Polly Russell explains why the Spare Rib resource may be suspended in the event of a ‘no deal’ withdrawal from the EU

Update (11 April 2019): the deadline for exiting the European Union has been further extended to 31 October 2019. Should the UK leave at that point without a withdrawal agreement, access to the Spare Rib digital archive will be suspended, as detailed below. Should an agreement be reached, either in October or earlier, access will continue until at least the end of the transition period (exact end date to be confirmed.)

In 2015, as part of our commitment to making our intellectual heritage available to everyone for research, inspiration and enjoyment, the British Library digitised and made available the full run of the feminist magazine Spare Rib available via the Jisc Journals platform.

This resource is used by researchers, activists, students and teachers not only in the UK but around the world. It is therefore with great regret that I must alert users to the possibility that we may have to suspend access to the resource and I want to take this opportunity to explain why.

Spare Rib was published between 1972 and 1993 and as a consequence its content is still in copyright. At the time we digitised the magazine the Library sought the permission of rights-holders for their work to feature in the online archive. As a result of this work copyright permission was successfully obtained from 1080 contributors. Where we weren’t able to clearly identify and/or locate a rights-holder content - including writing, artwork and photography - was subject to a further process to determine whether they could be made available under the exception that applies to ‘orphan works’ under European Union copyright law.

Image: Spare Rib, Issue 55, 1977 “Kathy Nairn in the Women’s Free Arts Alliance Karate Class”, copyright Michael Ann Mullen

The EU orphan works directive currently allows such material to be made available by cultural heritage institutions. Around 57% of the Spare Rib archive – some 11,000 articles and images from 2,700 contributors – benefits from this protection.

Should the UK exit the EU without a withdrawal agreement, however, we have been advised by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) that this legal exception will no longer apply. In those circumstances, the Library would have to suspend access to the archive or be in breach of copyright. The remainder of the archive, for which permissions have been obtained, would not form a sufficiently coherent resource to be useful to researchers, so we would have to close the resource entirely.

In the event of a withdrawal agreement being successfully concluded we understand that the orphan works exception – as with other EU laws – would remain in place at least until at least the end of the transition period, at the end of next year.

The Libraries Archives Copyright Alliance (LACA) are working on this issue and, in addition, the British Library is actively engaging with the Intellectual Property Office to explore ways that the existing exceptions can be preserved in the event of a ‘no deal’ exit from the EU. I will provide further updates as the situation becomes more certain.

I realise it will not compensate for the entire run of Spare Rib magazines being unavailable but the curated British Library Spare Rib site, with its contextual essays and selected magazine content will still be accessible.

I know how important this resource is as both a research and teaching tool and also as evidence of the incredible energy of the Women’s Liberation Movement. I sincerely hope that we do not have to suspend access to the resource but I wanted to take this opportunity to forewarn users in case this becomes necessary.

Polly Russell, Lead Curator for Contemporary Politics and Public Life

For more information please contact: [email protected]

Catherine Oliver writes about the online collection she has curated which explores Animal Rights Activism

Animal Rights Activism has a long history in the UK, and with a growing surge in ethical veganism, environmental awareness, and the health-based evidence turning people away from animal consumption, it is a crucial moment to reflect on these histories. It is very difficult to pinpoint an exact moment or movement that a concern and care for the welfare and rights of animals emerged. The online collection I have curated using British Library archives, now available at archivingactivism.com, seeks to discuss some of these ‘entangled histories’ of animal rights, for readers to form a picture of the different strategies, organisations, and characters involved.

'The Rights of Animals' - image copyright of Kate Levey (daughter of Brigid Brophy) and reproduced here with her kind permission.

One part of the collection draws on materials related to the ‘lost women’ of animal rights: Brigid Brophy, Frances Power Cobbe, Rosalind Godlovitch, and Lizzie Lind-af-Hageby and Leisa Schartau. These women all made significant contributions to the philosophy, practice, and understandings of animal rights in the UK, but often are not thought of as central figures. Tracing their stories through the British Library’s archives, the collection seeks to recognise the contribution of women in this area. The collection also draws together contentious histories of animals in politics and the use of animals in medical testing and in the beauty history, recognising the ways in which human and animal lives are entangled in different, often violent, ways. Reflecting on recent advances in the rights of animals in these areas, the collection displays some of the histories that allowed for these changes, as well as the different kinds of activists who worked and fought for these rights.

Image copyright of the National Anti-Vivisection Society and reproduced here with their kind permission.

By no means an exhaustive history of the animal rights movement in the UK, this collection serves as a starting point for engaging with not only these histories, but also with the importance of archiving animal rights movements, as our relationships with animals continue to evolve. Materials like these help us to understand how human histories are entangled with animal histories, and how humans have lived, and continue to live with animals, fighting to protect more vulnerable species from harm.

To find out more about the project, please visit archivingactivism.com

About the author

Catherine undertook a placement at the British Library ‘Animal Rights and Food Fights’, working with the archive of Richard D. Ryder, in 2016-2017, working with Polly Russell, Gill Ridgeley and Jonathon Pledge, where much of the intellectual work in this Animal Guide was inspired and completed. The materials in the collection are almost entirely located within the Ryder Papers. Catherine is a PhD student in the School of Geography, University of Birmingham researching vegan histories, presents and futures.

Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator of Spoken English, writes:

Congratulations, then, to Geraint Thomas, 2018 BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY), and to the magnificent England Roses for this year’s Greatest Sporting Moment. Likewise to toxic and single-use – Word(s) of the Year according to lexicographers at Oxford and Collins respectively. And so to the rather more self-indulgent award that is the British Library’s 5^th annual Sports Word of the Year (SWOTY) – a twelve month labour of love monitoring the British sporting press and broadcast media collecting examples of eye-catching words, phrases to make my morning commute more palatable. The nominations for 2018 are:

February (Chemmy Alcott assessing artificial snow at Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, BBC 5 Live Breakfast): it’s hero snow you roll on and you feel great.

June (Rio Ferdinand describing Marcus Rojo’s winner for Argentina v Nigeria at 2018 World Cup Finals, BBC1) that’s his week foot he puts it top bins.

July (Simon Hughes reflecting on Joe Root’s bowling figures of 4-5 for Yorkshire v Lancashire in County Championship match at Old Trafford, BBC 5 Live Sport): he’s a clever cricketer he’s a sort of cricket badger.

September (Jamie Donaldson summing up Dustin Johnson’s poor form on day 2 of 2018 Ryder Cup in Paris, BBC 5 Live Sport) I don’t know what DJ is playing out there but if it had been stroke play it would have been a snowman.

September (Sean Ingle reflecting on Greg Rutherford’s long jump career, Guardian Sport): Rutherford was just as impressive during clutch moments.

September (David Conn confirming FA’s decision to withdraw proposed sale of Wembley Stadium, Guardian Sport): executives were clearly interested but potential buyers will no doubt have taken note in the split in opinion between the suits and the blazers.

November (Aaron Bower discussing Rugby League World Cup, Guardian Sport): Kelly scored twice for the Jillaroos as they won last year’s women’s World Cup in Australia.

December (Andy Bull reporting on new system for deciding which team bats first in Australia’s Big Bash Twenty 20 cricket tournament): They will be calling hills or flats, just like children playing backyard cricket.

December (Richard Williams reviewing recently released Russian film Coach, Guardian Sport): Why choose a Panenka at a moment like that?

December (Jeremy Whittle reporting Jonathan Vaughter’s assessment of Sky’s decision to withdraw its sponsorship of cycling, Guardian Sport): ‘He [Dave Brailsford] has an impressive ability to reach into the toilet and pull out chocolate’.

This year’s list namechecks seven sports – skiing, football (3 entries), cricket (2), golf, athletics, rugby league and cycling – and illustrates a range of linguistic phenomena.

The rather neat distinction between suits [= ‘business executives implicitly motivated by financial profit’] and blazers [= ‘committee members implicitly motivated by maintaining the status quo’] is a wonderful example of metonymy: a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept (e.g. according to Number Ten is common journalistic shorthand for reporting a statement by the Prime Minister). Panenka [= ‘penalty kick in football in which the ball is chipped delicately into the middle of the goal after the goalkeeper has dived to one side’] provides a rare footballing example of eponymy: a person after whom something is named. Anybody of a certain age will know this audacious approach to penalties is named after Antonin Panenka, who successfully deployed the technique in a penalty shoot-out to secure the 1976 UEFA European Nations’ Cup for Czechoslovakia against West Germany. The Panenka is so risky it remains pretty rare, but sufficiently iconic that English football fans will recall SPOTY host, Gary Lineker, famously missing a penalty with a Panenka in a friendly against Brazil in 1992 (if he’d scored he would have equalled Sir Bobby Charlton’s then England goalscoring record). And we all remember Andrea Pirlo eliminating England with a Panenka in a penalty shoot-out at Euro 2012, although as an Italian he would call it il cucchiaio [= ‘the spoon’]. Having a technique named in one’s honour is surprisingly rare in football – the Cruyff turn is probably the only other widely used term in English – but this kind of accolade is more common in more ‘acrobatic’ sports. Different types of jumps in figure skating, for instance, include the Salchow, the Axel, the Lutz etc. and this year two new eponyms entered my sporting lexicon – the Biles [= ‘double half layout with full twist’ named after US gymnast, Simone Biles’] and the Nat-meg [= ‘run-scoring shot despatched between the legs’, named after England cricketer, Natalie Sciver].

One other entry reveals another naming process typical of sporting discourse: the nickname, Jillaroo [= ‘Australian Women’s Rugby League team’]. Some nicknames are so well-known they’re arguably more widely used than the official team name (e.g. All Blacks for the New Zealand Rugby Union team), but it’s surprising how often in sporting discourse more esoteric nicknames are used without further explanation, presumably because the user is confident the initiated will understand. Among the more obscure nicknames I’ve spotted in 2018 in Guardian Sport articles are: Matildas [= Australia Football (female)]; Pears [= Worcestershire County Cricket Club (male)]; She Cranes [= Uganda Netball (female)]; Mourners [= Neath Rugby Football Club (male)]; and Las Leonas [= Argentina Hockey (female)].

Two entries here are illustrative of sporting jargon: hero snow [= ‘snow that is soft on top and firm underneath’] and clutch [= ‘critical situation in which the outcome of a game or competition is at stake’]. In addition to the reference to long jump here, in 2018 Guardian journalists have regularly alluded to clutch serves in tennis and clutch putts in golf. Jargon refers to technical terminology used by a speech community – i.e. for our purposes here, sportswomen, sportsmen and sports’ enthusiasts – that can mystify outsiders.  Slang is even more subversive, more playful, and thus potentially even more incomprehensible and three items probably fall into this category. Snowman [= ‘a golf score of eight shots on one hole’] is a delightfully imaginative association of the figure 8 with a snowman (i.e. a circular head atop a slightly larger circular body). This kind of visual shorthand is equally apparent in the terms bagel (see SWOTY 2014) and Audi (see SWOTY 2017). Top bins [= ‘shot into top corner of goal’] and badger [= ‘overly keen/slightly know-all individual’] are expressions I first encountered among my (late teen/early 20s) children and friends. Badger, for instance, I first heard used among university hockey players to refer to a somewhat annoyingly enthusiastic club member who's never late for training, always brings the right kit, always has an opinion during half time team talks etc. – presumably the name derives from the notion that, like actual badgers, these are rare qualities among students?

The expression hills or flats is probably best characterised as Australian dialect, while one might speculate that reach into the toilet and pull out chocolate is either US dialect (Vaughters is American) or purely idiolectal. Playing cricket in the 1970s and 1980s I certainly recall spinning a bat in the air and calling either bridge [= ‘the bat lands face down’ i.e. presumably the equivalent of hills] or stream [= ‘the bat lands face upwards’ i.e. presumably flats] to determine which side had choice of batting or bowling first. To this day, amateur tennis and badminton players mirror this practice by calling rough or smooth to decide who serves first, based on tossing or spinning a racket so that the knot in the strings either stands proud or flush to the the racket head. The phrase reach into the toilet and pull out chocolate is, however, completely unfamiliar. A rather unwholesome image it is, nonetheless, analagous to polishing a turd, although the implication of pulling out chocolate is you can produce something desirable from something apparently worthless. The meaning is absolutely clear and reminds me a little of the claim, heard frequently in the mid-twentieth century, that if ever England needed a fast bowler they could whistle for one down a mine in Yorkshire.

Of the entries here only suits (but, surprisingly, not blazers) is included in this sense in the OED; clutch is recorded in Oxford Dictionaries Online; Panenka warrants an entry in Collins Dictionary and hero snow, badger and top bins have been submitted to Urban Dictionary. Of the other five, to my knowledge, none appears in conventional dictionaries, but snowman is included in Mike D’Auria’s Golf Fore Ever (2010) and Wikipedia includes Jillaroos in this sense – although, intriguingly, Adrian Room’s Dictionary of Sporting Games and Terminology (2010) suggests it refers to the Australian Women’s U21 Hockey team. The phrases hills or flats and reach into the toilet and pull out chocolate have proved elusive beyond the references here (and associated articles), which makes the British Library’s role in capturing and archiving this kind of linguistic evidence in our newspaper collections, TV and radio archive and UK Web Archive invaluable for anyone interested in documenting this kind of vernacular sporting language.

And so, finally, the winner for 2018. Well, it's Christmas so it’s got to be snowman, hasn’t it?

Follow British Library Accents and Dialects @VoicesofEnglish.

The Annual Equality Lecture with the British Sociological Association took place on 25 October 2018

‘Education is a right, not a privilege’ (Kalwant Bhopal, 2018)

Please note: The British Sociological Association have uploaded a video of the lecture to their Vimeo site here: https://vimeo.com/302226095

On the 25 October this year the British Library and British Sociological Association were delighted to host Professor Kalwant Bhopal who delivered a timely, insightful and important lecture about the current state of ethnic inequality within the UK higher education system.

Professor Bhopal’s lecture began with a look at the demographics of universities in the UK and differences in attainment between different ethnic groups. Her lecture showed that whilst there has been growth in recent years in the numbers of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students attending university, there remain stark differences in attainment and outcomes. For example, White students are more likely to receive a first class or higher-second class degree than BME students. This ‘attainment gap’ is particularly pronounced for Black students from Black African and Black Caribbean backgrounds.

She went on to look at the social and cultural reasons for these differences. Professor Bhopal showed that within secondary education BME students overall achieve good results at A level, compared to their White peers. However, BME students are less likely to apply, or be able to apply, to elite universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and those within the Russell Group. And when they do apply, they are less likely to achieve places. This evidence suggests that cultural and social factors within the higher education system are working to disadvantage BME students, and privilege White students, particularly so those White students from already privileged backgrounds.

So, what are the cultural and social factors that work to maintain White privilege in education, and disadvantage BME students? Professor Bhopal argued that socially embedded racism which operates in all processes, and at all levels, within universities, creates a vastly different playing field for BME students. From the university application process which favours particular forms of knowledge, to teaching at university which prioritises White experience and history, to the fact that within university teaching itself, BME lecturers are hugely underrepresented (only 8% of UK Professors are from BME backgrounds), the mechanics and culture of our university system propagate and reproduce ethnic inequality. Given this, it will come as no surprise that Black students are the group most likely to drop out of university.

Image: Professor Bhopal delivering her lecture. Photograph copyright of Tony Trueman for the British Sociological Association. Reproduced here with their kind permission.

Professor Bhopal was recently commissioned by the Equality Challenge Unit to understand minority ethnic ‘flight’ from UK higher education, to unpick ethnic differences in experience between academic staff and to understand how to attract and retain BME staff. A survey of 1,200 university staff as well as qualitative interviews, gave some clear indications about why BME staff might leave or hope to leave the UK higher education system.

This research showed that BME staff were more likely than their White colleagues to consider working abroad. There were perceptions that certain overseas countries (such as the USA) were more positive in their treatment of BME staff. Within the USA for example, Black Studies is an academic discipline and African American studies is taught at some of the most prestigious institutions including Harvard and Yale. Respondents to the survey felt that within the UK, race and ethnic studies were not highly regarded, and BME staff who worked in this area felt they were harshly judged. There was concern about limitations on career prospects, which was not surprising given the under-representation of BME scholars at senior levels.

Professor Bhopal concluded her lecture with advice and guidance for policy makers and university leaders about ways towards an equal future for all in higher education. First and foremost, higher education institutions must acknowledge that institutional racism is a problem which permeates processes and systems. Central to this is understanding and recognising how White privilege operates in real world interactions within universities; in interviews, at lectures, in seminars, at meetings and in informal and social scenarios. She suggests there should be greater rigour in monitoring BME attainment, with mandatory targets for elite universities around attracting and supporting BME students. Similarly, there must be targets for the recruitment of BME staff into senior roles and unconscious bias training should be mandatory.

The lecture was followed by an abundance of questions about how we achieve ethnic equality in higher education and more broadly, by a very well-informed and passionate audience. The questions and discussions continued into the foyer as the lecture closed, with people queuing up to ask Professor Bhopal to sign copies of her recent book. 

To find out more about Professor Bhopal’s recent work, please visit her report with Clare Pitkin on the Race Equality Charter: https://www.ucu.org.uk/HEIs-and-the-Race-Equality-Charter

A podcast of this lecture has been uploaded to the British Library SoundCloud here: https://soundcloud.com/the-british-library/the-annual-equality-lecture-social-justice-exclusion-and-white-privilege-in-universities

 

For the past few months, we've been working behind the scenes with Comichaus to help us collect more UK independent comics. From 1st October, we're able to start collecting. Here is what we are doing, and why ...

Independent comics in the UK reflect a huge range of energy and diversity, and are influential on other types of writing and expression. This was very clear both in the line up at this year's Thoughtbubble festival in Leeds, and also the Comics Forum - where comics art and writing could be found across healthcare, archaeology, local history and autobiography (as well as Victorian magic, space villains and giant robots). But, collecting independently published comics is a challenge. While the Library does receive comics from many independent creators, not all people who make and distribute their comics think of themselves as publishers, or that they should be submitting their work to the British Library, or know how to do this. Information about independently published comics is generally not available in the same way as for books with ISBNs, so it’s hard for us to know what is available to collect.  

So, over the past year, Comichaus has been working with the British Library to ensure that digital comics submitted to the Comichaus app can also be sent to the British Library (with the publisher’s consent) in fulfilment of Legal Deposit obligations. This helps the Library ensure that its collections reflect the diversity of UK independent comics, ensures that the comics will be preserved long-term, and means that they are available and discoverable in the Reading Rooms of the British Library and the five other UK Legal Deposit Libraries (the National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Bodleian Library at Oxford University, Cambridge University Library and the Library of Trinity College Dublin).

 We're excited to see the first digital comics arrive in this way, and look forward to watching our collections of UK comics expand with more digital comics. Our work with Comichaus is one example of the ways in which digital legal deposit helps us extend the breadth of our collecting for UK publications. You can find out more about how legal deposit works on our new web pages at https://www.bl.uk/legal-deposit  

Our free online course starts today. Learning from the Past is  for anyone interested in studying the past, what historians do, and why and how research on the past matters for understanding the world today. The course runs for 3 weeks, and is the second course produced by the University of Nottingham in partnership with the British Library.

Over three weeks, this course will introduce the ways in which historians conduct research, and the materials that are used to understand the past. Throughout the course, examples from across the Library’s varied collections are examined by curators and researchers. The course will also do two other important things. First, it will show the challenges that historians face in understanding and decoding the records of the past: books, archives, photographs, maps, recorded sound and digital records. Second, it will discuss how a study of the past helps us contextualise the issues of today. For example, we cannot fully understand the radical shift in our impact on the environment without knowing how societies in the past used natural resources.

The origins for this course come from our earlier work on the course Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life – which sought to explain how contemporary political research provides insight into the values and philosophies that lie at the heart of international debates, co-operation and conflict. We also sought to show how education, and in this case online learning platforms, can be used as a space where people with different ideas and opinions can communicate with each other, understand those differences and also see where there are points of agreement.

The response from learners to this course was incredible. Over the weeks, we saw conversations emerge between participants from around the world on “big political issues” but also in the more personal sphere: the gardens in their towns, food that reminded them of home, and the books and photographs that they always carry with them. We also saw that learners were enthusiastic to follow the debates that drew on current research, and followed links to academic texts where we made them available.

So, we wanted to produce a course that supported this desire for access to the ‘cutting edge’ of historical research, but also took the time to describe the practicalities of research. How do you decide what questions you are going to ask in your research? How can you find the materials that will help you to answer those questions? And how will you avoid the pitfalls of taking the records of the past at face value? Learning from the Past brings together researchers from the University of Nottingham and University of Birmingham, as well as curators from the British Library. Over the 3 weeks of the course, we will look at the materials and methods that researchers employ.

The first day of a new course is always exciting. I've been following our first steps for learners to introduce themselves and their research interests. There's lots of interest in family history and local history, but also other topics such as history of science or a general interest in how researchers work and analyse evidence. A lot of learners want to know more about how to use libraries and archives, and are interested in the practical elements of the course. 

A big topic for our first week is on the significance of language, and language change, in communicating ideas and values. I'm currently enjoying the discussion thread on 'what three words would you use to introduce yourself to a visitor from Mars'?   

If you’re interested in how historians work, thinking about starting your own research project, want inspiration for your existing work, or want to know why history matters today, join in the discussion at Learning from the Past: A guide for the curious Researcher. No need to worry if you're reading this after 3rd September - you can join any time before the course ends on 23rd September.  

For more than forty years A. Sivanandan was at the forefront of debates on anti-racism and politics in Britain. Born in Jaffna in 1923 and educated in Colombo, he came to Britain in 1958, leaving the anti-Tamil riots in colonial Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka in 1972) and walking into the anti-black riots in Notting Hill. He was to become one of the most important and influential black anti-racist thinker-activists in the UK.  His aphorisms, from ‘we are here because you were there’ to ‘poverty is the new Black’ - are known more widely than his name.  Sivanandan was librarian and then director of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) from 1973-2013, one of the founding editors of Race & Class, an activist and author of prize-winning fiction and non-fiction. He died in January this year, aged 94, and this coming weekend a memorial event in London will celebrate his life and work. 

Three book covers: A different hunger: writings on Black resistance, shelfmark X.529/48334; Catching history on the wing, shelfmark YC.2012.a.7672; When memory dies, shelfmark YA.1999.a.13299. Photo D. Cox

 

Several of Sivanandan’s writings are available on the website of the Institute of Race Relations, as is a full bibliography of his work, and five articles from Race & Class are free to download as the Sivanandan collection.  Collections of his articles are available in print, most notably Catching history on the wing: race, culture, globalisation (Pluto Press, 2008).  You can read about his life in more detail in an account on Sage’s Social Science Space by  Michael Todd  or in Gary Younge’s obituary in The Guardian  .

Sivanandan’s response to his arrival at the time of the anti-black riots of 1958 was to abandon his original aim of seeking well-paid employment and a comfortable life.  In an interview he said,

“I knew then I was black. I could no longer stand on the sidelines: race was a problem that affected me directly. I had no excuse to go into banking or anything else that I was fitted up to do … I had to find a way of making some sort of contribution to the improvement of society.  I wanted time to read and reflect and to become active. … So I started off as a tea-boy in a public library in Middlesex.  And I went on to do my library exams by attending evening classes.  From tea-boy I became branch manager of that particular library and then finally I went to be librarian at the Institute of Race Relations in 1964.”  (The heart is where the battle is: an interview with A Sivanandan, Race & Class, 59 issue: 4, pages: 3-14.)

In his early work Sivanandan put together bibliographies of materials in the Institute of Race Relations library about African, Asian and Caribbean migration to Britain, to help build an area of study and draw out materials for activism. This remains an important area of work for contemporary librarians and archivists. Most of Sivanandan’s political writing was first published as articles in Race & Class, the journal of the Institute of Race Relations, which continues today as an academic journal published by Sage:

 

Cover images of Race & Class journal. Photo D. Cox

 

Importantly too, his articles were reproduced as pamphlets, so that they could be achieve wider distribution among the community activists Sivanandan and others at the IRR worked with, including Newham Monitoring Project and the Southall Monitoring Group.  The British Library holds some of these pamphlets, allowing researchers to see not only the words on the page, but also to see how Siva’s arguments were taken out beyond an academic context.  The pamphlets pictured below show their prices, ranging from 30p to £1.00.   Materials from the IRR Library are now housed at Warwick University as part of their Ethnicity and Migration Collections.    The range of publications can also be viewed in a video on YouTube recounting the First Fifty Years of the IRR's history. 

 

Some of the pamphlet versions of Sivanandan's articles held by the British Library.  Photo D. Cox

 

Sivanandan published articles in a range of activist magazines, for example CARF (Campaign against racism and fascism.) The article below shows the evolution of Sivanandan’s concerns from racism and imperialism to globalisation and its impact on refugees and migrants.  In his foreword to Catching history on the wing  Colin Prescod writes that, through his coinage of the term xeno-racism, Sivanandan aimed to show that, “Europe’s formidable hostility to the impoverished migrant workers on which so much of its basic prosperity depends is not just some nice people’s social phobia about foreigners, but a system of belief and practice aimed at locking down, and locking in, the needy and the desperate.” (p. x)    

 

 

CARF Magazine.

 

Beyond his political writing Sivanandan also reached an audience through his fictional writing.  In 1997 he published When Memory Dies. The novel traces three generations of a family torn by Sri Lanka’s history of colonialism and ethnic strife. It was awarded the Sagittarius Prize (given by the Society of Authors for a first novel by an author over the age of sixty) and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the category of Best First Book for Europe and South Asia.  Where the Dance Is, a collection of short stories, was published in 2000.

Perhaps the most innovative means of taking his ideas out to a new audience was his collaboration with Asian Dub Foundation on the track Colour Line which features on their album Community Music  (2000). 

 

Asian Dub Foundation: Community Music (2000).

 

The British Library holds an oral history interview conducted by Louise Brodie for National Life Stories in 2010 with A Sivanandan.  Available on the Library’s Sound Cloud the interview is in ten parts and sheds a fascinating light on the life experiences, relationships and events that shaped Sivanandan’s writing.   This long and detailed interview provides a resource for anyone researching the complex evolution of anti-racist or activist politics in Britain. Many others played important roles in challenging racism and building activism, but Colin Prescod writes, “For those who recall the first half of the 1980s as a watershed in Black British politics, Sivanandan was father, elder to them all.” (Catching history on the wing, p. viii)

 

Selected works by A Sivanandan:

 

Race and Resistance: the IRR story, London: Race Today Publications, March 1975

A Different Hunger: writings on black resistance, London: Pluto Press, 1982

Communities of Resistance: writings on black struggles for socialism, London: Verso, 1990

When Memory Dies (a novel), London: Arcadia, 1997

Where the Dance Is (short stories), London: Arcadia, 2000

Catching history on the wing: Race, Culture and Globalisation, 2008 (Pluto Press).

Does your research or practice touch on issues of family and social justice, social welfare law or sources and methods in socio-legal research more generally?

If so then this month’s national socio-legal research workshop at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS)  in London on Friday 18 May 2018 presents an opportunity for you to learn from and network with others researching or supporting research in these fields.

This year’s workshop, includes presentations on methodological issues from socio-legal researchers working in the fields of family and social welfare law, and presentations on collections at the British Library and the London School of Economics (LSE) that can support research in these areas.

Focusing on methodological challenges research case studies will look at researching safety, responsibility, accountability and resistance in relation to Grenfell Tower, Lakanal House and high-rise housing, experiences and support needs of new adoptive families, welfare cases at the Court of Protection, and involving people with intellectual disabilities in empirical research.

Library sessions focus on the British Library’s collections especially the Social Welfare Portal, and on sources of social welfare law in the LSE Library.

For more information and booking please see https://www.sas.ac.uk/events/event/15339

Socio-legal research workshops at IALS are organised collaboratively by the Socio-Legal Studies Association, IALS and the British Library.

 

Details of previous workshops including selected presentations, papers and articles, can be found on the IALS website.