In March, The Observer newspaper published a survey of the experience of racist attacks in Britain today. This parallels a survey the same newspaper carried out in the run up to the previous general
No reader of this newspaper can be very surprised with the bald findings of their work -that reported violence against seekers is more widespread than ever.
Such attacks, which range from verbal abuse to murder and life-threatening assaults, are particularly widespread in rural areas where black people tend to live in only small numbers.
They are escalating in the context of:
• anti-Muslim propaganda associated with the "war on
which tends to rebound against all Asians or anyone wearing what is assumed to be Islamic dress
• anti-asylum seeker propaganda whipped up by the media and politicians which rebounds on all black people wherever they were born
• anti-traveller campaigns, compounded by the failure of the government to force concils to provide maintained sites for those that want them.
Six years after the Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which identified institutional racism in the police, a recent report published by the CRE concludes that little has changed. The BBC documentary, the Secret Policeman, revealed not only virulent racism but the infiltration of the police by the fascist BP.
Six years ago, Jack Straw, on behalf of New Labour, welcomed the Macpherson Report as an opportunity to tackle this problem. Since then New Labour has failed to implement the report's most important recommendations on the police and judicial
MATIONS! C
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FOR BLAIR lowed the expansion of the European Union to the east.
At the same time, politics within different black and ethic minority communities has shifted.
In the mid-1970s, in response to racism both from the state and on the streets, particularly young fought back and increasingly used the label "black" - to focus on their common experience of racism rather than the labels their parents had used which described the places their families had come from.
This was a powerful political move which drew on lessons from the black power movement in the United States but with a more inclusive dynamic which forged unity across different communities,
Over the next decades, this identification began to shift for a series of reasons, including the failure of the radical left to consistently champion anti-racist causes, and the concomitant growth of "identity politics".
One aspect of this was the growth in religious identification especially but not exclusively amongst the Muslim union campaigns in defence of particular asylum cases and
other instances of resistance, the movement is weaker.
We have again seen an Americanisation of black British politics - and in a situation where there is no parallel here the African American community in the US.
While all ethnic minority communities are the recipients of racism from the state and on the streets, there has also been the growth of racial tensions between communities which makes a unified fightback more difficult.
Today, the terror faced by people on the street, in the socalled criminal justice system, in their homes, workplaces, schools and colleges IS whipped up by politicians from all main stream parties-. and of course the far-right -and pandered to by most of the media.
Far from tackling racism New Labour has stoked it up. It has competed with the Tories in the demonisation of migrants and asylum seekers. Its so-called war on terror has demonised Muslim people to the of making "Muslim" synonymous with "terrorist".
The stop and search of Muslim and ethic minority people has increased. New Labour policy gives a false respectability to racism and succour to the far right in its various forms.
But we must not fall into the trap of seeing racism as something external to the working class who just have to understand the game their rulers are playing to reach the nirvana of enlightenment and throw off this prejudice.
For the left to effectively fight against racism, we have to understand its roots lie deep in the experience of imperialism and the divide and rule that this allows the ruling class to use against working people in and from different parts of the globe.
seekers
'held' in
unsuitable conditions Recent unannounced inspections of centres used to hold asylum seekers in transit to detention centres and to ports for deportation have found that no centre meets the minimum requirements in relation to child protection.
Officials carried out these inspections between June and October 2004. The holding centres, all run by private company GSL Ltd, (formerly Group 4) were: Communications House (Old Street, London), Lunar House (Croydon), Electric House (Croydon) and Dallas Court (Manchester).
The centres are all non-residential and attached to reporting centres which hold asylum seekers who have come to make a claim, report to immigration officers, or who have been picked up in 'enforcement operations. Asylum seekers are then moved to detention centres in the immigration estate or to ports for removal.
The recently published report found that:
• There was little external supervision or regular monitoring of the centres;
• Inadequate, or no, access to telephones to anyone they had been detained;
• No centre had child protection policies;
• Training in self-harm and suicide prevention was inadequate;
• No centre had approved fire or health and safety policies or procedures;
• There was too little for detainees to do, or read.
• There were no arrangements for detainees to arrange to recover or dispose of their property
These deficiencies are common to all the centres.
The reporf makes a series of recommendations to improve conditions - but only a change in policy which stops people fleeing for their lives being incarcerated where they have come to seek asylum will bring real justice.