Hassan Mahamdallie

On 5 May 1916 an advance party of two seaborne companies of US marines landed on the coast of the Caribbean republic of Santo Domingo (also known as the Dominican Republic) with orders to secure US interests. Ten days later they had taken over the capital city. They would not leave for another eight years, by which time they had made sure that Santo Domingo’s freedom had been subjugated to the political and economic imperatives of the US.

The demonisation and securitisation of Britain’s Muslims are accelerating at a bewildering pace. What prime minister David Cameron meant in his speech in Munich in February 2011 by his call to flex “muscular liberalism” in response to the so-called “war on terror” is becoming clearer by the day. As is the grotesque myth of “superior” Western liberal ideas and values continually vaunted by politicians in Europe and on both sides of the Atlantic.

Exhibit B, a walk-through art installation featuring black performers and looking at the themes of “racism, ‘othering’ and the colonial history of Europe in Africa”, was due to have a short run in London mounted by the Barbican arts centre. It was cancelled at the end of September amid a storm of protest.

Christian Hogsbjerg has done a magnificent job in piecing together the story of the revolutionary seaman Chris Braithwaite.

Along the way Hogsbjerg shines light on a generation of radical fighters against racism, injustice and exploitation, their lives and political careers sandwiched between not only two world wars, but the spark of light generated by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the crushing darkness of Stalinism.

How has racism changed in Britain over the past 30 to 40 years and what's been driving those changes?

Let's go back a little further - let's talk about the past 50 years. If you think about the first generation of West Indian and Asian and other groups that came to Britain to fill the labour shortages and rebuild Britain after the Second World War, they experienced naked racism.

Twenty years ago this month Stephen Lawrence was struck down by racist attackers and died on the pavement in Well Hall Road in south east London.

Although two of his attackers have been jailed for murder, at least another three are walking free, as are all those who covered up for them.

Dr Richard Stone, one of the three advisors who assisted Sir William Macpherson in the official inquiry into the Metropolitan Police's role in the failure to catch the killers, has written a book of personal reflections on his involvement in the case.

David Cameron travelled to Munich, of all places, at the start of last month to make a speech attacking our multicultural society and the more than one million Muslims living in it.

Why was this speech of such significance? It could be argued that Cameron was only travelling further down a road mapped out by Tony Blair. The deafening silence from New Labour, apart from frontbenchers distancing themselves from MP Sadiq Khan's condemnation of Cameron, was indeed wretched.

Frank Crichlow

I've been in Notting Hill for quite a long time now, since the 1950s. I first came in contact with Notting Hill police station when I opened a cafe called the Rio in Westbourne Park. A lot of people used to go there.

Manning Marable is one of the most valuable analysts of race and racism in the US today. He is the author of a series of books tracing the changing contours of "the colour line", which combine a radical viewpoint with a wealth of empirical data and historical depth. Beyond Black and White is an argument for a transformative solution to racism.

One of the most revealing and alarming aspects of A Suitable Enemy is the way in which it describes the same phenomenon erupting across western Europe, country by country, maybe at different speeds, but all moving towards the same barbaric endpoint.