these avenues of words. And walking in front is another Guyanese bard, the nonpareil of Caribbean poetry, Martin Carter. There are several moments in Return to Streets of Eternity when Carew’s words could be those of Carter, so essentially Guyanese are they. ‘We do not sleep to dream, but dream to change the world’, wrote Carter in ‘Looking at Your Hands’. In his poem to Rodney called ‘The History Maker’, Carew tells us that

it’s only a dream
but when you dream with millions
the dream’s like a flower awakening
to trumpet new dawns of reality. 

And remembering the March 1960 massacre of 69 protesting South Africans at Sharpeville in his poem ‘I Fight for What Must Be’, Carew writes two lines of a raw and naked imaginative beauty and power that are Carter to the core:

I fight for what must be and memories that
cling like bark to a tree. 

All these humans: visionaries, activists, militants, martyrs and writers are the living flesh of Carew’s poetry and those who walk, proudly and in freedom, along his eternal thoroughfares, so that we can always seek their counsel, talk to them, walk alongside them and join in their courage, clarity, beauty and solidarity. They are, as Carew describes them, ‘the heirs of everlasting hope’ and they carry our dreams in order to give them back to us:

The dream that all peoples have a right to share
The water of the River of Life
And drink with their own cups. 

Carew’s cups are for us all, and they carry the essence of continuing life, its struggles, its pleasures and its victories.

Related links

View details of the book launch on 26 November in London

Smokestack Books

A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe.

15 October: The Home Office announces the closure of Dover immigration removal centre, Free Movement, 23 October 2015)

19 October: The Hope Project publishes: Destitute and asylum-seeking women in the West Midlands: Immigration issues and charity support related to housing and subsidy. Download the report here (pdf file, 2.8mb).

Yarl’s Wood

20 October: An inquest records a verdict that 34-year-old Pinakin Patel, who was detained with his wife when they came with visas for a holiday, died of natural causes after suffering a heart attack at Yarl’s Wood detention centre in February 2015. The centre had not implemented a Home Office emergency strategy ordered after an earlier death. (Bedfordshire on Sunday, 20 October 2015)

21 October: Caroline Lucas MP tables an early day motion (EDM) on ‘Family reunification for refugees’. View the EDM here.

22 October:  The Swedish government, supported by the opposition, announces  tough new measures against asylum seekers on the day  that two people are stabbed to death in a racist attack at the Kronan School. (see below) 

28 October: The National Audit Office announces an investigation into Yarl’s Wood removal centre.

28 October: Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner announces that Austria will build a fence along its border with Slovenia, in order to ensure an ‘orderly, controlled entry’ into the country. (The Local, 28 October 2015)

Alois Dvorzak with his wife

29 October: The inquest into the death of immigration detainee Alois Dvorzac in February 2013 records a highly critical verdict. The 84-year-old dementia sufferer died handcuffed in hospital after suffering a heart attack in Harmondsworth removal centre. Download the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman report on the death here (pdf file, 160kb) (Open Democracy, 29 October 2015)

30 October: The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee publishes: The work of the Immigration Directorates (Q2 2015). Download the report here (pdf file, 683kb).

3 November: People detained on a British RAF base in Cyprus issue emotional appeals to be released and allowed to seek asylum. (Independent, 3 November 2015)

3 November: The Hungarian parliament votes to reject the EU refugee quota (Budapest Business Journal, 4 November 2015, cited by Statewatch)

4 November: Over 200 Roma migrants sleep outside Malmö town hall in protest over their eviction from a camp on the outskirts of the Swedish town. The local council has said that it will create a winter shelter with space for 40 of the most vulnerable people. (The Local, 4 November 2015) 

19 October: The Independent Police Complaints Commission finds that body-worn cameras are not ‘fit for purpose’ after examining footage following the shooting of Nathan Brophy in Brixton in August. The cameras are currently on trial in ten London boroughs. (BBC News, 19 October 2015)

21 October: The government announces the terms of reference for the independent review into deaths and serious incidents in police custody and the chair of the inquiry, Dame Elish Angiolini (former Lord Advocate of Scotland).

22 October: Commonweal Housing publishes a report: Justice after release: housing options for miscarriage of justice victims, a call to action. Download the report here (pdf file, 474kb).

22 October: Following a highly critical inquest verdict, the Crown Prosecution Service announces that it is to reconsider bringing charges against the officers involved in the death of Kingsley Burrell in Birmingham in 2011, an option it previously rejected. (Birmingham Mail, 22 October 2015)

25 October: The Daily Record reveals that Police Scotland contacted the Sierra Leone Embassy in London to repatriate Sheku Bayoh’s body just two days after his death in an altercation with police. Alarmed embassy officials contacted Bayoh’s family in Scotland, who prevented the planned repatriation. (Daily Record, 25 October 2015)

27 October: A legal challenge to the doctrine of joint enterprise begins at the Supreme Court. (Justice Gap, October 2015)

27 October: The Court of Appeal rules that the family of Mark Duggan can appeal an earlier High Court ruling over the inquest verdict of lawful killing. (Guardian, 27 October 2015

29 October: The Ministry of Justice releases statistics on deaths, assaults and injuries in detention, which are at their highest for a decade. Download the statistics here. (Guardian, 29 October 2015)

31 October: The United Families and Friends campaign holds its seventeenth annual march to remember those that have died in police, prison, immigration and psychiatric detention. (Russia Today, 1 November 2015)

2 November: PC Jonathan Williams is sacked from Essex Police after being found guilty of gross misconduct in sending racist and homophobic text messages. (Essex Chronicle, 2 November 2015)

3 November: JUSTICE publishes a report: Freedom from Suspicion: building a surveillance framework for a digital age. Download the report here (pdf file, 803kb)

4 November: The family of Leon Briggs hold a vigil outside Luton police station on the second anniversary of his death, the day after hearing that the force has reneged on a promise to allow a plaque to commemorate him, citing ‘potential legal implications’. (Luton Today, 3 November 2015)

23 October: Gary Scott is jailed for 18 months for assault and affray, Steven Rayon and Christopher Johnson both receive suspended prison sentences after they admit attacking two Polish men in Wrexham, leaving one man unconscious with a broken jaw. (Shropshire Star, 23 October 2015)

24 October: Two pigs’ heads with racist slogans are left outside a church in west Belfast. (BBC News, 24 October 2015)

28 October: A Muslim woman in her forties is racially abused, punched and kicked in the head by two women on a bus in south London. (Independent, 2 November 2015)

1 November: A final interview with the father of Surjit Singh Chhokar, who was murdered in a racist attack in 1998 in Scotland, is published, days after his death. (Daily Record, 1 November 2015)

2 November: Tell Mama publishes a report: We fear for our lives: offline and online experiences of anti-Muslim hostility. Download the report here (pdf file 4.5mb).

3 November: MailOnline columnist Katie Hopkins criticises police for investigating her for incitement to racial hatred after she called migrants ‘cockroaches’ and said she would use gunships to ‘stop’ them, when it emerges she will not face charges. (Huffington Post, 3 November 2015)

16 October: The Equality Commission NI publishes: Key inequalities in education, a draft statement. Download it here. (pdf file 993kb)

19 October: The Government publishes its ‘Counter Extremism Strategy’. View and download it here.

22 October: A judicial review over directions given by the Charity Commission over the future funding of advocacy group Cage is withdrawn after all three parties agreed a statement agreeing that the Charity Commission ‘has no power to require trustees to fetter the future exercise of their fiduciary duties under its general power to give advice and guidance’. (Civil Society, 22 October 2015) 

22 October: Far-right sympathiser Anton Lundin Pettersson, 21, fatally stabs teaching assistant Lavin Eskandar and 15-year-old student Ahmed Hassan and critically injuries two more, all chosen for their skin colour, at the Kronan school in the Swedish industrial town of Trollhättan. Police shoot their assailant, who dies in hospital. (Guardian, 23 October 2015)

22 October: Jewish Defence League activists in Paris attack a BuzzFeed journalist in a protest against Agence France Presse’s coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. (Guardian, 23 October 2015)

26 October: Four neo-Nazis are arrested in Dortmund, western Germany, after a series of violent attacks. On one day, three men attacked a group of people using a telescopic baton and knife, and the following day six men approached four men, asked their nationalities and on hearing they were not German, attacked them with wooden slats, bats and bottles, and continued to kick them on the ground. (The Local, 27 October 2015)

2 November: An assessment of the activities of Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) in the two years since he left the EDL is published. (Religious Reader, 2 November 2015)

4 November: Nineteen men are charged with violent disorder following a Britain First demonstration in Rotherham in September. (Sheffield Star, 4 November 2015)

4 November: The home secretary bans American Matthew Heimbach, 25, from entering the UK as his presence ‘would not be conducive to the public good’. Heimbach is a neo-Nazi who has made anti-semitic comments and is the president of the Traditional Youth Network. (Guardian, 4 November 2015)

23 October: The Danish People’s Party is fined by Copenhagen City Court for an advertisement in a newspaper in 2013 listing the names of 685 new citizens, stating that one of them was ‘a danger to Denmark’s security. Now he will become a Dane’. Fifteen of those named filed a libel suit against the party, with the Court ruling in their favour. (The Local, 23 October 2015)

25 October: The nationalist, conservative and anti-immigration Law and Justice Party wins 37.6 per cent of the vote and an absolute majority in the Polish general election. During the election campaign, its chairman Jaroslaw Kaczyánski sought to make the refugee crisis an issue, claiming that refugees were bringing ‘cholera to the Greek islands, dysentery to Vienna, various types of parasites’. (Guardian, 26 October 2015) 

October 2015: The Institut Montaigne in France publishes a report by Marie-Anne Valfort: Religious discrimination in access to employment: a reality. Download the report here (pdf file, 3.5mb)

Daniel Holder from the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) reflects on the recently introduced Counter Extremism Strategy and the scenario which we would see if the strategy was applied in Northern Ireland.

Margaret Thatcher famously claimed Northern Ireland was as British as her own constituency, Finchley. Apparently however we are officially no longer as ‘extremist’ as Finchley. Number 10’s recently launched new Counter Extremism Strategy will not apply here. The document follows the earlier ‘Prevent’ strategy’s definition of ‘extremism’ as ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values’ and among other measures plans:

• Extremist disruption orders (a type of ASBO for ‘extremists’);
• Powers to ban non-violent ‘extremist’ organisations;
• Powers to ban ‘extremists’ from the airwaves;
• Encouraging the public to report ‘extremists’ in their mist and duties that the police must fully’ follow up such reports;

We have seen the like of this before. Our experience dictates that the Strategy is only likely to become a vehicle for the institutionalisation of prejudice against target groups that will further the ‘segregation and alienation’ that the prime ministerial foreword paradoxically claims is ‘fertile ground for extremist messages to take root’. Injustice at home and abroad breeds anger, this Strategy like others before it will compound not redress injustice.

One initial question is whether the Strategy is really designed to do what it says it is going to do, and how that relates to the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland. The prime ministerial foreword to the Strategy singles out the need to tackle racist ideologies, neo-Nazis ‘and, of course, Islamist extremism.’ The Strategy goes on to repeat claims it aims to tackle the far right and ‘those who promote hatred.’ Whatever the hyperbole of Belfast being dubbed the ‘race hate capital of Europe’ over a decade ago we continue to be plagued by orchestrated racist (including sectarian) incidents with paramilitary involvement. Yet Whitehall nevertheless seems strangely relaxed about not applying its flagship strategy here.

There are other strange things in relation to the context of the policy. Firstly, it does not escape notice that there are already significant obligations (that could be deployed on both sides of the Irish Sea) to further tackle incitement to hatred. These obligations form part of human rights treaties the UK has long signed up to, but refuses to implement. Take the UN anti-racism convention (ICERD) which commits the UK to outlaw ’all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination, as well as all acts of violence or incitement to such acts against any race or group of persons of another colour or ethnic origin…’ In relation to banning organisations ICERD commits the UK to: ‘declare illegal and prohibit organizations, and also organized and all other propaganda activities, which promote and incite racial discrimination’. The current Counter Extremism Strategy is smattered with sample quotes of ‘extremist’ speech, including that attributed to ‘Islamic Extremists’, all of which could be challenged as advocacy of ethnic or religious hatred. Whilst there is already legislation in Britain (and stronger legislation in Northern Ireland) that criminalises incitement to hatred on ethnic and religious grounds, such laws set a high threshold and fall well short of what is required under treaties like ICERD. Yet despite being repeatedly urged to do so by UN committees the UK has steadfastly refused to fully legislate to implement these international obligations on the grounds that they might interfere with the British value of free speech. This objection is ill founded. Recent years have seen considerable work to codify the threshold test between protected freedom of expression on the one hand and incitement to hatred on the other. The UN Rabat Plan of Action sets out a six stage test focusing on harm and context. It is also notable that in relation to other conduct that is already outlawed the Counter Extremism Strategy document concedes that speech or conduct that advocates violence is already a criminal offence. Furthermore the government has also already legislated for broadly drafted powers to outlaw the ‘encouragement of terrorism’, and included the likes of the ISIL, referenced throughout the Counter Extremism Strategy, in its official list of terrorist organisations.

All of this prompts some questions. Just what and who else is the broader concept of ‘extremism’ (as defined as opposition to British values) intended to catch? If the Strategy really is a vehicle to tackle ‘hatred’ why is government both resisting relevant treaty-based commitments on that very subject and sparing the ‘race hate capital of Europe’ the Strategy?

A footnote on the contents page reveals the official answer to the last question. Legally speaking, the British government’s problem is that ‘counter-extremism’ is an ideological concept it has just made up. This means it is not on the list of policy areas retained by the Westminster Parliament included in schedules to the 1998 implementation legislation of the Good Friday Agreement. The legislation would therefore have to pass through the Northern Ireland Assembly and London knows that the Irish nationalist parties, themselves representative of past suspect communities, would block it. This might not stop Whitehall implementing other parts of the Strategy here that do not need legislation, but it does not appear minded to. This is suspiciously respectful behaviour for what is a flagship policy. Contrast it to the fury that has led to economic sanctions totalling £114 million this year alone on the Belfast institutions for the refusal to implement the Welfare Reform Act 2012.

There are however other reasons why officials might be relieved that the Strategy does not apply here. Firstly it would have been complicated to police allegiance to British values of those who constitutionally do not have to be British. Secondly the Strategy could either have been just targeted at Muslims and be challenged as blatantly discriminatory or alternatively be equally applied to active opposition to British values from what the Strategy would consequently label ‘Christian Extremists’ as much as it would be to ‘Islamic Extremists’. The conundrum is such even-handedness would have risked significant conflict with sections of our local political establishment.

Counter-extremism, violence and Britishness in the Irish context

The Counter Extremism Strategy borrows some language and concepts that have been around for some time under the guise of projects for ‘community cohesion’ and British Bills of Rights. Both have tended to extol ‘British values’ and ‘British rights’ as both being profoundly important but incapable of definition. More recent discourse has singled out the right to jury trial, for example, as a British right (one which ironically does not apply in British-as-Finchley Northern Ireland). The new Strategy goes further and provides definitions of both ‘extremism’ and ‘British values’.

After the classification of opposition to British values, a second part of the definition of extremism designates advocating killings as being extremist – but only some killings. It might seem reasonable to think that tearing up the UN Charter and launching, partaking in and supporting illegal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan that have left hundreds of thousands of people dead is pretty extreme. Yet Tony Blair is unlikely to be the recipient of the first extremist ASBO. The definition precludes both these examples from being considered ‘extreme.’ Only advocating killing of members of the UK’s armed forces is to be considered ‘extremism.’ In this sense ‘extremism’ becomes a further ideological tool (like the concept of ‘terrorism’ before it) to separate ‘good’ violence from ‘bad’ violence. Extremist violence is abhorrent but much more widespread violence by the UK and its allies is not abhorrent, rather it is bestowed some legitimacy. This is a problem for those of us who oppose all forms of illegitimate violence. The Strategy proposes to do nothing to redress alienation fuelled by knowledge of British foreign policy. Equally problematically this part of the definition, when read alongside the broader rhetoric in the Strategy, reads more and more like a test designed to root out the disloyal citizens. The Strategy plans changes to ensure rules are toughened up to ensure ‘the privilege’ of British citizenship can be stripped from those who ‘reject our [British] values’. The problem that would emerge if government took forward its stated desire to apply the Strategy to Northern Ireland is that the Belfast / Good Friday Agreement (GFA) conceded people here do not have to be loyal British citizens, or indeed British at all. Under the GFA both London and Dublin:

…recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship…

UK law continues to bestow British citizenship on persons born in Northern Ireland of Irish (or British) parentage. That Irish citizens here be stripped of British citizenship for failing to show sufficient Britishness would border on the farcical. Much the same difficulties apply to the Strategy’s underpinning stipulation that everyone must abide by ‘British values’ in a part of the jurisdiction where you do not have to be British. The constitutional framework of the GFA also provides that the power the British government deploys in the north: “… shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions”. This particular provision is notably not restricted to those who identify as ‘British’ or ‘Irish’. Whilst such a framework does not extend over the Irish Sea it nevertheless appears no less absurd in the ‘globalised’ 21st century to require the population of, say the south east of England, to all be British, and to demonstrate their adherence to British values and allegiance to UK armed forces.

That said there is nothing objectionable about the ‘British values’ that have finally been defined in the document. The values include ‘the rule of law, democracy, individual liberty and the mutual respect, tolerance and understanding of different faiths and beliefs’. It elaborates on a British value of belief in equality, speaking of the ‘damage caused by discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender, disability or sexual orientation’. The document concedes that there is nothing exclusively British about these values. Indeed all of the above are all fundamental internationally recognised elements of a human rights framework. The problem is that rather than being articulated as such, they are being attached to Britishness in a manner which locates the problem as being that the non-British other (Irish or otherwise) does not ‘share our values.’ This does not sound too dissimilar from popular racist discourse and is only likely to fuel prejudice and alienation.

Falling foul of British Values in Northern Ireland 

The second problem for government would have been that unless there was unequal enforcement active opposition to ‘fundamental British values’ such as ‘mutual respect, tolerance and understanding of different faiths and beliefs’ and equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, some powerful people and institutions, many of whom would proudly identify as British, could well have been labelled as extremist.

Among them could be Evangelical Pastor James McConnell for his widely publicised address at the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle Church in which he stated ‘Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell’ and warned of the ‘new evil’ of ‘cells of Muslims.’ An extremist ASBO is unlikely to go down well with Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson of the DUP who leapt to Pastor McConnell’s defence complaining he had been demonised and for good measure added ‘I’ll be quite honest, I wouldn’t trust them [Muslims] in terms of those who have been involved in terrorist activities. I wouldn’t trust them if they are devoted to Sharia Law. I wouldn’t trust them for spiritual guidance’ but did say Muslims were trustworthy in matters like going to the shops for him.

Senior DUP figures may also run into trouble over opposition to equality on grounds of sexual orientation. The party developed a private member’s bill to amend the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006, to legalise certain forms of currently unlawful discrimination when done in pursuance of religious conscience. This bill, which would apply to service provision, follows the Ashers Bakery case where this large business received a small fine for cancelling an order from a gay man for a cake with a marriage equality slogan on it (and is currently appealing the decision). The run up to the original trial saw a huge rally organised by the Christian Institute where several thousand cheering supporters of the Bakery’s Christian owners including DUP ministers past and present, packed Belfast’s Waterfront concert hall, and hundreds more packed the pavements outside. According to the logic of the Counter Extremism Strategy all were guilty of the common purpose of vocal and active opposition to a fundamental British value.

Comments by senior DUP figures which also conflict with this British value may also find themselves under greater scrutiny should the letter of the Strategy be implemented. A DUP health minister Jim Wells MLA, told voters at a hustings event last April ‘You don’t bring a child up in a homosexual relationship. That a child is far more likely to be abused and neglected…’ Mr Robinson’s wife Iris, also then an Assembly member and chair of its health committee, in addition to describing homosexuality as ‘comparable’ to child abuse, also described being gay as an ‘abomination’ but one that gay people could be cured from and ‘turned’ heterosexual with suitable psychiatric help. Mrs Robinson also set out her position that the role of government was to ‘uphold God’s law morally’ and to ‘represent the morals of the scriptures.’ Yet the Counter Extremism Strategy makes clear that government will only tolerate only ‘one rule of law in our country’ and will ‘never countenance’ alternative systems of law ‘informed by religious principles.’

Religious and political institutions themselves are also going to have to be careful they fall foul of opposing the British value of ‘mutual respect, tolerance and understanding of different faiths and beliefs’. For example every member of the Orange Order, itself heavily part of the Unionist establishment here, is pledged to: “strenuously oppose the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome, and scrupulously avoid countenancing (by his presence or otherwise) any act of ceremony of Popish worship; he should by all lawful means, resist the ascendancy of that Church, its encroachments, and the extension of its powers”. Another rule reportedly stipulates that ‘Any member dishonouring the institution by marrying a Roman Catholic or attending any of the unscriptural, superstitious and idolatrous worship of the Church of Rome shall be expelled.’ Far from labelling the organisation as extremist the UK government designates the Orange Order’s main parading day (12 July) as a Bank Holiday. The re-routing of a relatively small number of the Order’s marches away from counter-protestors or nationalist areas has been the biggest public order issue here for many years – government would not relish the backlash if it designates the institution as ‘extremist’ under its new Strategy. Furthermore if the Order was captured by the ‘extremism’ definition of opposing the above British value, it would not of course not be the only Christian organisation, Protestant, Catholic or otherwise whose rules or teachings would do so. This raises the question of the boundary of what is protected as manifestation of freedom of expression (including religious expression) and what is not.

As alluded to above there has been a lot of work done on bringing legal certainty to the concept of advocacy of hatred, as distinct from protected freedom of expression. It is only those matters which genuinely reach the threshold of internationally recognised advocacy of hatred, hostility or discrimination on religious, ethnic, LGBT and other grounds that should be pursued as such. By contrast the selective application of the more subjective concept of ‘extremism’ is what appears to be in store under the new Strategy. Stripped back into context the concept and Strategy and the manner in which they are framed look more like the establishment reasserting British nationalism. The folly of doing that in a divided society in a context like that which exists in the north of Ireland is plain to see. Yet it is likely to be no less ‘divisive’ elsewhere.

Committee on the Adminstration of Justice (CAJ)

As borders become militarised zones, and internal policing of refugees and migrants intensifies, the IRR continues to monitor asylum- and migration- related deaths.

Across Europe the humanitarian crisis continues as refugees continue to flee war-torn countries such as Syria. Front-line volunteers, who have witnessed the suffering first-hand over the summer and autumn, have now sent an open letter to the governments of Europe, giving ‘advance notice to all of you, the leaders of Europe, that people will be freezing to death soon on our borders if you do not act now’. European film-makers and film professionals have joined the call, stressing that, ‘The guilt doesn’t just lie with the traffickers: Europe cannot deny its share of responsibility’.

Acknowledgement and accountability for the hundreds of deaths that take place not just at Europe’s borders but as a result of our cruel and inhumane asylum systems was the raison d’être for the report the IRR published in March 2015 on 160 asylum- and immigration-related deaths. Since then, we have documented a further 14 deaths (excluding deaths at the borders). Below, we report on these recent deaths, setting them against the new controls initiated following the recent European migration summits. With the increasing militarisation of the borders and the EU’s new hotspots where ‘good’ refugees are divided from ‘bad’ migrants, the internal policing of refugees can only intensify.

Solidarity from below

So far in 2015, over three thousand refugees from war, persecution and globalisation have drowned in the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas. With hundreds of boats still making the crossing as the weather becomes stormier, commercial boats, fishermen and volunteers are being forced to play an increasing role in rescues,[1] and in looking after the thousands who arrive on Europe’s shores every week. Neither EU and German funding, nor the presence of humanitarian organisations like UNHCR and the Red Cross, seems to have had much impact on the ground. It is left to local initiatives like Lesvos’ Village of All Together to try to provide support, shelter, food, clothes, and sanitation for the refugees.

Militarised borders increase risk of death and injury

An unknown number of refugees – including the 71 found asphyxiated in an abandoned lorry in Austria in August, have died at the borders. But now some borders are being transformed into militarised zones, and new violent risks are emerging. The Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán refused assistance from international agencies to help with the reception of refugees. Instead, it has sought to turn Hungary into a ‘refugee protection free zone’ by building fortifications around the country. The cost of the 109-mile razor-wire fence at the border with Serbia was a staggering €98 million, at least three times the €27.5 million 2015 budget of the Office for Immigration and Nationality. The government has also deployed the military and riot police, and in violent scenes on 16 September, refugees on the Serbian side of the fence at the border town of Röszke were attacked with tear gas and water cannon by riot and anti-terrorist police, leading to injuries to at least seven children. Hungarian police are now authorised to use rubber bullets, tear gas, grenades and pyrotechnical devices at the border.

Amnesty International’s warning of the dangers inherent in militarised border operations has already been borne out in Bulgaria, where in October police shot dead 19-year-old Ziaulah Wafa, an Afghan refugee, at the south-eastern town of Sredets, near the Turkish border. Their claim that it was a warning shot that ricocheted has been disputed by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. Like Hungary, Bulgaria has built a 30 km razor-wire fence, along part of its border with Turkey, erected watch-towers and dispatched some 2,000 border guards, police and soldiers to provide twenty-four hour monitoring with armed guards at strategic points. Czech police have been sent to help guard the border.

The problem of an increasing resort to violence by state officials is not confined to Bulgaria and Hungary. With bulldozers and trucks, two hundred Italian police destroyed a makeshift camp near the French border in Ventimiglia. In France, riot police used tear gas and bulldozers to evict hundreds of mainly Syrian refugees from four camps round Calais, although the number of refugees and migrants living in ‘diabolical’ conditions in one of Europe’s largest shanty towns, has doubled to 6,000 over the summer. The UK meanwhile installed new barbed wire fortifications at the Eurotunnel entrance in Coquelles and at Calais to stop refugees boarding trains. So far in 2015, nineteen people have died trying to get to the UK from France.

European governments are also creating their own transit zones, for more detentions and removals. In the Czech Republic, new arrivals, including children are taken handcuffed to a former military barracks where they are held behind a four-metre high barbed wire fence, pulled out of bed by police to attend roll-calls and routinely strip-searched to confiscate the 250 CZK ($US 10) per day they are charged for their detention – provoking condemnation from UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.

At the EU level, too, punitive controls and speedy removals take precedence over humanitarian considerations. The EU’s first response to this year’s refugee crisis, in April, was to call for military action to destroy migrant boats. Public outrage led to the plan to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from southern Europe around the other Schengen states, announced in September – but under cover of the relocation plan, much more systematic policing of refugees and migrants has been introduced. Identification, registration and fingerprinting of new arrivals are prioritised in the EU’s ‘hotspots’ in Greece and Italy. At the new hotspot of Moria in Lesvos, thousands of men, women and children are forced to queue for days in mud and pouring rain, waiting to be nationality-screened by Frontex officials. Conditions in the queues ‘resemble a war zone’, say volunteers, who fear that children will die of cold and disease before they gain access to the EU- and NGO-funded reception facilities, such as they are, inside the fence. Once in, only Syrians, Iraqis and Eritreans are eligible for relocation. Those of the ‘wrong’ nationality, regardless of the strength of their claim for protection, are, according to observers, being detained for speedy removal with no appeal rights and no legal representation, in violation of EU refugee protection standards and the Refugee Convention. The Frontex mandate also allows its officials to round up for deportation those who do not register. In October, EU justice and home affairs ministers proposed a deal with Turkey, which was to keep refugees from travelling to Europe in exchange for visa waiver for its nationals and resumption of EU accession talks. They also demanded more and faster deportations from member states, as Frontex began removals from Greece and Italy to Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria and Pakistan. In its migration mini-summit in October, the EU promised funding to Greece and the Balkan states for a total of 100,000 reception places – but also agreed a package of policing measures including strengthened border controls in Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia and Slovenia, implementation of the Turkey plan and increased efforts to implement readmission agreements and expedite returns.

Accelerated removals and deportation deaths

With accelerated removals, decisions will be made in a cavalier way and the use of force will increase – particularly as Frontex officials are empowered to use ‘reasonable force’ in carrying out their screening and removal tasks. The brutal death of Iraqi refugee Adnan during a forced deportation from Sweden in April echoed Jimmy Mubenga’s 2010 death on a deportation flight at London’s Heathrow airport, and that of Abdelhak Goradia who died under restraint in a police van on the way to Roissy airport, Paris for deportation. The death of Chechen Kana Afanasev following his deportation from Sweden echoes the beating, torture and killing of Mohamed Ali Sleyum in Tanzania in 2014 after he was deported from Ireland. Abolfazl Vazirir, a 16-year-old Afghani asylum seeker, is reported to have been killed by the Taliban once he ‘voluntarily returned’ to Kabul from Denmark after his illegal detention by the Danish National Police, mirroring the death of Aref Hassanzade (22) allegedly at the hands of the Taliban after his ‘voluntary return’ from Belgium in 2013. There are likely to be more victims of careless ‘processing’ and wrongful deportations in the new, fast inflexible regime where safeguards against refoulement to persecution are eroded to the point of near-invisibility.

More control, more fear, more deaths

Suspicion and harshness towards asylum seekers and undocumented migrants spreads to all categories of migrants, including visitors. So a couple who arrived in the UK from Gujarat, India, Pinakin and Bhavisha Patel, for a ten-day holiday were suspected to be ‘not genuine visitors’ despite having visas, and were detained in the notorious Yarl’s Wood IRC. On 20 April, after two months’ detention, Pinakin, 33, died of a heart attack. His widow said medical staff took fifteen minutes to attend when he complained of shortness of breath. Even after his death, his widow remained in detention, prompting other detainees to go on hunger strike for her release. Mr Patel’s death echoed that of Alois Dvorzac, the 84-year-old Slovenian-Canadian dementia sufferer whose death in handcuffs following his detention at Harmondsworth IRC in March 2013 prompted the Chief Inspector of Prisons to accuse the centre of a ‘shocking loss of humanity’. Mr Dvorzac was held for two weeks on arrival from Canada, although he wanted to go to Slovenia to find his estranged daughter, and was shackled for five hours to a custody officer in a hospital before dying of a heart attack. Following the inquest in October 2015, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman said his treatment reached the threshold of inhuman and degrading treatment, banned by the European Human Rights Convention.

Many European governments seem intent on creating a hostile environment for migrants, keeping them permanently on edge, in fear. In Cyprus, a police raid on 26 September led to the death of a 27-year-old migrant from the Philippines. As police forced their way into her fifth-floor Nicosia apartment, Mrs L.H., who had been refused renewal of her residence permit having worked legally for four years as a domestic worker, tried to get to the neighbouring flat through a skylight, and fell into the basement of the building. The clinic where she was taken refused either to treat her or to call an ambulance, and she died from her injuries. Mrs L.H. was the second domestic worker in Cyprus to die in a fall in two months; on 2 August, R.K, an Indian domestic worker, was found dead beneath the balcony of the fifth floor apartment in Larnaca where she worked, days before she was due to be sent home by her employers. The anti-racist group KISA called for an end to domestic workers’ insecure status, caused by denial of the possibility of long-term settlement. But the refugee crisis has led to more harsh actions. The UK government is pushing through a new immigration law which will make driving a criminal offence for undocumented migrants, and put landlords in prison for renting rooms to them. A huge crackdown by the Bulgarian interior and security ministries in October deployed over 2,700 police checking nearly 13,000 people, 6,000 vehicles and 3,000 homes and workplaces, and led to the arrest of 495 undocumented migrants, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Suicide is the largest cause of detention deaths

We have recorded seven known deaths by suicide since February: the commonest cause of death for those in detention. Most follow the refusal of asylum. In Greece, Pakistani Nadim Mohammed, 28, hanged himself on 13 February after a total of 25 months’ detention in the notorious Amygdaleza detention centre. His death, and the suicide the following day of a 23-year-old Yemeni in Thessaloniki, prompted a pledge by a minister from the new Syriza-led government to shut down detention centres and replace them with open hospitality centres. Moroccan Benamar Lamri, who was 42 and had lived in Belgium for sixteen years, hanged himself on 2 April in the Merksplas detention centre when he was finally denied refugee status after years of fighting for it. Oumar Dansoko, a 27-year-old Guinean, set himself on fire the following day at the Fedasil (asylum seekers’ reception) officein Brussels after losing his five-year fight for asylum. In June, a 28-year-old South African man detained in a Rotterdam detention centre for removal to France under the Dublin regulation hanged himself. In July, a Ukrainian man jumped from the fourth floor of a building in Kreuzberg after only three days in Germany. And on 7 August, a 30-year-old Ugandan asylum seeker committed suicide at the Verne, an immigration removal centre in Portland, Dorset.

The Verne

The Verne like Yarl’s Wood, Haslar and other IRCs in the UK (and like the asylum reception centres in Switzerland), is remote and difficult to visit, making family visits rare and compounding the isolation of those in detention. The man, whose mother and children live in the UK, had been refused asylum and was told he was going to be deported.

From acknowledgement to responsibility

When we seek accountability for the institutionalised inhumanity of asylum reception, it is no use relying on the EU’s official bodies. Despite the notoriously dreadful conditions in the detention centres in Spain and Italy, the huge shortfall in housing and support for asylum seekers, including children, in Belgium, France and Bulgaria, and the failure of France and the UK to provide basic amenities for those in the Calais ‘jungle’, the European Commission is only now bringing infringement proceedings against nineteen member states, for their failure to transpose the EU’s Reception Directive into national law. Only Greece is (belatedly) condemned by the Commission for the conditions in reception and detention centres, which have been a European scandal for years, and which the Syriza government has in any event pledged to tackle.

In the absence of an effective accountability mechanism, it is up to us to call EU states to account. When state responsibility is engaged following a death, why do we not know even the names, ages, nationalities of a large number of the dead? Is anyone held accountable, and if not, why not? The IRR will continue to monitor deaths in order to help campaigners in their demands for structures of accountability for the deaths inside Europe, caused by Europe’s response to refugees and migrants.

IRR report: Unwanted, unnoticed: an audit of 160 asylum and immigration related deaths in Europe

IRR briefing paper: Driven to Desperate Measures: 2006-2010

IRR briefing paper: Accelerated removals: a study of the human cost of EU deportation policies, 2009-2010

IRR report: The deportation machine: Europe, asylum and human fights

A new report by Medical Justice, ‘A Secret Punishment’, highlights the human damage caused by the use of segregation in immigration detention, as well as its political purposes. 

Arriving at Heathrow Airport in 2011 on a family reunion visa, 24-year-old ‘MD’ expected to be reunited with her husband – a refugee whom she had not seen in three years. Instead, she was questioned by an immigration officer and, after becoming confused by the questions, subsequently detained in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre. She did not leave until nearly a year-and-a-half later, by which time her mental health had deteriorated to such an extent that she was deemed to be ‘lacking capacity’ under the Mental Health Act. In detention she had sliced open her forehead with the top of a sardine tin, cut her face and stomach with broken pieces of china and attempted to strangle herself with a telephone cable. She self-harmed at least eleven times between August and November 2011, the response to which was to handcuff her, restrain her and remove her from association with other detainees. The High Court later ruled that what she been through amounted to ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’ under Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which also covers torture.

That segregation – the isolation of an individual for up to 23 hours a day – can amount to torture is now established. It is a ‘secret punishment’ according to Medical Justice. Their report documents the scale of damage caused by segregation by examining their own casework with people who are or have been detained. It also draws on what little external scrutiny exists – most notably the inspection reports from HM Inspector of Prisons (HMIP) and the annual reports of Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB).

‘Relatively short periods of segregation’, the report says, can lead to ‘social withdrawal, perceptual disorders, hallucinations and suicidal thoughts’. But segregation is not only carried out for short periods. In one case documented in the report a person was held in segregation almost continuously for twenty-two months. In another a person was taken to a psychiatric hospital after eighty days of segregation. ‘The mental health of individuals is frequently allowed to deteriorate to the point where they require sectioning in a secure psychiatric facility under the Mental Health Act’, the report states.

From institutional expediency…

Some 30,000 people are detained in immigration removal centres each year in the UK, and between 1,200 to 4,800 of those are segregated.[1] This setting appears to encourage institutional contempt for outside scrutiny. But the use of segregation, integral to the functioning of the system, is barely acknowledged and shrouded from view.

As A Secret Punishment explains, segregation is frequently used as a form of control, to ‘manage’ the detainee population. It is deployed in different circumstances to ensure specific forms of social order. Home Office policy stipulates that it may be used in the ‘interests of safety or security’, the report notes. In practice this means that it is used as punishment, an ‘unofficial sanction’ for ‘non-compliance’. Detainees who are described as potentially ‘disruptive’ can be isolated in areas with ‘limited regimes’: limited access to the internet, fax machines and contact with lawyers or supporters. In some cases, the person’s mobile phone is removed, and segregation is a means through which to ensure that his or her removal can take place – unhindered, and without accountability.

…to warehousing of the vulnerable

Described by IMB reports as ‘bleak’, ‘depressing’, ‘austere’ and ‘bare’, segregation cells and regimes compound fear and desperation. Yet it is the most vulnerable detainees who are frequently placed in them. Such is the extent to which they are used to contain those with suicidal thoughts, the report notes, that in one immigration removal centre detainees have taken to hiding their concerns, through fear that they will end up in segregation, or ‘the block’. Brian Dalrymple, a schizophrenic American tourist with severe hypertension, detained in 2011, was placed in segregation on numerous occasions as a way to ‘manage’ his deteriorating mental health. He died of a ruptured aorta, alone and isolated in a single cell, waiting for a psychiatric assessment.

Parallel segregation regimes

A Secret Punishment provides evidence of the strategic use of isolation in immigration detention. What little accountability there is for a decision to segregate a detainee can be circumvented by a parallel, de facto form of segregation, described euphemistically by those managing detention centres as a form of ‘care’.

‘These regimes’, the report states, ‘are sometimes referred to as Care and Support Units, Induction Units, Assessment and Integration Units or they may be part of in-patient healthcare facilities’. They include – or have included – the Eden Wing in Brook House; the Bunting Unit at Yarl’s Wood; the Rose Unit at Colnbrook. A ‘main concern with de facto segregation’, it continues, is that those held under such regimes ‘are not subject to the … safeguards that go along with segregation under Rule 40 and Rule 42 – with requirements for daily checks and behavioural observations as well as justifications for continued segregation.’ These units are ‘grey areas’, the report explains. Citing HMIP reports, it shows how, for example, the Bunting Unit has previously been used to hold ‘disruptive’ detainees under the terms of an ‘unofficial, but among staff widely acknowledged, policy’. The Assessment and Integration Unit at Colnbrook has been described as a ‘bleak’ place where ‘rooms contained no furniture beyond a mattress on a tiled concrete plinth, and a concrete toilet without a seat’.

Some of these de facto segregation units have been disbanded. Some have been rebranded. Several are described by the centres themselves as places for vulnerable people. That this is the case gives an indication of the extent to which language is perverted, and meaning twisted, in immigration detention. Regardless of how they are spun, A Secret Punishment, of particular use for lawyers and clinicians challenging detention, makes clear that ‘the conditions of detention, including segregation, are so detrimental to the health and wellbeing of those detained that the only way to remedy this situation is to close IRCs’.

Medical Justice

Download a copy of the report, A secret punishment – the mis-use of segregation in immigration detention, here

IRR briefing paper: Driven to Desperate Measures: 2006-2010

IRR News: Neglect and indifference kill American man in immigration detention

IRR News: Deaths in immigration detention: 1989-2014

A double book launch celebrating the life and works of the late Guyanese political writer Jan Carew.

The evening will launch Episodes in My Life (Peepal Tree Press), which tells the story of Carew’s life as writer, activist, and revolutionary, and Return to the Streets of Eternity (Smokestack Books), which collects poems written during a lifetime of engagement in anti-colonial, black power and liberation movements.

• Thursday 26 November 2015, 7pm
• Claudia Jones Organisation, 103 Stoke Newington Road, London N16 8BX

Speakers:

• Joy Gleason Carew – University of Louisville
• Chris Searle – Editor, Return to the Streets of Eternity

Facebook event listing

Smokestack Books

Peepal Tree Press

Defend the Right to Protest’s annual conference.

• Sunday 15 November 2015, 11am til late,
• School of African and Oriental Studies, Russell Square, London WC1H OXG

Workshops include:

• Prevent and the threat to our civil liberties with Moazzam Begg, Gareth Peirce, Malia Bouattia, Patricia McManus and Hilary Aked
• Undercover policing and the new inquiry with Imran Khan, Janet Alder, Rob Evans, Suresh Grover, Jules Carey
• Detention prisons, border police & migrant solidarity with Antonia Bright, Reem Abu-Hayyeh, Shanice McBean, Mona Dohle
• Whose communities? Policing the police with Gloria Morrison, Adam Elliot Cooper, Anti Raids Network
• The Public Order Act and the criminalisaton of protest with Mike Schwarz, Rachel Harger, Christopher Hilliard
• Deaths in custody – with Aamer Anwar, Marcia Rigg, Kedisha Burrell-Brown, Natasha Dhumma
• From Legal Aid to the Human Rights Act with Debalena Dasgupta, Charlotte Haworth Hird, Nina Power, Rebecca Roberts

Related Links

Defend the Right to Protest

Book here

The launch of the Socialist Register 2016, as part of the 12th annual Historical Materialism conference.

• Saturday 7 November 2015, 11.15am
• Room L67, School of African and Oriental Studies, Russell Square, London WC1H OXG

Speakers: 

• Chaired by Greg Albo
• Liz Fekete
• Richard Seymour
• Richard Saull
• Avishai Ehrlich

Download a full programme for the conference here

A demonstration to mark 22 years of Campsfield removal centre. 

• Saturday 28 November 2015, from 12noon
• Campsfield (main gates), Langford Lane, Kidlington OX5 1RE
• From 2-5pm refreshments and Barbed Wire Britain gathering at Exeter Hall, Oxford Road Kidlington OX5 1AB

Related links

Campign to Close Campsfield

Download a flyer

An international women’s conference bringing a critical, left-wing and intersectional perspective to the women’s movement.

• Saturday 28 November – Sunday 29 November 2015
• Southbank University, 103 Borough Road, London SE1 0AA

Speakers include:

• Angela Davis (USA) – University of California Presidential Chair in African American and Feminist Studies, and founding member of the prison abolitionist group Critical Resistance
• Rashida Manjoo (South Africa) – the former (2009-2014) UN Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Professor in the Department of Public Law, Cape Town
• Lilian Hofmeister (Austria) – CEDAW, Substitute Justice at the Austrian Constitutional Court
• Wafa Kafarna (Palestine) – Norwegian Refugee Council and Palestinian activist
• Liz Davies (UK) – Housing Rights Lawyer, honorary Vice-President of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers
• Jeanne Mirer (USA) – President of IADL, founding board member of the International Commission for Labour Rights
• Frances Webber (UK) – vice-chair of the Institute of Race Relations

Book here

Download a flyer

Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers

A demonstration outside Yarl’s Wood, demanding the end of immigration detention.

• Saturday 7 November 2015, 1.30pm
• Yarl’s Wood, Twinwoods Business Park, Thurleigh Road, Milton Ernest, Bedfordshire MK44 1FD

Movement for Justice

See details for the demo here

A panel discussion on the Kristallnacht anniversary.

• Tuesday 10 November 2015, 7pm
• Room v111, Vernon Square Campus, School of Oriental and African Studies, Penton Rise, London WC1X 9EW

Panelists: 

• Zoë Marriage – Oxford University and the LSE
• Ruth Barnett – Holocaust survivor and human rights activist
• Mike Schwarz – Bindmans solicitors
• Morten Thaysen – Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants
• Michael Daduc – Europe Roma Network
• Giulia Dessi – Media Diversity Institute
• Plus a participatory art instillation by anti-fascist campaigns

Never Again Ever!

A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe.

7 October: Leaked EU plans reveal proposals to deport thousands of failed asylum seekers by threatening countries refusing to take back their migrants with withdrawals of aid, trade deals and visa arrangements. The documents show that Frontex will be assisting in the deportations. (Independent, 7 October 2015)

9 October: The detention of a 42-year-old Sudanese woman is branded ‘unreasonable and truly disgraceful’ by a High Court judge. The woman, a torture survivor, was held at Yarl’s Wood removal centre for 37 days. (Independent, 9 October 2015)

11 October: It is reported that councils in the UK were sent draft guidance in advance of Theresa May’s speech on immigration to warn them not to provide Syrian asylum seekers with ‘luxury’ goods such as fridges, cookers, TVs or DVD players. (Observer, 11 October 2015)

12 October: An Afghani man, Vahid Vazirir, confirms that the Taliban has killed his 16-year-old brother in Afghanistan. The two brothers were deported, against humanitarian organisations’ advice, from Denmark earlier this year after living there for five years. Vahid is now in hiding in Iran. (The Local, 12 October 2015)

12 October: The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) warns that new proposals in the Immigration Bill requiring landlords to evict tenants without proof of regular immigration status could breach human rights laws. (Guardian, 12 October 2015)

12 October: The Law Gazette reveals that immigration appeal hearings are being delayed until next summer because of a high volume of cases. (Law Gazette, 12 October 2015)

12 October: Over 350 QCs, barristers, solicitors and law professors sign a statement calling for ‘an urgent, humane and effective governmental response to the refugee crisis’.

13 October: The Immigration Bill, which will cut asylum support, remove appeal rights and further criminalise and marginalise undocumented migrants, has its second reading in House of Commons. (BBC News 13 October 2015)

13 October: The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees publishes issue no.16 of its newsletter, Federation. Download it here (pdf file, 1,.9mb).

13 October: The Home Office wins a case at the Court of Appeal over the rights of appeal of foreign prisoners facing deportation from the UK; the court ruled that two men facing deportation would not have their human rights breached if they were to be deported before their appeal rights were exhausted. (Guardian, 13 October 2015)

14 October: A Syrian migrant in her early thirties dies after being run over by a car on the A16 motorway to Calais. Her death brings the total number of deaths of migrants attempting to cross to the UK from Calais since June of this year to sixteen. (La Voix du Nord, 15 October 2015)

14 October: New guidance issued by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services states that social workers should give asylum seeking children the ‘benefit of the doubt’ when assessing their age. (Children & Young People Now. 14 October 2015)

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein

14 October: UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein says Europe’s leaders have descended into ‘xenophobia’ over refugees, and compares language of ‘swarms’ with rebuff of Jews in 1938. (Guardian, 14 October 2015)

15 October: The Welsh Refugee Council and British Red Cross criticise plans to cut support for asylum seekers saying cuts could drive people into destitution. (BBC News, 15 October 2015)

15 October: A High Court judge quashes the decision to refuse a 45-year-old Asian woman a passport, criticising as ‘grotesque’ and ‘untenable’ the Home Office’s objections to her claim to British citizenship. (Asian Image, 15 October 2015)

16 October: A ‘warning shot’ by a Bulgarian border guard kills an Afghani migrant aged between 20 and 30 in the city of Sredets, Bulgaria. He had entered the country with a group of 50 men who are all currently held in custody. (BBC, 16 October 2015)

16 October: On the tenth anniversary of the creation of the Frontex agency, around 300 people stage a protest at London St Pancras station to highlight the deaths of refugees and the politics of Fortress Europe. (Open Democracy, 19 October 2015)

16 October: Failed asylum seekers fear deportation on chartered private jets as it removes them from the public eye, making it impossible for anyone to witness possible violence against them. Deportations are highly contested due to both their alleged high costs, reaching £14 million in just 18 months, and the locations to which people are forcibly returned. (Guardian, 16 October 2015)

17 October: A 34-year-old Hungarian man is arrested without any charges during a peaceful protest. The Home Office is targeting the political activist as part of an operation designed to arrest and deport criminals from other parts of the EU living in the UK. Daniel Gardonyi has lived in the UK for 7 years and is now facing deportation threats from the Home Office. (Guardian, 17 October 2015)

18 October: 84 bishops release a private letter they wrote in September urging the prime minister to accept more refugees, accusing him of ignoring their offers of help to house and provide for up to 50,000 refugees. (Observer 18 October 2015)

20 October: At a Pegida rally in Germany, attended by tens of thousands of people, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon describes the movement as ‘the salvation of Europe’ and says ‘current immigration is an invasion’. (Independent, 20 October 2015)

21 October: Checks on the immigration status of tenants, which could lead to ‘potentially discriminatory behaviour’ according to the Government’s own review, will be rolled out nationally, ministers announce. (Independent, 21 October 2015)

16 October: After a 14-year-old Muslim boy who mentioned ‘eco-terrorism’ in a discussion about the environment was taken out of a classroom in a London school and questioned about his ‘affiliation’ with ISIS, Islington Council will lobby the government to change its counter-extremism duty in schools, stating that it is a great concern for free speech, human rights and community cohesion. (Islington Gazette, 16 October 2015)

18 October: David Cameron announces £5 million funding, and further increases in coming years, of anti-extremist projects in communities and online to challenge all forms of extremist ideology. Part of the strategy will be developing stronger ties between industry, police and government. (Guardian, 18 October 2015)

19 October: The government launches a counter-extremism strategy which includes plans to combat what is described as ‘entryist’ infiltration of the public sector, charities and businesses by ‘extremists’. (Guardian, 19 October 2015)

19 October: Sir Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester police, says that the government’s counter-extremism strategy could alienate Muslims and damage free speech and religious freedom. (Guardian, 19 October 2015)

8 October: Two Met police officers, PCs George Cooper and Stephen Newbury, are sacked following a disciplinary hearing after racist text messages were found on their phones during an investigation into the Plebgate affair. (BBC News, 8 October 2015)

8 October: After viewing phone and CCTV footage of Sheku Bayoh’s dying moments after being restrained by police officers in Kirkcaldy earlier this year, his family call for the footage to be released. (The Courier, 8 October 2015)

8 October: At least 140 people are granted ‘core participant’ status at the recently commenced Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing, including the families of Ricky Reel, Cherry Groce, Jean Charles de Menezes and Stephen Lawrence. (Guardian, 8 October 2015)

9 October: A 40-year-old black war veteran tells the Andover Advertiser that he was the victim of a racially motivated asault by police officers in Andover police station in September. (Andover Advertiser, 9 October 2015)

12 October: Freedom of Information requests reveal that there have been 240 complaints of racial discrimination against the Metropolitan police over a one-year period but not one has been upheld. (Guardian, 12 October 2015)

12 October: The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) announces an investigation into allegations of racial abuse and misuse of police computers by two Sussex police officers, including a senior officer who has been suspended, following an incident while the men were off duty. (Eastbourne Herald, 12 October 2015)

12 October: An inquest into the death of Tobias Terpilowski-Gill is told he fell from a balcony in Kilburn while handcuffed after he was denied urgent mental health care. (KIlburn Times, 12 October 2015)

13 October: According to Freedom of Information requests made by the BBC, black people are three times more likely to be tasered than white people. (BBC News, 13 October 2015)

13 October: The Jamaican security minister disputes David Cameron’s recent announcement, made on a visit to the country, that a prisoner transfer agreement has been signed to allow Jamaicans convicted in the UK to be sent home to serve their sentence in a prison funded by the British government. (Guardian, 13 October 2015)

14 October: INQUEST publishes the latest edition of its E-Newsletter. View the newsletter here.

15 October: The Ministry of Justice publishes: ‘Use of language interpreter and translation services in courts and tribunals statistics: 2013 to 30 June 2015’. Download the statistics here.

15 October: BBC News airs claims that PC Alan Paton, a police officer involved in the death of Sheku Bayoh, has a history of violence, including against his own parents, and ‘hates black people’. (BBC News, 15 October 2015)

15 October: The Ministry of Justice is carrying out a consultation on ‘Expectations for police custody’. The consultation closes on 11 December 2015. View the consultation documents here.

15 October: The Ministry of Justice launches a ‘Review of coroner services’. The review closes on 10 December 2015. View details about the review here.

16 October: The National Crime Agency launches an investigation into the Metropolitan police, especially the conduct of the former detective sergeant John Davidson, after allegations arose that the murderers of Stephen Lawrence, stabbed to death by a racist gang in London in 1993, were shielded by police corruption. (Guardian, 16 October 2015)

9 October: The Independent Commission on Freedom of Information is calling for evidence on aspects of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The consultation closes on 20 November 2015. View the call for evidence here.

19 October: The academic Matthew Goodwin resigns from a government working group on anti-Muslim hatred, arguing that ‘During a generally unpleasant four years, the basic message appeared to be that the government was simply not that interested in anti-Muslim hatred.’ (Guardian, 19 October 2015)

10 October: Far-right groups, including the North West Infidels, hold an anti-refugee demonstration in Preston which is met by a counter demonstration. One person is arrested. (Lancashire Evening Post, 11 October 2015)

11 October: The extreme-right Freedom Party wins a record 31 per cent of the vote in city elections in Vienna, but fails to take the city from the Social Democrats who take 39.5 per cent of the vote. (Guardian, 11 October 2015).

9 October: Ryan Swindells is jailed for three years after pleading guilty to assault and affray after an unprovoked racist attack on two Iraqi-Kurdish men in Orford, Warrington. One of the victims suffered head injuries and a fractured collar bone after being kicked unconscious by Swindells and four others. Two others are also sentenced in connection with the attack.  (Warrington Guardian, 15 October 2015)

9 October: In the latest of many paramilitary attacks on refugees arriving at Europe’s borders, five armed commandos, wearing hoods and masks, without insignia, appear on a speedboat in international waters off the Greek islands of Lesbos and attack four dinghies carrying about 200 refugees, among them women and children. They smash the engines, forcing the boats to float adrift at sea for eight hours. (Huffington Post, 15 October 2015)

12 October: In the worst incident of violence in the Netherlands since the refugee crisis began, men dressed in black, wearing balaclavas, setting off fireworks and ripping down fences, attempt to storm a sports hall in the Woerden, near Utrecht. The sports hall temporarily housed some 150 refugees, including 51 children. No one is hurt in the incident and several local people help intercept and detain the gang. The Prime Minister condemns the incident, and later visits the centre. (Dutch News, 12 October 2015)

13 October: David Cameron announces changes to the recording of hate crimes; anti-Muslim hate crimes are to be recorded separately and should be treated as seriously as anti-Semitic crimes. (Guardian, 13 October 2015)

13 October: New hate crime statistics from the Home Office reveal an 18 per cent increase in reported crimes. Download the statistics on ‘Hate crime, England and Wales, 2014 to 2015′ here. (BBC News, 13 October 2015)

14 October: A fireman in the western German town of Altena is one of two men arrested and charged with arson after setting fire to an attic of a house, forcing the seven Syrians living there, including a pregnant woman, to flee for their lives. The prosecution is criticised by the Green party lawmaker for failing to catalogue it as a hate crime (on the grounds that there was no far-right connection), and for not bringing an attempted murder charge. (NBC News, 14 October 2015)

14 October: New research finds that the Gurkha community in Catterick Garrison do not report race hate incidents as they have no relationship with the police and do not recognise racial abuse as a criminal offence because it is so persistent. (Darlington & Stockton Times, 14 October 2015)

18 October: Henriette Reker is elected mayor of Cologne, the day after she was stabbed in the neck and seriously wounded by an assailant. The attacker is known to have been angry about Germany’s immigration policy. She is said to be making a good recovery. (BBC News, 18 October 2015)

20 October: A refugee accommodation centre near Munkedal in western Sweden has been subjected to an arson attack, the fourth in just over a week. Accommodation centres in Onsala, Ljungby and Arlöv have also been attacked, with suspected xenophobic motives. The Umeå municipality announced that it would not be disclosing the location of a new refugee accommodation centre for fear of similar attacks. (The Local, 20 October 2015)

20 October: A 14-year-old boy is convicted of racially abusing a teenager of ‘mixed-race heritage’ with ‘severe learning difficulties’ whom he stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver in south London on 5 August. (Sutton Guardian, 20 October 2015)

21 October: Writer and poet Siana Bangura speaks of an incident on a train to Liverpool in October when she was called a ‘black n****r b***h’ and physically attacked by a white man, but one one onlooker told her to stop making a scene and to ‘calm down’. (Voice, 21 October 2015)

13 October: UKIP loses control of Thanet Council after another UKIP councillor defects to the Democratic Independent Group, four others having previously defected. Thanet Council had been the first council with overall UKIP control. (BBC News, 13 October 2015)

18 October: The right-wing populist and anti-immigration Swiss People’s Party secures a record result in the parliamentary elections and now has 65 out of  200 seats in the lower house. (BBC News, 19 October 2015)

12 October: Alistair Carmichael MP tables an early day motion on ‘Caste discrimination’, read the EDM here.

13 October: It is revealed that a 10-year-old boy attending Parkfield Community School in Saltley, Birmingham was reported to the police over ‘concerning behaviour’; two other pupils at the school were also referred to police. (Birmingham Mail, 13 October 2015)

In the week that the government announced new counter-extremism measures, the IRR publishes contributions from its seminar on ‘Securitisation, Schools and Preventing Extremism’, held at Garden Court Chambers on 7 October, where participants considered the consequences of a new statutory duty on public bodies to prevent non-violent extremism and whether it breached the Equality Act.

Background

This week, the home secretary Theresa May unveiled a string of new anti-extremism measures. Already, Sir Peter Fahy, national policing lead on Prevent and counter-radicalisation, has questioned the wisdom of the government’s approach, warning that the measures are possibly counter-productive and a period of consultation and debate is needed.

In addition, teachers are concerned that new statutory duties, that came into force in July 2015 and places them under a duty to take measures to prevent non-violent extremism, may breach the Equality Act 2010, which stipulates that direct and indirect unlawful discrimination is taken seriously, and that individuals or groups should not be treated unfairly or put at a disadvantage.

The seminar

Liz Fekete, Yasser Louati and Bill Bolloten

On 7 October, teachers, parents, university staff and representatives of international human rights organisations came together at a seminar organised by the Institute of Race Relations and the Collective Against Islamophobia in France. Participants voiced concerns that the duty, which has already led to a number of disturbing cases where predominantly Muslim children have been treated in a heavy-handed and discriminatory way, could involve violations of Articles 2, 3 and 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We publish today the contribution given at that seminar by Bill Bolloten, a leading educational consultant who specialises in issues of equality and diversity. He believes that the new statutory duty is not only misguided and counter-productive, but confuses the professional roles of police and teachers. ‘The new duty risks closing down the very opportunities where the classroom can be used to develop an inclusive curriculum that fosters democratic skills and explores human rights’, he says.

Yasser Louati is director of the CCIF, an organisation that assists the victims of discrimination in France. His contribution, also published today, concentrates on the many cases taken up by the CCIF, including those of 130 young Muslim students expelled from school for wearing a long skirt and that of a French teacher reported to the school board by his own pupils. Yasser Louati warned the British authorities not to follow the French Ministry of Education’s lead by institutionalising an anti-radicalisation schools programme which is ideologically driven and linked to debates on national identity.

‘Nobody wants young children going to Syria or being radicalised by groups like “ISIS”‘, says IRR Director Liz Fekete, who moderated the seminar. ‘But teachers already have duties to safeguard children. They fulfil such duties each and every day of the week with great sensitivity and skill – professional attributes undermined by this disproportionate, heavy-handed new duty which fosters discrimination, sows mistrust and risks turning teachers into thought police.’

Read Bill Bolloten’s speech: Education not surveillance

Read Yasser Louati’s speech: A French perspective on a British debate

Read an IRR report: Spooked! How not to prevent violent extremism

Read an IRR News story: School governors and British values 

Read an IRR News story: ‘Apologists for terrorism’: dissent and the limits of free expression

Read an IRR News story: Counter-terrorism policy and re-analysing extremism

Le Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France

Garden Court Chambers

A demonstration outside Dungavel House immigration removal centre, protesting against immigration detention.

• Sunday 25 October 2015, 1-4pm
• Dungavel House, Strathaven, South Lanarkshire, Scotland ML10 6RF

A coach will leave Glasgow George Square at 11.30am. The journey to Dungavel House is one hour. More details on booking a coach ticket are avilable here.

We will rise

An edited version of a speech given by the director of the Collectif Contre l’ Islamophobie en France at the joint IRR/CCIF seminar ‘Securitisation, Schools and Preventing Extremism’

Yasser Louati

For me as a teenager, the UK was the place to be. Growing up in France in the ‘90s, we Muslims saw the UK as a place of absolute freedom where your religion wouldn’t be a brake on your personal success, where you wouldn’t face as much discrimination as we were facing in France. And for me, I was definitely looking to live in the UK, for the simple reason that I come from a country where women can’t go to school, and now can’t go to work, the day they decide to wear a headscarf. When they put a piece of cloth on their head, it’s a social death sentence. Unfortunately, I am starting to see a trend here, and this is not a good sign when the Brits start following the French, really it’s not.

‘A sacred space’

The Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) is a human rights organisation based in Paris that specialises in fighting Islamophobia, primarily by assisting its victims and collecting data on cases connected to Islamophobia – be it discrimination, hate crimes or hate speech. But today I really don’t want to speak to you as a Muslim person or as the representative of a human rights organisation, I just want to speak to you as a parent. Some of you are already parents, might become parents. For me, school has always been a sacred place and I always had the idea that school should be protected from ideological battles and that our children are handed over to teachers who take over when we are away working and making a living. The teachers, the men or the women in the classroom, are actually second in charge of our children’s education. And unfortunately that ideal is being shattered. Since I joined the CCIF we are now experiencing an alarming rate of violence against children since they launched the so-called War on Terror. And in this respect I think it is crucial that for us we start connecting the dots, because what you are facing today in the UK might end up being what we are facing right now in France.

Taking up cases

As you all know, Paris was marked by violent terrorist attacks at the beginning of January. A newspaper was attacked, a Jewish supermarket was attacked, a policeman was killed. The terrorists made no distinction between the Jew, the Muslim, the Christian and the atheist. To them it was all about taking people’s lives. The very next day after the first attack, a child, maybe you heard, his name was Ahmed, he was 8 years old at the time, and his case made headlines because he was asked, during the time when everyone said ‘ Je suis Charlie’ by his teacher if he was Charlie. And he said ‘no I am not’. And then he was asked ‘why’ and then he said ‘because Charlie is an evil man because he insulted my prophets’. And then he said something like, ‘I think the terrorists were right’. But when he was asked later what a terrorist was, he said ‘I don’t know’. But that did not keep his teacher from sending him to the principal, who got very angry about the child’s behaviour. What then happened to that child is the subject of a legal challenge. The school principal denies the claim that he started banging the boy’s head against the blackboard. He blames the boy’s father for escalating the situation by coming to the school and ‘acting aggressively’. The child was also diabetic. The school principal denies the charge that he refused Ahmed access to his insulin unless he walked into every single class and apologised to every single pupil in those classes.

However, the case itself caused almost unanimous outrage among ordinary citizens. Ahmed, who was also questioned at the police station, now suffers from nightmares and bed-wetting. But the story did not move the Ministry of Education, which sided with the teachers and gave some kind of political statement that they were just following procedure. So if our schools are places for crushing the personality of our children, what are they becoming?

A week later the mother of another child named Elias, who was about 6 years old, received a phone call. The school principal was quite aggressive with her, asking if she had any ill-feeling towards the school, if she was feeling some kind of aggressive sentiment towards the establishment. And she said, ‘Why do you ask me all these questions?’ Then the school principal said, ‘Well, do you think I should report you to the local education authority?’ She later discovered that her son had been bullied and made to play the part of a terrorist during a dramatic staging by the school of the January killings.

But that case, now being dealt with by the CCIF, did not move the Ministry of Education, that a 6-year-old child was made to feel like a terrorist.

Not long after that in Poitiers, the local education authority issued a circular with specific guidelines to detect potential terrorists. I wrote down the signs to look for and here they are: shaved heads, clothes down to the ankles, the absence of tattoos, a dark mark on the forehead, unshaven beards, loss of weight, anorexia, public expression of political opinions, interest in the history of Islam. That caused an embarrassment for the Ministry of Education, but that was about it. They did not say, ‘We are pushing too far, this is too much.’

Expelled for wearing long skirts

This kept happening week after week, and actually my predecessor, Mrs Elsa Ray, I really salute her courage for dealing with all that on a daily basis. Then we had the story of Sarah which first became known not in France but in the UK after the Independent reported the story and it was subsequently taken up by the Guardian and the New York Times, who all wrote about the case of a young girl expelled from school for wearing a long skirt. But Sarah’s case was not isolated. When the case broke in the newspapers we were called up by a paper asking us if we had any similar cases of long skirts, and by the end of May we had over 130 cases of students being expelled from school for wearing a long skirt. Why? Because long skirts were identified as a religious statement. As you all know France passed a law in 2004 banning conspicuous religious signs, i.e., Muslim religious signs. And that girl Sarah made headlines and everybody spoke about her.

The first case I dealt with when I came to the CCIF as a spokesperson took place in Montpellier in the southern part of France. We had three girls, I think of Moroccan descent, and they were kept isolated from school because they were wearing long dresses and long skirts. For several weeks, they couldn’t go to class, they just went to a special room and stayed there for hours. I think one of them went through depression because she couldn’t understand what was happening.

The discrimination against the girls because of their dress code and their religion became apparent when a fourth girl joined the bunch. That girl was not of North African descent, she was of Spanish decent so she looked European but she had converted to Islam. It was only after she was seen a few blocks away from school taking off her headscarf, that the teachers and the school staff made a connection between her long skirt and the headscarf she was taking off a few blocks away. So it was okay for her to wear a long skirt as long as she could not be identified as a Muslim person.

A few weeks later Béziers, in the southern part of France, made headlines, and there we have a mayor, Robert Ménard, a former head of Reporters Without Borders subsequently elected as mayor on a Front National ticket. Ménard did a live interview on television saying, ‘I have been counting every single Muslim child in my city. And I have a personal file where I have their names and their ages.’ Again there was outrage, social media spoke about it openly, but instead of public office holders condemning it and the Justice Department doings its work, we only heard something like ‘maybe it’s about time to start having accurate statistics’.

A teacher reported by his own students

But to show how this atmosphere is not only affecting children, a high school philosophy teacher, named Jean François Chazerans, did not implement the minute of silence that all schools were expected to observe after the January attacks. Instead, seeing his students arguing and using violent language like ‘we should kill them and shake them down like dogs’, he said, ‘Let’s have a debate on the issue’. For doing this, he was reported to the school board by his own students, who said that he refused to implement the minute of silence. So what happened to him? He was sanctioned, suspended, he spent eight hours being interrogated before they decided to impose upon him a compulsory transfer to another school. Just because he preferred to engage his students in a debate rather than obeying a dogmatic order. You have to be Charlie, you have to remain silent.

Speaking of Charlie, I don’t think I would ever be heard saying the ‘Charlie Hebdo attacks’, because in January the newspaper was attacked, but a Jewish supermarket was attacked, policemen were attacked, so I would want it to be remembered that Charlie Hebdo was not the only victim of terrorists. As I said before, people make no distinction when they kill those citizens. So to me it is just the January attacks.

Ever more repercussions

Let’s continue with what is going on in our schools in France. The mere suspicion of radicalisation, based upon your dress code or your Facebook account or whether your father or husband has a beard, is enough for you to lose custody of your own children. We had a story in France of a Muslim mother who lost custody of her children, including a baby. Why? Because the husband was a devout Muslim with a beard. And he was on no watch list whatsoever. He just had a beard. And this suspicion was based on spying on people’s Facebook accounts.

I can go on, but I don’t want you to think that I am making all this up. Even yesterday, as I was travelling on the train from Paris, I received an email from the IRR with another report about a student being called into the principal’s office for so-called ‘apology of terrorism’. Let me tell you that what happened in this case is that one of the teachers went on a student’s public Facebook account and started taking screenshots of his Facebook page. Why? Because there was his name, and Arabic script. And for that teacher this was enough to arouse suspicion, this was a sign of radicalisation. And the student called his mother and then unfortunately for the teacher, and luckily for the child, his sister intervened and actually proposed to sue the teacher and to present the case to local authorities. Then the teacher kind of backed down and tried to calm things down. It didn’t work, especially as he tried to give her, instead, the details of the hot-line for government anti-radicalisation services.

So my question here is: to which society do you want to belong? A society where schools are no longer a sacred place where children are protected and teachers respected for what they do, where all children reach their potential? Or do you really want to implement the ideological agenda of the very same people who impose upon you austerity measures and deny you the right to work in decent conditions?

Secularism and securitisation

Unfortunately in France we have a dogmatic approach to laïcité and now the relationship with minorities is only looked at through the security lens. It’s no longer about social cohesion, it is not about promoting the interests of the child, it’s just about, as the New York Times said, the majority imposing its will and its view of the world upon minorities.

So let’s make a brief analysis. France is home to the largest Muslim minority in Europe, by far. At the same time France has implemented the greatest number of Muslim-specific laws: in 1994 we had the ‘ministerial circular’ giving the right for principals to expel girls wearing the headscarf; in 2004 we had the law banning the headscarf; in 2010 we had the law banning the full-face veil. Then we had the ban on Muslim mothers accompanying their children on school trips while wearing a headscarf. Then we had the ban against nannies wearing the headscarf, then we had a new law banning self-employed nannies from wearing the headscarf even if working from home. At the same time, France is the number one exporter of foreign fighters. And it has one of the biggest Muslim minorities. Isn’t there a problem? It has the greatest number of laws targeting that very same minority, at the same time it’s exporting the greatest number of foreign fighters. I am not a statistician but I do ask questions about the way we function.

Now my question to you teachers and academics and community workers and representatives is, who is willing to break the bond with children and break the trust of parents? Who is going to do that? If we cannot hold our schools sacred and protected from the ideological battles of adults, what’s going to happen tomorrow? If you want to know how much freedom you’re going to have tomorrow, just look at how much freedom minorities are losing today. Just think about it. What’s happening today to minorities will happen to everyone tomorrow. Because today minorities are vulnerable, but once a law is passed it affects everyone. Thank you for your attention.

Read Bill Bolloten’s speech ‘Education not surveillance’, here

Read the IRR’s press release: ‘Prevent duty “heavy handed and discriminatory“‘

Le Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France

IRR News story: Charlie Hebdo backlash – the unredacted story

An edited version of a speech given by one of the UK’s most respected independent educational consultants at the joint IRR/CCIF seminar ‘Securitisation, Schools and Preventing Extremism’.

First, thanks to the IRR and the Collective Against Islamophobia in France for convening this meeting and providing a valuable opportunity for colleagues working in education, as well as others, to discuss our concerns about the Prevent duty.

I am a teacher and independent education consultant. I work with schools, school governors and children’s services on equality and diversity, and also on SMSC – the requirement for schools to promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. In case you didn’t know, that is the framework through which the government and Ofsted now require schools to actively promote so-called ‘fundamental British values’.

Bill Bolloten

I am active in #EducationNotSurveillance, a network of parents, teachers, educationalists, activists and academics, who argue that the new statutory Prevent duty is misguided, counter-productive and damaging to both pupils and schools. We have come together to challenge Prevent and how it is being implemented in schools and early education settings.

We will shortly be launching the #EducationNotSurveillance website, aimed primarily at school leaders, teachers, parents, early education practitioners as well as teachers’ professional associations. We are developing a statement that we want people to get behind, and we aim to provide information, analysis and arguments explaining the consequences of the Prevent duty.

As part of our opposition and challenge to Prevent we also want to give out a clear and positive message that we believe in education that is inspirational, that develops pupils’ critical thinking, celebrates cultural diversity, promotes equality and fosters the trust and goodwill needed to explore sensitive and difficult issues.

New duties, flawed concepts

On 1 July 2015, the new legal duty was placed on schools and early years and childcare providers to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. The revised statutory guidance stipulates that ‘being drawn into terrorism includes not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and can popularise views which terrorists then exploit.’

Schools and early years providers are now assessed by Ofsted to check that they are implementing Prevent. You will also be aware that Prevent has been through different phases since its inception but currently its most important dimension is Channel, a referral, multi-agency assessment and intervention process meant to protect people at risk of ‘radicalisation’. Channel is driven by multi-agency panels in which the police play a leading role.

I want to identify some of the key concerns about the Prevent duty as well as suggest some positive alternative approaches. And I will end by discussing some of the challenges we face in organising against Prevent in partnership with teachers as well as the pupils, parents and communities that Prevent is impacting on.

Firstly, the model that underpins the government’s concept of ‘radicalisation’, and which is central to Prevent, is informed by notion of ‘psychological vulnerability’; that individuals must have certain vulnerabilities that make them more likely to engage in terrorism.

This means schools should be identifying signs of such vulnerabilities to then be able to halt the process of ‘radicalisation’. It is interesting that leaked guidance provided to the Cabinet’s home affairs committee stated that it was wrong ‘to regard radicalisation as a linear “conveyor belt” moving from grievance, through radicalisation, to violence’.

Secondly, the Prevent strategy and the new duty are fixated on ‘extremist ideology’; the view that people are drawn into terrorism almost exclusively through ideology. Yet research suggests that social, economic and political factors, as well as social exclusion, play a more central role in driving political violence than ideology.

In the UK therefore, but also in the USA and Australia, training for teachers, often delivered by police officers, urges teachers to report signs of radicalisation among their pupils, despite there being simply no empirical evidence at all to support the idea that terrorism can be correlated with factors to do with family, identity and emotional wellbeing.

One writer described this as ‘orientalist pseudoscience’. Beneath the jargon on ‘risks’, ‘vulnerabilities’, ‘engagement factors’ and ‘psychological hooks’, is an invitation to limitless racial and religious profiling in which normal teenage behaviours, or a young person’s beliefs, can be seen as indicators of being on the pathway to violent extremism. In fact, again, studies show that there is no direct link at all between religious observance, radical ideas, emotional wellbeing and violent acts.

But this is how Prevent operates in schools: identifying threats before they emerge in the so-called ‘pre-crime space’.

You might remember that a senior British police officer, Scotland Yard commander Mak Chishty, recently called for a move into the ‘private space of Muslims’ and offered specific advice: if a teenager stops shopping at Marks and Spencer, it could be because they had been radicalised. He also suggested watching for subtle unexplained changes such as sudden negative attitudes towards alcohol and western clothing.

A huge concern is therefore the tremendous risk of abuse and mistake in any approach that tries to predict future criminal activity, including terrorism.

By requiring schools and teachers to put pupils under surveillance, casting particular suspicion on Muslim pupils, and profiling them for behaviours that have no real connection to criminal behaviour, Prevent confuses the different professional roles of teachers and the police, and draws educational practitioners into becoming the eyes and ears of the counter-terrorism system.

An example of this is that there are now several private companies selling anti-radicalisation software to schools. If school pupils search for words such as ‘caliphate’ or ‘jihad’, or the names of Muslim political activists on classroom computers they risk being flagged as potential supporters of terrorism. A really sinister feature of the software being marketed by the company called Impero, is a ‘confide button’ allowing pupils to report on classmates anonymously.

Destroying trust, fostering discrimination

Expecting teachers and childcare professionals to identify potential extremists undermines trust and positive relationships.

We argue that mutual respect and trust between teachers and pupils is essential for learning environments where everyone feels safe and valued.

The constant monitoring of Muslim students will destroy trust and encourage discrimination against them.

How much confidence can Muslim communities have in Prevent in schools when many serious abuses are being reported already?

You will have seen many examples in the media. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) also submitted a series of case studies to David Anderson QC, the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and these were included in an annex in his recently published annual report.

These cases confirm the worst fears we had about the statutory Prevent duty in schools. We are seeing the duty being implemented naïvely in some schools, but also in crude, damaging and discriminatory ways in others. These are often schools where teachers have attended the ‘official’ Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP) training.

Here are some examples:

• A fifteen-year-old was questioned by police at home about his views on Syria and Daesh because he wore a ‘Free Palestine’ badge to school and handed out some leaflets promoting the boycotts, divestments and sanctions movement. Al Jazeera subsequently reported the conversation between the student and police officer: ‘I explained to him my views about freedom and justice and that I supported Palestine. I said I thought Israel should have tough sanctions put upon it and he said these could be radical beliefs,’ the boy said. ‘He said these are terrorist-like beliefs that you have. He explicitly said you cannot speak about this conflict at school with your friends,’ the boy said.

• In another case, a fourteen-year-old was referred to Prevent without his parents’ consent for not engaging in a music lesson.

• A schoolchild mentioned the ‘history of the Caliphate’ in a piece of homework about British foreign policy and was referred to social services for signs of radicalisation.

• A teacher decided to call in the parents of a student after they used the Arabic term for ‘praise be to God’.

• A Muslim schoolboy was questioned about Islamic State after a classroom discussion about environmental activism. He was left ‘scared and nervous’ by his experience, and afterwards was reluctant to join in class discussions for fear of being suspected of extremism.

Prevent is clearly leading to negative stereotyping of Muslim children and young people, and racial and religious profiling.

As Muslim pupils are now monitored and scrutinised through a securitised lens there is now little doubt that those who fit the profile set out in the Channel Vulnerability Assessment Framework will increasingly find themselves unfairly targeted.

New York Lawyer Sergio De La Pava, reflecting on police brutality towards minority communities in the US, recently commented: ‘Being targeted is horrid, but nothing breeds enmity quite like being unfairly targeted.’

We argue then that the Prevent duty is institutionalising anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia in schools.

We also believe that Prevent is undermining the duties of the schools under the Equality Act 2010 to ensure that direct and indirect unlawful discrimination is taken seriously, and that individuals or groups of students should not be treated unfairly or put at a disadvantage.

Making schools less safe

Prevent is making discussion of sensitive and controversial issues much more difficult in schools. Pupils with political opinions or who take part in protests are also coming under increasing surveillance. If the safe space that schools provide for discussion is restricted, and pupils feel that they can’t share their opinions without being reported, there is a risk that they may seek out spaces that are less safe.

Children and young people need to be able to speak openly with teachers about the issues they feel strongly about, including sensitive and controversial ones, without the fear that they will be profiled or put under suspicion.

The MCB has particularly expressed concern that Muslims are being treated differently to others, and that some parents are therefore training their children to restrict their speech.

It is perfectly legitimate, for example, for young people to criticise government foreign policy; to oppose the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan; to express support for Palestinian rights or to express either support for or opposition to the Israeli government. One may agree or disagree with such views, however they form part of legitimate discussion and debate.

Undermining the Children’s Convention

As a result of this, the Prevent duty presents a number of specific threats to the rights of children and young people. Despite the UK government being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a legally binding international agreement, there appears to have been no consideration at all given to the Convention as the Prevent duty was drafted. Apart from the key articles that ensure rights apply to all children without discrimination (Article 2), and the principle that governments must act in children’s best interests (Article 3), I think there are very specific concerns in relation to Article 13 which outlines how every child has the right to freedom of expression and ideas.

As Arun Kundnani recently commented: ‘The great risk is creating an atmosphere of self-censorship – where young people don’t feel free to express themselves in schools, or youth clubs or at the mosque. If they feel angry or have a sense of injustice but nowhere to engage in a democratic process and in a peaceful way, then that’s the worst climate to create for terrorist recruitment.’

Schools are now required to actively promote ‘fundamental British values’, including ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.’

By branding opposition to British values as ‘extremist’, the government are engaged in a similar process as can be seen in France: a crude attempt to create a forced consensus, in the same the way the French secular principle of laïcité has become a tool to reinforce narrow judgements about French identity and discriminate against minorities.

The challenges ahead

I will end by outlining some key questions and challenges:

1. What will the cost of Prevent be for the dignity, confidence and sense of belonging of Muslim children?

In a powerful piece earlier this year, Safeguarding little Abdul, Prevent Muslim schoolchildren and the lack of parental consent, Yahya Birt asked his readers to imagine Abdul, a 12-year-old pupil:

‘Abdul deserves a better future. One in which he is treated a citizen rather than as a suspect. Where he can disagree, sometimes even be bold and radical in disagreeing if he chooses to do so, without being labelled an extremist. Where he can be proud rather than be ashamed of being a Muslim. He deserves to be inspired at school, opened up to new possibilities, for his autonomy to be nurtured and respected. This is the kind of schooling and the kind of country that we need to fight for.’

2. What will be the short and long-term impact of Prevent on schools and teachers?

Already, in many schools, Prevent is causing significant nervousness and confusion among teachers. There is increasing evidence that teachers identify it as counter-productive and dangerous.

The new duty risks closing down the very opportunities where the classroom can be used to develop an inclusive curriculum that fosters democratic skills and explores human rights.

A teacher, who did not want to be identified, told a Guardian journalist that her Muslim pupils had become more careful about what they talked about for fear of being referred through Prevent. She added that assessment by Ofsted on how schools were protecting children from radicalisation added an extra pressure on teachers.

3. What do we need to do next to challenge Prevent and thinking behind it, and work towards its repeal?

The National Union of Teachers statement on the Prevent duty was welcome and encouraging:

‘Teachers need opportunities to work together, and with local schools, to develop proportionate and sensible ways for schools to respond to the different risks young people face – one of which, for a comparatively small number of young people, might be exposure to individuals advocating violence.’

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) union moved a motion, unanimously passed at September’s TUC Congress in Brighton, arguing that Prevent ‘could destroy relationships between teachers and learners’. Requiring teachers to spy on and report pupils would ‘close down space for open discussion in a safe and secure environment and smother the legitimate expression of political opinion.’

However other professional associations such as the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) are leading training in partnership with advocates for Prevent such as the founder of Inspire, Sara Khan and Birmingham headteacher Kanal Hanif. They also recommend to schools the ‘official’ workshop to raise awareness of Prevent (WRAP) training sessions.

We must work towards repeal of the Prevent duty on schools, but we need more discussion on what we need to do to achieve that.

I suggest that this must involve engagement with school leaders, teachers and governing bodies, as well as working with the NUT, NASUWT and other professional associations.

We also need to develop close partnerships with the communities, pupils and families who Prevent is targeting, and ensure that as well as playing a leading role in campaigning, they can also access expert advice, support and advocacy.

We also need more expert research and analysis that can inform us of what is happening locally and nationally. There is a key role here for committed journalists, academics and human rights organisations. In particular, the way that Prevent is being driven into schools as part of ‘safeguarding’ needs to be more thoroughly analysed and critiqued so teachers, school leaders and others have the confidence, the evidence and the arguments they need.

Read Yasser Louati’s speech ‘A French perspective on a British debate’, here

Read the IRR’s press release: ‘Prevent duty “heavy handed and discriminatory“‘

IRR News story: Will the government’s counter-extremism programme criminalise dissent?

IRR News story: The Great British Values Disaster – education, security and vitriolic hate

A free night of films and ‘food raiser’ hosted on the theme of migration and borders.

• Monday 2 November 2015, 6pm
• SOAS, Vernon Square Campus, London WC1X 9EW

Provisional film list:

• Working Illegally
• Campsfield House
• Borders
• Accents
• The Invisibles
• No Lager
• Through the Wire
• Broken English
• Defining Border Imperialism

Related links

Facebook event listing

Food Not Bombs Whitechapel on Facebook

Food Not Bombs Whitechapel on Twitter