News

Update: The Pastor will not be attending the EDL meeting. He has accepted an alternative invite by the National Front.

Original: Recent news that Terry Jones, the anti-Muslim American Pastor who threatened to burn the Koran is to address an English Defence League rally in February has re-ignited fears that gangs of racist thugs are gaining prominence.

EDL marches have become synonymous with racist violence, often propagated by football hooligans.

The last time the EDL marched through Luton, 250 of them went on the ­rampage in an Asian area of the town. Shop windows were smashed, cars overturned and a number of people were attacked.

Katie Price is many things to many people but the verbal attack on her mixed heritage son Harvey, who has a number of medical conditions including septo-optic dysplasia and autism, is despicable on so many levels.

My Colleague on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Geraldine Van Bueren has written why we celebrate this day and why the Commission has focused to highlight those advocates who seek to defend the Rights of workers in the public and voluntary sector, and in the community.

When we think of icons of international Human Rights individuals such as Dr Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, or the Burmese campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi come to mind.

Operation Black Vote and Lewisham Council have teamed up again to offer a unique programme to address the deficit of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities in civic and political life.

The representation of BME individuals at every level of public life is woefully low, from the House of Commons to the highest tiers of Judicial Office. In Lewisham, 34% of the borough is from a Black and Minority Ethnic background and yet only 8 of the 54 councillors are BME.

That’s the question that will undoubtedly be asked following the release of the film in the UK today (10th December).

Perry’s movie is based on the poem ‘For coloured girls who considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf’ by Ntozake Shange and features a stellar cast of black actors including Janet Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Devine, Whoopi Goldberg and British actor Thandie Newton.

Some mainstream European politicians have been agonising recently about the growth of racist far right parties, which are currently propping up, or part of centre-right coalitions in Europe's most liberal countries, Holland and Denmark, and which have recently been part of right wing coalitions in more conservative countries like Italy and Austria.

Diplomatic cables leaked by the whistle blowing website Wikileaks have confirmed that western leaders were supportive of a plot to oust Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.

The leak lends credence to Mugabe’s allegations that there was a plot to remove him supported by Western leaders.

According to classified US documents, a coup in the southern African country would have been supported by the UN secretary general.