Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Race and Class Vol 50, 2 Oct-Dec 2008

Race and Class is justly celebrating its 50th anniversary. This issue (Vol 50, 2 Oct-Dec 2008) carries a re-print from Sivanandan's Race and Resisitance: The IRR Story, his pamphlet from 1974 that gives the history of the Insitute of Race Relations and explains the insurgency that led to a transition from a kind of Commonwealth liberalism to the current radicalism. And Jenny Bourne contributes a piece on 'The IRR: the story continues'.

As well as these two pieces are there are another two articles of great interest. Arun Kundnani writes about 'Islamism and the Roots of Liberal Rage' and Richard Phillips on the Muslim Association of Britain and the anti-war movement, especially the Stop the War Coalition, in 'Standing Together'. Kundnani (who's 2007 book The End of Tolerance is an important contribution to debates about racism) gives a detailed account of British Islamicist politics and the Islamophobic response coming from the likes of Paul Berman and Nick Cohen and how this shapes Ed Husein's account of The Islamist. Phillips provides a very useful and interview based account of one of the crucial and most controversial features of anti-war politics, the participation of the MAB in the Stop the War Coalition, and of special interest an account of how the MAB moved away from STW.

There's more, but that's enough to be going on with.

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