Anti-Racism

Left-wing MP Diane Abbott has apologised unreservedly for what she wrote about “Irish, Jewish and Traveller” people not suffering racism. Even ultra-Blairite John McTernan commented: “Swift and appropriate apology from Diane Abbott. She has been subjected to vile racist abuse throughout her career, and her apology should be accepted in the spirit it is offered”. The Labour leadership, which has largely declined to defend Abbott against racist and misogynist abuse, is opportunist and hypocritical on bigotry and oppression, and will show that again if it doesn’t lift her suspension from the...

Eugene Debs (1855-1926) was the main public figure of the US Socialist Party in the era when it won over 900,000 votes in the presidential elections of 1912 and 1920. Later socialists, learning from the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution as well as rising black struggles, were critical of Debs's limitations, and of course the language he used was the language of his time; but Debs spoke out eloquently against racism. The Birth of a Nation (1915) has been called "the most influential film in history". The merits of the spectacular drama The Birth of a Nation excite bitter comment whenever it...

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.)...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...