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This Saturday (March 18), if you’re in London or able to get to the capital, I do hope you’ll come to a national March Against Racism demo, beginning at noon by the BBC in Portland Place, London W1A 1AA, with other demos taking place in Glasgow, beginning at 11am in Holland St, and Cardiff, beginning at 11am in Grange Gardens. The Facebook page for the London event is here.

The protests have been called to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (which is on March 21), and also because it is the week before Theresa May intends, suicidally, to trigger Article 50, beginning the disastrous two-year process of us leaving the EU. Please also note that there is another national demo, against Brexit, on Saturday March 25, which I’ll be writing more about soon.

Standing up to racism is hugely important, as was made clear last June with the narrow victory for the Leave campaign in the EU referendum. Amongst the misplaced reasons for the Leave vote, which included some spurious notion of British sovereignty, was a toxic mix of racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, stirred up for years by politicians and the media, and by fears and misconceptions prompted by increased immigration — a phenomenon not unique to the UK, of course, but shared by all the richer countries of the west — that were, lamentably, unchallenged. Read the rest of this entry »

Please sign the new e-petition to the British government, “Britain must not turn its back on child refugees in Europe”, which has secured over 25,000 signatures in 24 hours.

On Monday evening, the cruelty of this government was, yet again, laid bare, when, by 294 votes to 276, MPs voted against an amendment to the Immigration Bill tabled by Lord Alf Dubs, who, as the BBC described it, “arrived in the UK in 1939 as a six-year-old refugee fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.”

The amendment, calling on the government to take in 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children, already in Europe, who have relatives in the UK, was defeated “after the Home Office persuaded most potential Tory rebels that it was doing enough to help child refugees in Syria and neighbouring countries,” as the Guardian described it.

Home Office minister James Brokenshire said during the debate that the government could not support a policy that would “inadvertently create a situation in which families see an advantage in sending children alone, ahead and in the hands of traffickers, putting their lives at risk by attempting treacherous sea crossings to Europe which would be the worst of all outcomes.”

However, Keir Starmer, the shadow immigration minister, disagreed, and voiced the concerns I and numerous other British citizens have. “What it boils down to,” Starmer stated, “is to say we must abandon these children to their fate, lest if we do anything, others may follow in their footsteps. I am not prepared to take that position.” Read the rest of this entry »