Frances Webber
Biographic Data
| ID | 3888972 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Frances Webber |
| GIVEN NAMES | Frances |
| FAMILY NAME | Webber |
| SIGNATURE | WEBBER F |
| AFFILIATIONS | London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Rojava v Turkey: A view from a People’s Tribunal
In February 2025, a People’s Tribunal was held in Brussels to investigate alleged Turkish war crimes across north-east Syria (Rojava) since 2018 – aiming to amplify the voices of the Kurdish victims and document evidence to hold the perpetrators to account. The author, the presiding judge of the tribunal, presents here some background history on the area and some of the evidence presented to the tribunal
Systems of Suffering: Dispersal and the Denial of Asylum By Jonathan Darling
Policing rights in the UK 2022: An audit
As the UK economy unravels and collective action in defence of livelihood and life spreads, the author explains how 2022 reveals the way the government is reacting to an expanding list of ‘enemies’, heedless of legal and moral restraints. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have pursued authoritarian responses on many fronts: with increasingly brutal policing of racialised minorities, migrants, asylum seekers and protesters, and ‘crackdowns’…
The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the security state By Rizwaan Sabir
Impunity entrenched: The erosion of human rights in the UK
In this article, the author provides a roundup of the UK Conservative government’s legislative programme in 2021, arguing that, in the service of an authoritarian agenda, it uses law to undermine the rule of law and executive accountability, and to criminalise marginalised and/or racialised groups, including asylum seekers and those helping them, black youth, protesters and human rights defenders, and Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. Through an anal…
The racialisation of British citizenship
The history of British citizenship is a history of state racism – from the differential treatment of ‘non-patrial’ citizens who acquired citizenship through a colony rather than through British ancestry, which led to the ‘East African Asians’ scandal of 1968, and the quiet withdrawal of British citizenship from former colonial citizens when their countries became independent, which led to the Windrush scandal, through the dilution of the right of…
Britain’s authoritarian turn
Looking back, in December 2020, at the year since Boris Johnson’s Conservatives were swept back into government with a huge majority, the author identifies a raft of new laws, Home Office measures and government proposals in the fields of policing, crime, and immigration and asylum which embody long-held rightwing projects. Coming on top of already discriminatory practices, these include restrictions on the fundamental right of peaceful protest a…
On the creation of the UK's 'hostile environment
The indictment presented to the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal London Hearing in November 2018 on violations of the human rights of migrant and refugee peoples. It concentrates on the ways in which a 'hostile environment' has been created in the UK removing rights, enshrined in EU and international laws and conventions, to housing, health, livelihood, liberty, freedom of assembly, family and private life, freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment…
Lights in the Distance: Exile and refuge at the borders of Europe
Refusing refuge
In the face of the worst refugee crisis since the second world war, the leaders of Europe are slamming the doors, enacting exclusionary policies which daily become more brutal. The controversial book Refuge by Collier (ex-World Bank) and Betts (academic in refugee studies) provides, according to the reviewer, their moral justification. Collier and Betts argue that allowing refugees into Europe is wrong and counter-productive, denying states in co…
Europe's unknown war
The EU's response to the global 'refugee crisis' has involved the returning of refugees to war zones, for example in Afghanistan, in breach of human rights conventions. But it has also been so determined to stop further asylum seekers reaching European waters or shores that it has entered into the most dubious of agreements with countries outside the EU. Using bribery (aid, promises of investment, even the prospect of membership of the EU) and bl…
The inversion of accountability
In this wide-ranging survey of recent UK government pronouncements, policies and new legislation relating particularly - but not limited - to 'security', migration and refugee issues, the author exposes a consistent pattern in which human rights concerns are being systematically downgraded. But, at the same time that government is systematically minimising its own accountability over possible abuses committed by its agents or in its name, it is r…
Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism Is Swallowing the World
The Chicken Trail: Following workers, migrants and corporations across the Americas
Extending immigration policing and exclusion in the UK
This piece contains the responses to two consultations by the UK government on proposals to place duties on private landlords to act as extensions of the immigration service in order to exclude undocumented migrants from rented accommodation, and to exclude all migrants, except permanent residents, from free National Health Service (NHS) healthcare. The author comments on the likely effects and the larger human rights implications
The Migration Apparatus: Security, labor, and policymaking in the European Union
Uk: The way to pariah status in Europe
British government ministers’ use of nativist arguments to propose the removal of the basic protection of the European Court of Human Rights is causing alarm in the rest of Europe. The bid to repeal the Human Rights Act and diminish the role of the European Court of Human Rights in the UK is, the author argues, a sign of the resurgent influence of the Eurosceptic Right. Behind the rhetoric of repatriating power to the UK lies a preoccupation with…
Dismantling racial justice
According to this commentary, the UK coalition government's 2012 proposals to restrict judicial review and to abolish measures which safeguard race equality amount to a further assault on migrants, asylum seekers and BME communities, in the guise of promoting economic growth. The arguments against judicial review - their number, their length, their cost - are contested here. The author argues that judicial review is a necessary protection for hum…
Borderline justice
This article reflects on the author's legal career of over thirty years as a barrister representing migrants and asylum seekers in the UK. It exposes the consistently inhumane treatment meted out by successive governments to migrants and asylum seekers. It examines the ways in which such treatment is embodied in an ever-more punitive regulatory system, often implemented by powerful and profitable corporations, at the state's behest. The hallmarks…
Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier
Uk: The Real 'Immigration Debate
This transcript of a speech given to the UK's Churches' Refugee Network by a former barrister points up the 'free world's' role in the creation of refugees and how globalisation now entrenches a new social Darwinism. Domestic policies increasingly restrict legal aid and increase detention and deportation for migrants and asylum seekers. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the voluntary sector are being challenged by this new context and have…
How voluntary are voluntary returns
Voluntary returns' for rejected asylum seekers, foreign national prisoners, illegal entrants and overstayers are increasingly being promoted by European governments without due regard for the safety and preparedness of the returnee. In addition, the voluntariness of such returns has to be questioned. Among the UK schemes examined here are the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP), Assisted Voluntary Return of Irregular Mig…
Foreign nationals, enemy penology and the criminal justice system
In recent years, European governments have introduced a series of measures aimed at clamping down on foreign nationals within criminal justice systems. Such measures have included policies of automatic deportation on completion of prison sentences of a certain length, harsher sentencing, prison segregation, and restrictions on access to citizenship and rights to permanent settlement. This article argues that such measures constitute a separate cr…
Bibliography of publications
In the Midnight Hour
How voluntary are voluntary returns
Voluntary returns' for rejected asylum seekers, foreign national prisoners, illegal entrants and overstayers are increasingly being promoted by European governments without due regard for the safety and preparedness of the returnee. In addition, the voluntariness of such returns has to be questioned. Among the UK schemes examined here are the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP), Assisted Voluntary Return of Irregular Mig…
On the creation of the UK's 'hostile environment
The indictment presented to the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal London Hearing in November 2018 on violations of the human rights of migrant and refugee peoples. It concentrates on the ways in which a 'hostile environment' has been created in the UK removing rights, enshrined in EU and international laws and conventions, to housing, health, livelihood, liberty, freedom of assembly, family and private life, freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment…
From ethnocentrism to Euro-racism
Foreign nationals, enemy penology and the criminal justice system
In recent years, European governments have introduced a series of measures aimed at clamping down on foreign nationals within criminal justice systems. Such measures have included policies of automatic deportation on completion of prison sentences of a certain length, harsher sentencing, prison segregation, and restrictions on access to citizenship and rights to permanent settlement. This article argues that such measures constitute a separate cr…
Lights in the Distance: Exile and refuge at the borders of Europe
Extending immigration policing and exclusion in the UK
This piece contains the responses to two consultations by the UK government on proposals to place duties on private landlords to act as extensions of the immigration service in order to exclude undocumented migrants from rented accommodation, and to exclude all migrants, except permanent residents, from free National Health Service (NHS) healthcare. The author comments on the likely effects and the larger human rights implications
Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier
Uk: The Real 'Immigration Debate
This transcript of a speech given to the UK's Churches' Refugee Network by a former barrister points up the 'free world's' role in the creation of refugees and how globalisation now entrenches a new social Darwinism. Domestic policies increasingly restrict legal aid and increase detention and deportation for migrants and asylum seekers. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the voluntary sector are being challenged by this new context and have…
The human trade
Refusing refuge
In the face of the worst refugee crisis since the second world war, the leaders of Europe are slamming the doors, enacting exclusionary policies which daily become more brutal. The controversial book Refuge by Collier (ex-World Bank) and Betts (academic in refugee studies) provides, according to the reviewer, their moral justification. Collier and Betts argue that allowing refugees into Europe is wrong and counter-productive, denying states in co…
Borderline justice
This article reflects on the author's legal career of over thirty years as a barrister representing migrants and asylum seekers in the UK. It exposes the consistently inhumane treatment meted out by successive governments to migrants and asylum seekers. It examines the ways in which such treatment is embodied in an ever-more punitive regulatory system, often implemented by powerful and profitable corporations, at the state's behest. The hallmarks…
The Pinochet Case: The Struggle for the Realization of Human Rights
In the publicity surrounding the House of Lords' removal of immunity from General Pinochet, there has been virtually no mention of Pinochet's role in destroying socialism in Chile. This article looks at that history, from the inauguration of Salvador Allende to the coup on 11 September 1993. It traces Pinochet's economic transformation of Chile following the prescriptions of the ‘Chicago boys’ of Milton Friedman, which destroyed living standards …
Teachers in uniform
Europe's unknown war
The EU's response to the global 'refugee crisis' has involved the returning of refugees to war zones, for example in Afghanistan, in breach of human rights conventions. But it has also been so determined to stop further asylum seekers reaching European waters or shores that it has entered into the most dubious of agreements with countries outside the EU. Using bribery (aid, promises of investment, even the prospect of membership of the EU) and bl…
The inversion of accountability
In this wide-ranging survey of recent UK government pronouncements, policies and new legislation relating particularly - but not limited - to 'security', migration and refugee issues, the author exposes a consistent pattern in which human rights concerns are being systematically downgraded. But, at the same time that government is systematically minimising its own accountability over possible abuses committed by its agents or in its name, it is r…
Uk: The way to pariah status in Europe
British government ministers’ use of nativist arguments to propose the removal of the basic protection of the European Court of Human Rights is causing alarm in the rest of Europe. The bid to repeal the Human Rights Act and diminish the role of the European Court of Human Rights in the UK is, the author argues, a sign of the resurgent influence of the Eurosceptic Right. Behind the rhetoric of repatriating power to the UK lies a preoccupation with…
Bibliography of publications
Kurdish refugees: Pawns in a Deadly Game
Governing racism: The Corruption of the Executive
Six centuries of revolt and repression
Teachers in uniform
Europe 1992
UK commentary: Refugees: countdown to zero
From ethnocentrism to Euro-racism
UK commentary: 'If I'm sent back, I'll die anyway'
Europe: J'accuse
Europe: From refugee to terrorist
Asylum: The Government's False Alarm
The human trade
Governing racism: The Corruption of the Executive
Asylum-seekers: Caught by the Act
Kurdish refugees: Pawns in a Deadly Game
The Pinochet Case: The Struggle for the Realization of Human Rights
In the publicity surrounding the House of Lords' removal of immunity from General Pinochet, there has been virtually no mention of Pinochet's role in destroying socialism in Chile. This article looks at that history, from the inauguration of Salvador Allende to the coup on 11 September 1993. It traces Pinochet's economic transformation of Chile following the prescriptions of the ‘Chicago boys’ of Milton Friedman, which destroyed living standards …
Justice and the General: People vs Pinochet
L'A. s'efforce de comprendre les enjeux inherents a la question de l'extradition du general Pinochet vers l'Espagne. Il evoque les conditions du renversement de Salvador Allende le 11 septembre 1973 et la mise en place d'un regime militaire en mars 1974 qui a conduit a la suppresion des institutions democratiques. Il rappelle que l'Eglise catholique s'est efforcee de defendre le respect des droits de l'homme. Les femmes des disparus contribuerent…
The Human Rights Act: A Weapon against Racism
Cet article expose les conditions d'enterinement de la Charte Europeenne des Droits de l'homme par la constitution britannique. L'A. revient sur les conditions historiques, politiques et sociales qui ont contribuees a cette tardive adhesion
In the Midnight Hour
Bibliography of publications
Foreign nationals, enemy penology and the criminal justice system
In recent years, European governments have introduced a series of measures aimed at clamping down on foreign nationals within criminal justice systems. Such measures have included policies of automatic deportation on completion of prison sentences of a certain length, harsher sentencing, prison segregation, and restrictions on access to citizenship and rights to permanent settlement. This article argues that such measures constitute a separate cr…
How voluntary are voluntary returns
Voluntary returns' for rejected asylum seekers, foreign national prisoners, illegal entrants and overstayers are increasingly being promoted by European governments without due regard for the safety and preparedness of the returnee. In addition, the voluntariness of such returns has to be questioned. Among the UK schemes examined here are the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP), Assisted Voluntary Return of Irregular Mig…
Borderline justice
This article reflects on the author's legal career of over thirty years as a barrister representing migrants and asylum seekers in the UK. It exposes the consistently inhumane treatment meted out by successive governments to migrants and asylum seekers. It examines the ways in which such treatment is embodied in an ever-more punitive regulatory system, often implemented by powerful and profitable corporations, at the state's behest. The hallmarks…
Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier
Uk: The Real 'Immigration Debate
This transcript of a speech given to the UK's Churches' Refugee Network by a former barrister points up the 'free world's' role in the creation of refugees and how globalisation now entrenches a new social Darwinism. Domestic policies increasingly restrict legal aid and increase detention and deportation for migrants and asylum seekers. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the voluntary sector are being challenged by this new context and have…
The Migration Apparatus: Security, labor, and policymaking in the European Union
Uk: The way to pariah status in Europe
British government ministers’ use of nativist arguments to propose the removal of the basic protection of the European Court of Human Rights is causing alarm in the rest of Europe. The bid to repeal the Human Rights Act and diminish the role of the European Court of Human Rights in the UK is, the author argues, a sign of the resurgent influence of the Eurosceptic Right. Behind the rhetoric of repatriating power to the UK lies a preoccupation with…
Political science (39 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Law (19 works) · Human rights (14 works) · Refugee (13 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (12 works) · Politics (10 works) · Criminology (9 works) · Immigration (7 works)