Anti-Racism

Articles on racism and anti-racism. See our pamphlet "How to Beat the Racists"

Ambedkar, Pankhurst and political awakening

Playwright Sonali Bhattacharyya may be known to some readers as a member of Momentum’s national coordinating group (elected as part of the Forward Momentum grouping ). Judging by her Two Billion Beats , which has just finished a second run at the Orange Tree Theatre in SW London, her generally wider fame as a writer is well-deserved. (Last year Bhattacharyya's Chasing Hares , about factory workers’ lives and organising in West Bengal, was on while I was involved in discussions about setting up the India Labour Solidarity campaign . Somehow I didn't go in the end, and hope it will return soon.)...

Emmett Till: a lynching which fired the Civil Rights Movement

Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago When a young boy from Chicago stepped through a southern door This boy’s dreadful tragedy I can still remember well The colour of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till - Death of Emmett Till , by Bob Dylan Till , a film now showing at local cinemas, tells the story of a lynching in the Southern USA which did not go almost unnoticed outside its area as many other such lynchings did. Instead it became a cause célèbre and gave a major impetus to the Civil Rights Movement. The USA presents itself as a great “melting pot” — a country where diverse...

Hindu nationalism, communalism and the left

Professor Dibyesh Anand spoke with Daniel Randall about the recent rise of the Hindu right in Britain, and how the left should approach questions of communalism and chauvinism within and between minority communities.

“BAME Labour” erases Labour’s first MP of colour

The tiny, inactive and secretive BAME Labour grouping has been back in the spotlight, after Labour’s National Executive junked plans to create a democratic structure representing black, Asian and minority ethnic party members. To give a flavour of this “organisation”, in 2018 it had less than a thousand members, out of an estimated 70,000 party members of colour. Yet it has representation on the National Executive. A quick look at BAME Labour’s website confirms it is a non-organisation. But its “What is BAME Labour” statement is worth scanning. Generally vapid in the extreme, it says: “The...

Demand justice for Chris Kaba - fight to curb the police

Protest at New Scotland Yard, 17 September 2022 It's good that protests for Chris Kaba, the young black man murdered by the police in Lambeth (South London) on 5 September, have spread across the country - particularly given the pressure not to demonstrate in the run up to the queen's funeral. Around 10pm on 5 September police pursued Kaba to a road in Streatham Hill, blocked in the car he was driving, and when he attempted to drive out shot him through the windscreen; he died in hospital soon after. He was not armed. It seems the car was identified by an automated system, which alerted police...

Kino Eye: Native Americans onscreen

Sacheen Littlefeather at the 1973 Oscars The recent apology to Native American Sacheen Littlefeather for her treatment at the 1973 Academy Awards Ceremony when she declined an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando is about 50 years too late, but welcome all the same. While attempting to speak for the cause of Native American rights she was booed and, some allege, threatened by John Wayne. Officials told her to keep her speech to one minute or face arrest. It could well be the case that Native Americans have been subjected to more racist abuse, onscreen, than any other ethnic minority in the world...

Thirty years since The Satanic Verses

Last month [September 2018] saw the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses . Rushdie’s sprawling novel defies summary: interlinking stories meld scurrilous fantasies, dark humour and cutting political satire directed not only at Islam, but British racism and Indian immigrants’ attempts to adapt. It is an honest attempt to deal with the warping pressures of racism, religion and cultural dislocation. When it was published in September 1988 there was no spontaneous grassroots opposition. According to Kenan Malik in From Fatwa to Jihad , one early move...

Winston Churchill: his times, his crimes

An enduring memory from my youth is of my father returning from the pub telling me how he had been taking bets on how long Churchill, by now very ill, would survive. He died shortly after (24 January 1965). The memory hardly fits with the usual image of a cult of hero-worship around Churchill. Some of the views of Tariq Ali have been rightly criticised in Solidarity , but in his new book Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes he has produced a powerful exposé of the Churchill myth and all the accumulated nonsense that it carries in its slipstream. Churchill was never the “hero” that post-war...

Women and Roma in the war

The European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine delegation which visited Lviv on 3-7 May heard from feminist activists and campaigns for women’s rights. The war has had a profound effect on women’s lives. Sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war by the invading Russian forces, creating enormous suffering and trauma. The ability for women to access abortion is far from guaranteed. Though abortion is legal in Ukraine, those trying to get one can face social stigma and religious prejudice. Shamefully, many traumatised Ukrainian women who succeed in escaping to Poland discover that they...

USA: a House Divided yet again

Another far right terrorist gun rampage, this time in Buffalo, New York (14 May). Perpetrators of racist attacks don’t need burning crosses to advertise their deeds nowadays. They livestream the whole thing on the internet instead, with a white-supremacist “manifesto” thrown in as if to serve as “justification” for the cold blooded murder of working class people going about their daily business. The teenager who carried out the atrocity was from small town America — Conklin in New York State, population 5,000, 98% of which is white. His social interaction with non white Americans very probably...

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