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SubscriptionsColumn / Investigation: Identity, Empire & the Culture War
Byline Times explores the weaponisation of Britain’s past as a key tool in a dark project of division and distraction
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Beyond Exceptional: The Etonian English Imperialism at the Heart of a Deadly COVID-19 Crisis
With one of the highest Coronavirus death rates in the world, the UK has proven itself to be exceptional. But its problems go beyond shallow notions of complacency and are rooted in deep-seated structural and cultural oppression
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The Coronavirus Crisis: The UK’s Forgotten Asylum Seekers
Cut off from public funds, with rising food prices and diminishing charity support, Jonathan Fenton Harvey reveals the plight of refugees during the COVID-19 lockdown.
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The Ungrateful Country
First published in 2016 in The Good Immigrant, a book bringing together writers exploring what it means to be black, Asian and minority ethnic today, in this essay, Musa Okwonga explores his complex relationship with Britain – and himself.
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The Coronavirus Crisis: China Capitalises on COVID-19 By Blaming Foreigners
CJ Werleman looks at the international conspiracy theories being thrown around about the Coronavirus and how the Chinese Communist Party is using the pandemic to further its geopolitical goals.
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Why I Refused to Go to Chatham House and Hear the Polish Katie Hopkins Speak
Rafal Pankowski laments how a great institution seems to be giving a voice to xenophobia.
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‘Downstream of Culture’: How Identity Politics Swept Labour Away
While the right has turned politics into a culture war, the left has yet to tackle the politics of culture, says Hardeep Matharu.
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Priti Patel is a Product of her Own PR
Otto English charts the rise of the controversial Home Secretary and explores the ambition which could be placing her eyes on the top job next
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The Great British Immigration Myth
With the Government’s announcement of a new points-based immigration system, James Melville considers how people’s fears of those entering the country have been fuelled by political decision-making.
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From Sajid Javid to Rishi Sunak: Boris Johnson’s New Version of the Old Colonial ‘Divide and Rule’ Game
Hardeep Matharu explores what the rise of Conservative ethnic minority politicians reveals about the party’s approach to race and diversity.
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The Day I Discovered My Ancestor was a Slave Owner
Stephen Colegrave uncovers a family secret and realises how easy it is to whitewash our slavery roots.
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Editorial: The Battle of Brexit May be Lost, but the Cultural and Constitutional War Goes On
The problem is not in the stars of the EU flag but in ourselves Brexit is not the cause of British decline, but a symptom. Every institution that has failed over the past three years since the EU Referendum – from our electoral laws to our oligarch-captured media, a supine BBC and the dominance of a…
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History Isn’t ‘Woke’ – It’s the Best Defence we have Against Tyranny and Hate
Hardeep Matharu explains how Laurence Fox’s myopia about the role of Sikh soldiers in World War One is a wider British problem of imperial amnesia.
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‘Refusal of Corbyn’s Labour to Fight Back Against the Right’s Culture War a Big Mistake’
Hardeep Matharu speaks to Faiza Shaheen, a Labour candidate in the General Election, about why the British left cannot simply bury its head in the sand over the dangerous politicisation of race and class.
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This is My England, and Yours: Reclaiming Englishness
Now that English Nationalism has been unleashed, Peter Jukes argues that we must all try to restore England’s buried civic tolerance and historic diversity.
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The Man in the High Castle: How to Evict the Conservatives from their Nationalist Redoubt
While Boris Johnson broke all the rules in the 2019 General Election, his opponents must create new networks to bring him to book.
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‘A Sikh Man Standing Up for Muslim Women Mattered in Exposing Boris Johnson’s Divide and Rule Dog Whistle Politics’
Hardeep Matharu sat down with MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi to discuss his passionate taking down of the Prime Minister and his derogatory comparisons labelling Muslim women as letter boxes and bank robbers.
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The Dangers of Priti Patel’s Racial Gatekeeping
Musa Okwonga examines how politicians with immigrant backgrounds are using this identity to win popular support for regressive policies against minority groups.
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How We Came to Forget: Imperial Amnesia Helped Propel Brexit – It’s Time to Set the Historical Record Straight
Hardeep Matharu explores a new National Trust project designed to shed light on the colonial roots of country houses and the need for a more honest, less mythical discussion of Britain’s past.
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‘Brexiters Used Empire in the Mind to Weaponise People’s Prejudices and Fantasies’
A sense of British exceptionalism based on our colonial past is “alive and kicking” in hearts and minds – and we must make ourselves aware of it, warns Lord Victor Adebowale
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Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Brexiters’ Persistent Myths of Empire
Britain has not really faced up to losing an empire and the unresolved cost is playing out through the traumas of Brexit.
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How the Shooting Down of a Malaysian Jet Reveals Corbyn’s Putin Problem
Paul Canning reveals the Labour Leadership’s alarming tendency to mitigate the crimes of the Kremlin.
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The Myths of Immigration Just Don’t Add Up
Jonathan Portes, Professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, on why the UK has long been a country shaped by immigration and immigrants – and how the reality of this is not as bad as the rhetoric portrays.
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Brexit and Empire: Nostalgia for a Nation that Never Was is Driving Britain over a Cliff
With the likely next Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, praising Britain today as the ‘Greatest Place on Earth’ all the unlearned lessons of Empire are coming back to haunt us.
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Why do the British Not Eat Horsemeat? How Icons of the British Countryside have been Weaponised by the Brexit Establishment
Iain Overton on where power has always resided in Britain – and why the horse is its ultimate symbol.
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Divide and Rule: ‘Colonial Mindsets Fuelling Islamophobia and Racism’
Hardeep Matharu speaks to Tahir Butt, a Muslim campaigner who spent nearly 30 years in the police, about his experience of racism and identity.
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MYTH AND TABOO: Can Integration Ever Solve Racism?
Far from being topics of taboo, integration, immigration and racism have been politicised for years in dishonest narratives. Are Tony Blair and other centrists going down the same path again as populism rears its ugly head once more?
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The Global Terror Network – From the Christchurch Mosque to the San Diego Synagogue
CJ Werleman on the spreading ‘white genocide’ ideology and online radicalisation behind the rising tide of Far-right terror attacks.
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One Hundred Years On: Government Concerned about ‘Financial Implications’ of Apologising for 1919 Amritsar Massacre
100 years after the horrific expression of British brutality in India, the Government still appears unwilling to formally apologise for the killings in Jallianwala Bagh.
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The Story of Brexit is the Story of Empire: Why Did Asian Immigrants Vote to Leave the EU?
The complicated love-hate relationship of immigrants from former colonies with the British Empire cannot be ignored if lessons are to be learned in post-Brexit Britain, says Hardeep Matharu
