Racism & fascism - new material (21)
01 March 1999
Institutionalised racism and human rights abuses: A special investigation into 45 deaths in Europe in 1998. Campaign Against Racism and Fascism & United 1999, pp14. This report investigates 45 deaths across Europe of which nearly 65% "were of asylum-seekers or undocumented workers whose deaths...arose as a direct consequence of immigration and asylum policies which deny individual human rights." Institutionalised racism played a role in the remaining 16 cases: seven of these were Roma killed either by the police or in racially motivated incidents, another seven were EU citizens "killed in racially motivated incidents" and "two were EU citizens of immigrant descent killed by the police." The report contains a table and an analysis that calls for "European governments to address the institutionalised racism of their criminal justice and educational systems which amounts to an abuse of ethnic minorities' human rights." Available on the web: http://www.carf.demon.co.uk/deaths98/ or from CARF, BM Box 8784, London WC1N 3XX and UNITED, Postbus 413, NL1000, AK Amsterdam, Netherlands.
London Update. Institute of Race Relations No 7 (Spring) 1998, pp4. Latest issue of the redesigned Monitor focuses on "policing and black deaths in custody" and expresses well-founded concern about the introduction of experimental equipment such as US-style batons and CS gas, the policing of immigration, inquest verdicts and the role of the Crown Prosecution Service. It has a table of black deaths in London 1991-1999 and a survey of racist attacks. Available from IRR, 2-6 Leeke Street, London WC1X 9HS; Tel. 0171 837 0041.
The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: implications for racial equality. Commission for Racial
Equality, March 1999. This is a summary of the CRE's evidence to the Stephen Lawrence (MacPherson) inquiry. Copies can be obtained from the CRE, 10/12 Allington Street, London SW1E 5EH, Tel. 0171 932 5437.
Seize the time, A Sivanandan. CARF No 48 (February/March) 1999, p2. Sivanandan considers the repercussions of the Stephen Lawrence murder "which has put the question of institutionalised racism back on the agenda." He astutely warns, however, that: "We are in danger of being side-tracked... not so-much by a refusal to define institutional racism as a move to define it out of existence, as when, for example, Commissioner Condon interprets it to mean the collective guilt of all his officers, which he can then go on to show is a nonsense." Sivanandan goes on to applaud the way the case "mobilised so many people from so many walks of life" and reminds us that the "life-blood of any movement is its grass-roots campaigns."
Racism and the press in Blair's Britain. CARF No 48, (February/March) 1999, pp8-10. Prompted by the racist press campaign against the arrival of Roma refugees, fleeing persecution and death in the Czech and Slovak Republics, CARF urges anti-racists "to make campaigns against press racism a priority." The article also examines how the press "has sharpened its race reportage to reflect the cool "inclusive" nationalism of Blair's Middle England" while "beneath the surface the old hatreds remain..."
The London Monitor. The Monitoring Group, Issue 2 (Autumn) 1998. This issue contains articles on the racist killing of Michael Menson, the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, racial violence in west London and victims of domestic violence and racist immigration laws. Available from TMG, 14 Featherstone Road, Southall, Middlesex UB2 5AA.
Report on the United Kingdom. European Commission against Racism and Intolerance January 1999, pp24.
Evidence from the Institute of Race Relations to the Lawrence inquiry. Race and Class Vol 40 no 4 1995, pp65-74.
After Macpherson: the racism debate. CARF 49 (April/May) 1999, pp7-10. This piece looks at the issues of police accountability and stop and search powers "which are not being addressed" since the publication of Macpherson report.
Parliamentary debates
Stephen lawrence Report (Injunc