Feature

Behind China’s much vaunted economic miracle lies a tale of exploitation and resistance. The wealth of the country’s new billionaires was created by the labour of millions of migrant workers, working exhaustingly long hours for little pay, if they ever got paid at all, in some of the most dangerous conditions in the world. But the bosses, including those of the multinational corporations who often reap the biggest profits, haven’t had it all their own way. In the face of government repression workers have learnt to organise and fight for their rights.

During the latter part of the 19th century and first years of the 20th, the European country which witnessed the most severe antisemitism was not Germany but the Russian Empire. The Tsarist state police would regularly organise pogroms during which drunken Black Hundreds or Cossacks would attack Jewish villages, murdering Jews and destroying their property.

The government’s Brexit secretary David Davis hailed the transition deal signed with the EU’s Michel Barnier in March as a major breakthrough. But it didn’t come without the Tories backing down from a series of positions and promises it had made about what would be acceptable.

As the Financial Time said, “Monday’s announcement showed that the EU, without a great deal of cunning, had managed to call multiple bluffs from Brexiters about the transition period.”

In this centenary year of the Representation of the People’s Act — when some women, those aged over 30 who met specific property qualifications, were first granted the right to vote — much has been made of how far we have come.

The presidential elections in Russia this month will see the continuation of Putin’s rule in Russia for another six years. Such has been Putin’s grip over the Russian political institutions and the media throughout his reign that any other result would be unthinkable.

Back in 1999, as the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle was shut down in a cloud of teargas, a global anti-capitalist movement was born. The best of the socialist left sought to engage with this movement, while also showing that it had something to contribute.

Growing up I always held socialist views, but believed you could not be a socialist and a Muslim, nor could you advocate women’s liberation and wear the hijab. This belief is common among Muslims, based on the assumption that in order to be a socialist you must be an atheist, as all socialists hate religion.

The acquittal last month of the last two defendants in the group of Asian men known as the Rotherham 12 is probably the most important victory in the fight against racism and fascism in Britain for decades. The impact of such a decisive triumph for anti-racists has not been felt since Southall in the late 1970s or the Bradford 12 in the early 1980s. It is a victory for the whole of the working class.

"What, what nigger?” Those were probably the very last words that 18 year old black student Stephen Lawrence heard as he waited for a bus with his friend Duwayne Brooks in Well Hall Road, Eltham, on 22 April 1993. Seconds later he was attacked by a knife wielding gang of racists. He tried to escape and managed to run some distance before collapsing in a pool of his own blood.

Why do you begin Bordered Lives by questioning the term “refugee crisis”?

I think the media language that we have accepted (and often adopted as our own) has in many ways shaped the way we understand issues relating to refugees. “Refugee crisis” has been the media term by which we’re made to think about displaced people in the world. My biggest problem with the term is that it suggests “us” and “them”, refugees being the “problem” for “us” to find solutions to. That seems to be the way many in this country look at migration and movement of people.