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Art & Activism: Module 3

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On his way to becoming an international icon, the subversive and secretive street artist turned the art world upside-down

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Enoch Powell

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Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech: 50 years on

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Brexit 2016

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The Brexit vote aftermath, explained: a wild week in UK politics

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From Labour infighting to the end of Boris Johnson, the shocking EU referendum result set into motion a series of events that no one could have predicted

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What do young people think about Brexit?

24/7/16

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What do young people think about Brexit? - video

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75% of young voters in the UK voted to remain in the EU

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The UK has a long way to go before becoming a tolerant multicultural society _ The Independent

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The Immigration Act will introduce new sanctions on illegal working, prevent illegal migrants accessing services and introduce new measures to enforce immigration laws.

On Thursday 12 May 2016, the Immigration Bill received Royal Assent and will now be known as the Immigration Act 2016.

It will:

introduce new sanctions on illegal workers and rogue employers

provide better co-ordination of regulators that enforce workers' rights

prevent illegal migrants in the UK from accessing housing, driving licences and bank accounts

introduce new measures to make it easier to enforce immigration laws and remove illegal migrants

Measures in the act will be implemented over the coming months.

Documents

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The Immigration Act will introduce new sanctions on illegal working, prevent illegal migrants accessing services and introduce new measures to enforce immigration laws. On Thursday 12 May 2016, the Immigration Bill received Royal Assent and will now be known as the Immigration Act 2016.

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Diversity is Britain’s greatest strength. It must be at the top of the political agenda _ June Sarpong _ Opinion _ The Guardian

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Powell's speech today

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The real lesson of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech _ Letters _ Politics _ The Guardian

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Apparently, I am BAME. This places me as a contender for The Guardian 's BAME awards or the Jhalak prize, both aimed at BAME writers like myself. Ah, BAME - this acronym, which means black, Asian and minority ethnic, joins many other appellations offered over the decades (not all of them very nice), painstaking attempts to address the complexities of a multicultural society. But isn't it, despite its best intentions, rather limiting?

As a child in Zambia, I was a mwenye, if the speaker wished to be disparaging (it's an unflattering term that I won't translate). In most contexts my family was "Indian", while we regarded ourselves as Keralites (being Indian was secondary). Back in Kerala, if denoted by religion, we were proud to be "Syrian Christians", members of a Catholic congregation predating the arrival of Islam in India, formed by the disciple Doubting Thomas. Of course this meant we were a cut above those "Latin Christians" who had converted centuries after to curry favour with their Portuguese colonisers.

Later, as a teenager in a new Zimbabwe, I was once again "Indian" and, in a Harare which had been segregated under the Rhodesians, my family should thus have lived in the suburb of Belvedere, which was the Indian zone, rather than as we did on the edge of the "coloured" (mixed race) Braeside. I resisted these tortuous preoccupations with skin tones and bloodlines - and by my late teens, inspired by the rising tide which was turning against apartheid in South Africa, I was resolutely, in my eyes, "black".

But when I arrived in the UK, I was suddenly "Asian" - defined by a great continent, of which my home state in India was a mere slender slip of a thing. I was properly foreign, with a student visa stamped in my Indian passport, but my proficiency in English led many to believe I was "British Asian", alongside an assumption that I was second generation British, well versed in both Withnail and I and the career of reggae DJ Apache Indian, and full of fond memories of that incredible summer of 1976. I have done my homework since, as you can see.

I returned to Africa as a young woman, and when living and working in Mozambique, I was a monye - another disparaging term, not dissimilar to mwenye, but this sobriquet was seasoned with the erroneous assumptions of being Muslim and wealthy. Then, on to the tiny island of Bioko, part of Equatorial Guinea, where I was memorably known as la chica blanca - the white girl. Oh yes, and in Spain some years later, I was declared a hindou, the religious divisions that beset my homeland refreshingly ignored. Reader, an identity crisis in the making.
The journey so far
But, actually not. For, observers often overlook the ID and the ego: your own innate understanding of yourself. Are we swayed so much by what others call us? Probably not. Despite my nomadic childhood, my peripatetic young adulthood, my membership of a wider diaspora, angst over love affairs and migrations and appearance and employment, if I'm honest, I've always known myself: as impulsive, restless, often inept, but well-intentioned. Despite all the assumptions made in the geographical/religious/social "names" I have been given, these qualities best define who I am.

The journey I have taken to arrive at the roles I currently have - wife, mother, writer, teacher - baffles many people. My first novel (roundly rejected, then published independently) juxtaposes a young woman's passionate love affair in Mozambique with her arranged marriage in the US. My second, published as my debut by Polygon, follows a widower's return to India after 30 years in London. My most recent, The Inheritance, features an affair between a young student and an older lecturer, the latter born in Zimbabwe-then-Rhodesia.

As a writer, if I tap into my experiences of geographical dislocations and multilingual communities, the literary industry and reviewers often locate the story as one of identity crises, of a quest to belong, in which I give "a compelling insight into what it means to be rootless, with characters torn between the culture of their parents and that of the society in which they grew up". All true. But not the whole story and not a unique story by any means - instead, one that is shared by millions over a shifting, transient world, including readers of fiction. To a lot of us, the mobility and code-switching and reinvention are rather normal. What informs my sense of self? Whom I love, my children, the opinions and advice of the people who are important in my life.
BAME at a glance
It feels churlish to question BAME. But, if identifying a misrepresented or underrepresented minority, then why not just "minority"? The writer and historian Paul Gilroy, in his book There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack, has already queried the "imploded, narcissistic obsession with the minutiae of ethnicity". Why the splintering and separation? Does the "B" in BAME reference the Windrush generation or the recently arrived Somali, or neither, or both?

Are we in danger of engendering a hierarchy by stealth, so some minorities are considered more "minority" than others? As a "British Asian" (holding a British passport now, I have become one) I cannot claim to have the same experiences and reception as a Briton with Nigerian origins. But I might well share some of her experiences if she is a woman (like me), if she is a writer (like me), or if she is as scared of her teenage daughter as I am.

And if we take the "A" - what constitutes a (British) Asian? Not all of us emanate from the Punjab or Gujarat or Bangladesh, or made a prolonged stopover in east Africa. Not all of our parents arrived in the UK in the 1960s or 1970s. Not all of us live in a large, dense community, or speak its language - or even wish to. Not all of us dance bhangra or admire Bollywood. Our families may not all have served in or near the Raj and we may not have a strong memory of or feelings about partition.

Disappointed? You might well be, so embedded are the discourses surrounding British Asians. A discourse which can blind an "A" in BAME to the heterogeneity and diversity within - and which is perpetuated sometimes by these individuals themselves. I once watched on television a very well known British Asian comic whose punchline centred on the unlikelihood of finding an Indian at a Catholic school. The laughter from the audience only served to show how little they knew of the millions of Indians who are Catholic. But, more depressingly - neither it seemed, buying into the discourse, did the comic.

To note, the aforementioned Jhalak prize is the Hindi-Urdu word for "glance". Considering it is open to all BAME writers, the Bs and the MEs alongside the As, perhaps this is not the most inclusive title?

Perhaps rather than trying to solve issues about diversity by making diversity more explicit and more fractured at the expense of cohesion, we should simply acknowledge that it is, frankly, impossible to categorise a creature as self-reflective and self-concerned as a human being.
Sheena Kalayil is a senior language tutor at the University Language Centre at the University of Manchester. This article first appeared on The Conversation

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Apparently, I am BAME. This places me as a contender for The Guardian 's BAME awards or the Jhalak prize, both aimed at BAME writers like myself. Ah, BAME - this acronym, which means black, Asian and minority ethnic, joins many other appellations offered over the decades (not all of them very nice), painstaking attempts to address the complexities of a multicultural society.

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Nigeria's civil war explained - BBC News

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The

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The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history

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Crimewatch UK has ruined the countryside for us all banksy tate

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Graffiti artist gets his work hanging in the Tate _ Art and design _ The Guardian

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On 21 August 2018, the then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced that - after a review of 11,800 cases - 18 members of the Windrush generation who could have been wrongfully removed or detained would get a formal apology from the government.

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After World War Two, thousands of people moved to the UK from the Caribbean - and they were known as the Windrush generation.

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How Today’s Street Artists Are Mobilizing Activists

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How Today’s Street Artists Are Mobilizing Activists

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Israel-Gaza violence: The conflict explained

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Israel and the Palestinians: History of the conflict explained

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The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people is one of the longest-running in the world.

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Prof Kate Williams on "What will historians say about Brexit?"

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Prof Kate Williams on "What will historians say about Brexit?"

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How did we get here?

Where to start? There's geography: Britain is an island, and has been since geologically Brexiting from the continent 8,000 years ago. And history: unlike most of western Europe, it has not spent the past few centuries as a battlefield. Its history, rather, is global and imperial.

That, plus second world war heroics, has given it a profound sense of exceptionalism, reinforced by relative economic success and an overwhelmingly Eurosceptic popular press that adores dripping corrosive untruths about Brussels.

All this eventually combined to create the impression that the EU was essentially an anti-British plot: something that was somehow done to us. Hardline Tory Euroscepticism emerged with Margaret Thatcher's Bruges speech of 1988, hounded the party into opposition in the 1990s, and returned with a vengeance once Conservative rule was restored in 2010.

Amid the bitter fallout of the financial crash, mounting public concern over immigration and a political threat from the right in the form of Nigel Farage's anti-EU Ukip party led David Cameron to promise an in-out Brexit referendum if he won the 2015 election.

A largely populist, emotive and evidence-free campaign with the inspired slogan "Take back control" carried the day, with voters motivated by a wide range of factors opting by 52% to 48% in favour of the UK leaving the EU.

Three years of exhausting stalemate set in, as parliament refused to muster a majority in favour of a withdrawal deal mired in uncertainty chiefly over the future status of Northern Ireland.

So what broke the deadlock?

In short, a meeting in a wedding venue in the Wirral on a cold day in October 2019.

Boris Johnson and Irish premier Leo Varadkar broke the impasse with an agreement on what to do about the tricky land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

This frontier had become a 300-mile stumbling block for Theresa May, who was unable to broker an agreement on how to take Northern Ireland out of the EU without reinstating unworkable - and unpalatable - border checks.

Johnson and Varadkar essentially agreed to shift the border checks to between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The deal is not popular in Northern Ireland. But it is one that commands the support of the Conservative party and its 80-strong majority. So, after it was approved by MPs in December and is ratified in the European parliament and Westminster later this week, it will bring the final curtain down on 47 years of EU membership at 11pm on 31 January.

So is the UK out of the EU?

"Yes, but". At the stroke of 11pm on 31 January (midnight in Brussels), the UK ceases to be a member of the EU. The divorce is sealed. The only way back is an application to rejoin.

But many people may not notice the difference, as the UK enters an 11-month transition period to allow time to negotiate a new relationship. That means staying in the EU single market, its customs union and paying into its budget. British citizens can continue to live, work, study and retire to the EU, while EU27 nationals enjoy those reciprocal rights in the UK.

A more significant moment could be 1 January 2021, the UK's first day outside EU rules. Under the Brexit withdrawal agreement, that day could be delayed until 2022 or 2023, but Johnson has ruled out any extension of the transition period.

So what actually changes on Friday?

Life will carry on as normal for individuals with one key change - UK citizens, from 11pm, will no longer be EU citizens.

British passport holders will continue to be able to travel and work in the EU because the country remains in the single market for the transition period up to 31 December and the freedom of movement of goods, people, services and capital over borders applies until then.

The main change is legal and institutional. The article 50 process is over and non-reversible. Friday is the point of no return to the EU.

The UK will continue to follow EU rules, but have no say in making them. British ministers will play no part in the EU law-making process. The prime minister will cease attending EU summits to set the bloc's priorities.

The UK's 73 MEPs will be sent home, with one of the parliament's union jacks dispatched to the EU-funded House of History. The last UK commissioner, Julian King, has already said goodbye to Brussels. The EU will move on without Britain.

Over 47 years, British governments cheered liberal economic policies (above all the single market), promoted EU enlargement, invented regional policy subsidies for poorer regions, pushed reform of fisheries and farming, watered down some environmental protection laws (and championed others), while avoiding the euro and the Schengen passport-free zone.

The UK had "the best possible world", concluded one veteran French diplomat. Now it's gone.

And how is the country planning to mark it?

After almost half a century of membership, the departure from the EU is a historic event. But the prime minister has to be careful about not deepening the divisions in the country by being too celebratory and has instead chosen a series of toned-down events to mark the occasion.

Instead of Big Ben chiming out as the UK officially leaves at 11pm on Friday, a clock counting down be projected on to No 10 Downing Street.

And an effort to convey the Tory party's commitment to "levelling up" the country, a special cabinet meeting will be head in an as-yet-undisclosed location in the north of England.

The union jack will fly from all flagpoles in Parliament Square but there will be no emblematic lowering of the EU flag.

A commemorative Brexit 50p coin with the words "peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations" will come into circulation. New stamps marking the occasion are also in the pipeline.

Farage and the Leave Means Leave campaign are hosting a party for the countdown in Parliament Square, with Brexiters encouraged to go in fancy dress.

There is no official wake for remainers but Guardian readers have shared their private plans to mark the momentous day.

What will happen next?

There is a set timetable for the year with negotiations expected to formally kick off after 25 February.

By 1 July there must be a deal on fisheries and a UK decision on whether to ask for an extension to the transition period.

Johnson has urged Brussels to fast-track trade talks, but the EU moves at its own pace. Draft negotiating mandates are due to be produced by 1 February and EU ministers are expected to approve a mandate for the chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, on 25 February, allowing formal talks to begin soon after.

These talks will be unprecedented, and could cover a vast sweep of policies, including trade, security, foreign affairs, data, fisheries, cultural-educational ties and much more.

However, with just 11 months to negotiate, the chances are there will only be a "bare bones" deal likely covering trade, fisheries and security. If that is the case, then, at the end of 2020, there will be a lot of unfinished business. Differing aspirations for the trade talks have raised the prospect of a new no-deal scenario at the end of this year.

Leaving the transition period without a trade deal would not lead to the major diplomatic bust-up that failure on the Brexit withdrawal agreement would have done.

It would have huge domestic consequences, however, with representatives of the car industry, hospitals, agriculture and directors already expressing alarm over Sajid Javid's declaration that the UK will not follow EU rules, which will cause hold-ups in Dover and Calais and possibly lead to businesses quitting the country.

In the absence of a deal, the earlier accord on citizens' rights, money and the Irish border remains intact.

The special arrangements that apply in Northern Ireland will kick in, deal or no deal.

Both sides would brace themselves for the economic shock of trading on World Trade Organization terms, an outcome that is more damaging for the UK. But talks would roll on.

What are the big issues at stake here?

Top of the list is a trade deal to ensure the tariff and quota-free flow of goods between the EU and UK. But the EU will only agree to zero tariffs and zero quotas i f the UK pledges zero dumping - that is, not lowering social and environmental standards to outcompete the EU.

Negotiators will almost certainly clash over the EU's refusal to bring services into the trade deal, leaving the City of London reliant on a patchwork of market access agreements that can be withdrawn at any moment.

Another early fight will be over fish, as the EU seeks to link goods trade to maintaining the status quo on access to British waters, a demand seen as outrageous in London.

The non-trade topics sound easier, but are full of political landmines. For instance, agreeing a replacement for the European arrest warrant will require Germany to change its constitution. The UK will struggle to achieve the historic first of securing outside access to some EU crime-fighting databases.

What will happen to the economy?

It depends who you ask. In the short term, much of the risk seems to have been priced in, at least on currency markets, where sterling still languishes compared to where it was in June 2016. The stock market is well ahead.

A slightly more certain outlook could allow business investment to recover, after years of lagging behind Britain's G7 peers. But against that must be weighed the unpredictability of the looming trade talks.

What does Europe think about the big Brexit moment?

The EU has always expressed regret at Britain's decision to leave, repeating as long as legally possible throughout the Brexit process that the door was still open should the UK change its mind and, more recently, that it could always reapply after leaving.

But the bloc has also robustly defended its interests, in particular the integrity of the single market, insisting, with unexpected unanimity, that Britain could not "have its cake and eat it" by retaining the benefits of EU membership while diverging from its rules.

Frustration mounted at what the EU27 saw as the UK's reluctance to accept the real-world consequences of the vote to leave, its inability to agree on what kind of Brexit it wanted, and of course the long months of parliamentary psychodrama and paralysis that ensued.

Some countries (France) have taken a much tougher line than others; some (the Netherlands, Denmark) will suffer much more from a no-trade-deal Brexit. But the EU27 should maintain their unity during the future relationship talks: however much of a blow a hard Brexit may be, a weakened single market is a far more damaging prospect.

What does it all mean for Britons in Europe...

No one yet fully knows; much remains to be negotiated. The withdrawal agreement secures British citizens' basic rights to live and work within their EU host countries, a broadly similar post-Brexit status in each country, and EU-wide coordination on reciprocal healthcare and social security.

During the 11-month transition period, because the UK will remain in the single market, Britons will retain the freedom to move within the EU as before. After it ends they will have the right - providing they register, or in some countries apply, within a given time limit - to stay and, after a time, seek permanent residence.

But when the UK leaves the single market after transition, certain rights will fall away, including freedom of movement. This is a major blow for the 80% of UK citizens on the continent who are of working age or younger; they fought hard to lock free movement into the withdrawal agreement, but the EU decided this should be part of the trade talks.

Some rights within the gift of the UK are not yet assured either, such as home fees for British students on the continent who wish to study in the UK, and family reunification rights for Britons returning to the UK with EU family members.

...and for Europeans in Britain?

Many British voters who were passionate about staying in the EU will be feeling upset and emotional at 11pm on 31 January. While life goes on as normal in general, it is the point of no return and from 1 February British citizens will no longer be EU citizens.

But for EU nationals in the UK the moment will cast a long shadow of material consequence. While the government has given assurances that they will not face deportation or loss of social or employment rights, the bond of trust with the government is weak, not least because of the Windrush scandal.

And for the rest of the world?

Although it will certainly affect the UK more than the EU in almost every respect, Brexit will undoubtedly weaken the EU economically and politically. Britain was the EU's second-biggest economy, a major net budget contributor, key military force and one of the bloc's two nuclear powers and permanent UN security council members.

The EU's institutions may have withstood the test of Brexit better than expected so far, and support for the EU among its citizens has generally increased. Brexit has also proved a salutary lesson, with almost all the bloc's nationalist and Eurosceptic parties dropping promises to follow the UK's example.

But the UK's departure has distracted attention from a number of other big and urgent problems, including the climate crisis, and settling on the new relationship is also likely to be a messy and debilitating process. Longer term, in the balance of global powers a smaller, fractured Europe is obviously a weaker Europe.

In the face of an aggressive China and an increasingly protectionist and unpredictable US, the EU will need to be significantly tougher, with a centralised foreign policy and stronger rules ensuring European companies can compete with overseas rivals. Brexit makes that imperative even more urgent.

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Brexit explained: how it happened and what comes next

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Confused by the whole 1,300-day Brexit saga? This summary sets out how and why it happened, and what can be expected in 2020 and beyond

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Banksy's Love is in the Bin sells for record £16m

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"It is not a great painting that can be compared to a late Rembrandt, or a sculpture to sit alongside Michelangelo's David, but in terms of conceptual art emanating from [Marcel] Duchamp's Dadaist sensibility, it is exceptional," he added.

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Banksy's Love is in the Bin sells for record £16m

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"It is not a great painting that can be compared to a late Rembrandt, or a sculpture to sit alongside Michelangelo's David, but in terms of conceptual art emanating from [Marcel] Duchamp's Dadaist sensibility, it is exceptional," he added.

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A poem that illustrates how diverse  British society is  and how to achieve social cohesion.

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The British- serves 60 million B Zephaniah