Tag: britain

LOOKING CLOSER TO HOME

June 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my opening keynote talk at the ‘Dehumanising the Other’ conference at the CEU in Budapest. It was called ‘Looking Closer to Home: How mainstream politics paved the way for the demonization of migrants’. A shorter version of the talk was published as the Sunday essay in the Observer on 10 June 2018. In October 2013, a ship carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Some 300 people drowned. It was not the first […]

Categories: International, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: africa, britain, emmanuel macron, european union, far right, fortress europe, greece, immigration, italy, lesbos, liberalism, populism, racism, theresa may, victor orban, windrush generation

OSMAN KAVALA AND THE IMPRISONMENT OF HOPE

May 21, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the imprisonment of Osman Kavala and what it signals about repression in Turkey, was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Meghan Markle and why making inherited privilege more ‘diverse’ is not cause for celebration.) It was published in the Observer, 20 May 2018, under the headline ‘In Erdoğan’s warped world, even intellectuals are now “terrorists”‘. Imagine a seminar in London. Around the table are Blairites and Corbynistas, […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: britain, erdogan, free speech, osman kavala, turkey, war on terror

ALTAB ALI AND BRICK LANE, 1978

May 5, 2018 by Kenan Malik

40 years ago, on 4 May 1978, a Bengali garment worker in East London was brutally murdered by racist thugs. It was but the latest in a series of racist attacks on Asians, at a time when racism in Britain was vicious, visceral and often fatal. Altab Ali’s murder became, however, a spark for new anti-racist mobilization, especially among local Bengali communities. Ten days after the murder, Brick Lane and surrounding areas closed down as 7000 people, mainly Bengalis, marched […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: altar ali, anti-racism, brick lane, britain, racism, tower hamlets

REMEMBERING THE DEATH OF JOY GARDNER

April 20, 2018 by Kenan Malik

The scandal of the government treatment of the Windrush generation has caused outrage. I have written an essay, for my column in the Observer tomorrow, putting the scandal in the context of the history of elite attitudes to race and immigration in the postwar period. It is worth remembering that there is a long history to the callous, cruel and inhuman treatment of migrants deemed ‘illegal’. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Joy Gardner, killed during […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, immigration, joy gardner, racism

BRITAIN AND THE COVERT WAR IN YEMEN 1962-70

January 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This is an extract from Mark Curtis’ superb book Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses. It tells the story of Britain’s secret war in Yemen in the 1960s to restore the monarchy and Saudi control, and to protect its interests, and military base, in the region. Some 200,000 people were killed in the war. Curtis’study provides essential background to today’s conflict in Yemen. It was, Harold Macmillan observed at the time, ‘repugnant to political equity and prudence alike that […]

Categories: Britain, History, International • Tags: britain, british imperialism, imperialism, mark curtis, saudi arabia, yemen

FROM LEFT RADICALISM TO RADICAL ISLAMISM

May 28, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 28 May 2017, under the headline ‘How did the left radicalism of my Manchester youth give way to Islamism?’ Were I 20 today, would I be attracted to Islamism or desire to become a soldier of Islamic State? It seems shocking, even insulting, especially to those who lost their lives in the Manchester Arena on Monday night, just to ask that question. It seems more shocking still not simply to give a resounding ‘No’ as an answer, […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: asian youth movement, britain, british asians, british politics, france, grunwick, islamism, jihadism, left, muslims, working class

LA FRANCE ET L’ANGLETERRE AU BORD DE LA CRISE DE NERFS

January 22, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The French journalist Ilana Navaro has made a superb four-part radio documentary series for France Culture on social policies towards immigration and integration in France and Britain. Entitled La France et L’Angleterre au born de la crise de nerfs (‘France and England on the edge of a nervous breakdown’), the documentary visits a ‘theological cafe’ in Paris and the Cambridge Muslim College, a sharia council in Birmingham, Goutte d’Or, an area in the 18th arrondissement in Paris with a large […]

Categories: International, Multiculturalism • Tags: assimilationism, britain, france, ilana navaro, integration, islam, multiculturalism, sharia

ON THE GRAMMAR SCHOOLS DEBATE

October 20, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the International New York Times on the grammar schools debate in Britain. (I cannot publish my INYT articles on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published in the newspaper.) It was originally published under the headline ‘Why Britain Fails in Class’. Few people could have predicted the first policy on which Britain’s new prime minister would take a stand. It is none of the issues that have […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: britain, british politics, conservatives, education, equality, grammar schools, inequality, left, social mobility, theresa may, ukip, working class

BEYOND FEAR AND INDIFFERENCE

May 15, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This essay on Sadiq Khan’s London Mayoral victory, Trevor Philips’new pamphlet on diversity and the public discourse on Islam was published in the Observer, under the headline ‘Muslims are not a ‘different’ class of Briton: we’re as messy as the rest’. ‘It shows it is possible to be Muslim and a Westerner. Western values are compatible with Islam.’ So said Sadiq Khan after his victory as London mayor. Trevor Phillips, former chief of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, takes […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Multiculturalism • Tags: britain, british asians, free speech, identity politics, islam, muslims, sadiq khan, trevor phillips

FROM THE ARCHIVES: MY FIRST ARTICLE FOR THE INDEPENDENT

February 14, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This week the Independent announced that it would cease its print edition next month and will be appear purely in digital form. Dozens of redundancies are expected. The Independent was born in an era of great transformation, political, social, and technological. It came to life just as the postwar order was unraveling; three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and at a time when the old ideological politics were being unpicked, and the meaning of ‘right’ and ‘left’ […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, germany, immigration, migration crisis, nazism, racism, refugees

CAN SOCIAL COHESION BE IMPOSED?

November 7, 2015 by Kenan Malik

These are my introductory comments to a debate on ‘Can Social Cohesion be Imposed?’, part of the ‘Diverse or Divided?’ conference organised by the IPPR and Canada House, London. Other speakers in the debate were Julian Baginni, Marina Jimenez and Catherine Fieschi. Let me begin with a newspaper account of life in East London: The Bethnal Green poor are a caste apart, a race of whom we know nothing, whose lives are of quite different complexion from ours, persons with […]

Categories: Britain, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, britishness, diversity, identity politics, immigration, multiculturalism, social cohesion, working class

IS EASTERN EUROPE MORE RACIST THAN THE WEST?

November 3, 2015 by Kenan Malik

An extract from my latest column for the International New York Times on the migrant crisis and the supposed ‘cultural gap’ between Eastern and Western Europe: Judging by the newspapers lately, one might be forgiven for thinking that until Hungary started putting up fences, the European Union had open borders and welcomed migrants with kindness and gentleness. In fact, over the past 25 years, the union has constructed what many justly call ‘Fortress Europe’, keeping out migrants not with fences […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: britain, eastern europe, european union, fortress europe, hungary, immigration, racism, xenophobia

LIVING IN DIVERSITY

May 4, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk I gave at a conference last month in Oslo on diversity, faith and extremism. How should we live in a diverse society? It is a question that has been asked with increasing urgency in recent years as the question of immigration, and in particular of Islamic immigration, has taken centre stage in public debate. At the heart of this question lies the dilemma of how Western societies should respond to the influx of […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: assimilation, britain, civil society, cultural diversity, europe, france, free speech, immigration, integration, islam, islamism, jihadism, karim miske, multiculturalism, racism

THE AGE OF ADOLESCENCE

April 17, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my article on the Jeremy Clarkson debate, published last month in the International New York Times. (I cannot contractually publish the full article on Pandaemonium until a month after it is published on the NYT.) The middle-aged presenter of a British TV show about cars has been suspended by the BBC for allegedly hitting his producer during a ‘fracas’. Big deal, you might think; hardly global news. Except that, for many people, the suspension last week […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: bbc, britain, free speech, jeremy clarkson, racism, top gear

BIGOT OR REBEL?

March 18, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is on the furore over Jeremy Clarkson’s suspension from Top Gear, published in the INYT under the headline ‘Top Gear hits rock bottom’. Here are the opening paragraphs. You can read the full article in the INYT. The middle-aged presenter of a British TV show about cars has been suspended by the BBC for allegedly hitting his producer during a ‘fracas’. Big deal, you might think; hardly global news. Except that, for many […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: bbc, britain, free speech, jeremy clarkson, top gear

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