The Commonwealth - Don McKinnon and Kwasi Kwarteng
- Duration:
- 43 minutes
- First broadcast:
- Monday 25 February 2013
LISTEN
On Start the Week Bridget Kendall discusses the role and future of the Commonwealth. As its Secretary-General at the turn of the century, Sir Don McKinnon reveals its inner workings. But the journalist Frances Harrison is critical of the organisation for failing to challenge human rights abuses. The MP Kwasi Kwarteng questions whether the Commonwealth can ever shed the baggage of Empire, and Sir Ronald Sanders asks if it can survive the rise of China.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
The Commonwealth - Don McKinnon and Kwasi Kwarteng
- Duration:
- 43 minutes
- First broadcast:
- Monday 25 February 2013
On Start the Week Bridget Kendall discusses the role and future of the Commonwealth. As its Secretary-General at the turn of the century, Sir Don McKinnon reveals its inner workings. But the journalist Frances Harrison is critical of the organisation for failing to challenge human rights abuses. The MP Kwasi Kwarteng questions whether the Commonwealth can ever shed the baggage of Empire, and Sir Ronald Sanders asks if it can survive the rise of China.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
Secularism And Communalism In The UK
Prof. Chetan Bhatt
During the period of the mass black, Asian and antiracist movements of the 1970s and 1980s, a common slogan that was used in a number of campaigns was ‘We are here because you were there’. That very simple slogan was necessary because it said that migration in the 1960s and 1970s – against which there was a powerful mobilisation by some mainstream politicians and neo-fascist movements – was part of an historical process. The histories of migrants did not begin in Britain but were shaped by Empire, plantation slavery, expansion and exploitation.
This demand that black and Asian migration to the UK should be seen as part of an historical process that includes colonial history was important because racism effectively denies that history. However, some varieties of UK anti-racism and multiculturalism also remove minorities from historical processes. Histories have many consequences that travel well beyond the mono-dimensional characterisation of people simply as victims of racism, producers of colourful cultures, or people who only become significant when they need help.
The human and political geography of movements of people across the globe today is very different from that of post-Second World War postcolonial migration. It often occurs through the paths and enclaves that sanctuary seekers are forced to use or because of other varied movements of people. What used to be called ‘settlement’ is a dynamic and transnational process that can include further and complex movements and transnational family associations. However, our political languages are still controlled by concepts, some from the 1950s and 1960s, regarding ‘immigration’, ‘host’, ‘minority’, ‘tolerance’, ‘integration’, ‘assimilation’, ‘accommodation’, ‘incorporation’ and the like. Read More
