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SubscriptionsColumn / Investigation: Strangers & Neighbours
Byline Times analysis of community cohesion and sectarian attempts to break it through the racialisation of poverty, Islamophobia as policy, the asylum system as spectacle, and the culture war waged against plural Britain.
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Revealed: Boris Johnson’s Hidden History of Islamophobia
Iggy Ostanin unearths troubling new evidence of anti-Muslim racism in a rediscovered personal blog of Britain’s Prime Minister
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To Alabama and Back: The Memorial that Holds Up a Mirror to Racism
Hannah Charlton takes a journey into America’s dark history of segregation and subjugation of black communities and wonders how Britain could do the same
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OUR LIVES MATTER: I Have Died Many Times – A Black Woman’s Experience
Chantel K Watts shares her thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement and asks: who is standing up for black women?
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Rashford and Racism: Not Just A Political Football
Daniel Harris explains why the star footballer’s fight to right injustices provides an example for us all of how to delve into pain and confront the truth
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Johnson & Brexit – Patronising Etonian Alienates the World
The Prime Minister’s attempts to show his understanding of Aussies and New Zealanders fell flat this week – as have his attempts for post-Brexit trade
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OUR LIVES MATTER: “I Can’t Breathe” & the Syrian Living Dead
In the second of Byline Times’ new series dedicated to giving a platform to new voices of colour, Amina Shareef explains how George Floyd’s last words resonate across the world
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Static Statues Can’t Change their Position – But We Can
Beyond offensive memorials being removed, real progress will come when we talk to each other and make it our focus to understand the other side, writes Bonnie Greer
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Statue Battles: The Counter-Protestors at War with Themselves
Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s former producer explains how the hard-right has chosen a fight it cannot win and why Boris Johnson cannot cut it completely loose
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Priti Patel Cannot Make Herself a Poster Girl for a ‘Non-Racist Britain’
By using herself as an example of how Britain is not a racist a country, the Home Secretary is blind to how such thinking keeps structural inequality firmly in place against others from minority communities, writes Hardeep Matharu
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Infection & Revolution: What Can We Learn from the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’?
From economic aftershocks to social unrest, racial discrimination and healthcare inequality, Otto English predicts a pandemic will transform this century just as it did the last
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Food Standards and a Top Brexiter’s Fishy Business
Looking forward to Jersey Royal potatoes fresh from New Jersey? Henry Dyer reports on how US/UK trade talks could endanger British food standards
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OUR LIVES MATTER: An Education in Institutional Racism
In the first of Byline Times’ new series dedicated to giving a platform to new voices of colour, Cheryl Diane Parkinson shares her experiences of confronting structural prejudice within schools
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Quarantining Travellers Is Too Much Too Late
Dr John Ashton, a former director of public health, warns that the Government must get back on track with its evidence base and messaging around the pandemic if it is to be prepared for a second wave.
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Tear Down the Tyrants, Reappraise the Past
As the Black Lives Matter movement removes a symbol of slavery and Empire from the heart of Bristol, Otto English explains why misplaced reverence for these relics of a shameful past has had its time
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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 Mainstream Media Needs to Give Learning Disabled People their Own Voice
Saba Salman calls on the mainstream media to more accurately reflect the lives of those with learning disabilities and explains how her new book of essays, written by the learning disabled, aims to change the narrative.
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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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Listen to Joey: How the Most Vulnerable Can Show Us the Way in this Crisis
Stephen Unwin shares his experience of not being able to see his son Joey due to the COVID-19 outbreak and what he believes Joey can teach us in moments such as these.
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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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Eugenics and the Intellectuals
Stephen Unwin explores how some of the most civilised and intelligent thinkers have supported one of the most dark and barbaric philosophies in modern history.
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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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Speaking Another Language: A Social Media Tale
Otto English takes us on a journey through the history of the English language, the exceptionalism of Empire and the furious and curious of Twitter.
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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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Brexitannia: The British Identity Crisis
Brexit has become an identity conflict in Britain. It is Danny Boyle’s London Olympics Opening Ceremony versus the Last Night of the Proms. Where do we go from here?
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How My Punjabi Immigrant New Labour-Supporting Parents were Charmed by Boris Johnson
Hardeep Matharu reflects on the personal story of her parents’ political shift towards the right – and what it might represent about Britain as a whole.
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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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Brexit Britain’s Love Affair with its Navy is Rooted in a Foolish and Costly Obsession with the Past
How Brexiteers’ obsession with the sea and Boris Johnson’s promise of more money for ship-building represents a yearning for the days of Empire.
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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.
