A Sivanandan
Biographic Data
| ID | 75672 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Sivanandan |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Sivanandan |
| SIGNATURE | SIVANANDAN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute of Race Relations |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 312 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The heart is where the battle is: An interview with A. Sivanandan
A. Sivanandan, director of the Institute of Race Relations for over thirty years and the Founding Editor of Race & Class, has died. We publish below an interview with him, which prefaced the second collection of his writings Communities of Resistance: writings on black struggles for socialism (Verso, 1990), and which has not before appeared in the journal. In it, Sivanandan recounts his early life and education in the then colonial Ceylon, and th…
John Berger 1926-2017: Truth-sayer in an age of lies
Submission from the IRR to the Labour Party Inquiry into anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, including Islamophobia
Following a number of accusations of anti-Semitism against British Labour Party activists, including former London mayor Ken Livingstone, an inquiry into racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia was instituted by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in May 2016 - to be chaired by Shami Chakrabarti (former director of Liberty). This article consists of the submission to the inquiry from the Institute of Race Relations which suggests the parameters within whi…
The case for self-defence
In this polemic, originally published in the magazine CARF in March 1979, the authors show through a number of cases, how the police are failing to protect black people from racist attacks and then how the criminal justice system compounds this failure by penalising those who are forced to defend themselves, and then ruling out of court the whole issue of racial provocation. Why, ask the authors, should other liberal freedoms take precedence over…
Homage: Jan Carew 1920-2012
The market state vs the good society
In this polemical analysis of the rise of neoliberalism in the UK and the political culture it threw up, the author argues that the market state no longer serves the nation, but transnational capital. Consequently, inequality and poverty have been structured into society. Government rhetoric about the small state, 'big society' and localism are cons that smooth the way to privatisation, the undermining of democracy, and the imposition of market m…
Basil Davidson: Soldier in the People's Army, 1914-2010
Ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka
In a speech made on 3 July 2009 to the 'Marxism 2009' conference in London, the author examines the roots and development of ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka from British colonial rule to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009. Sri Lanka today is at the cross-roads between parliamentary dictatorship and fascism
An Island Tragedy
A. Sivanandan recounts his country’s long road to ethnic cleansing, from the social engineering of colonial Ceylon to Colombo’s anti-Tamil campaigns. Marginalization, displacement and destruction of a people, in a communal onslaught fanned by Buddhist chauvinism
Englishman
Gaza
Catching history on the wing: Conference speech
On 1 November 2008, the Institute of Race Relations held a conference, 'Catching history on the wing', at the National Union of Teachers building in London, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its formation. We publish here the text of A. Sivanandan's speech to the conference, reflecting on the lessons of the Institute's history for today's political struggles
Race and resistance: The IRR story
What lay behind the founding of the Institute of Race Relations in 1958 and its subsequent transformation in the early 1970s, through the agency of its staff, radical academics and black activists, is told here by a major protagonist of that change. Edited and abbreviated from a 1974 pamphlet, long out of print, not only does the article give an object lesson in how to effect far-reaching and radical organisational change, but it also contextuali…
Freedom of speech is not an absolute
In September 2005, the right-wing Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published specially commissioned cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were judged, by Muslims and many non-Muslims, to be racist and offensive. Republished in February 2006 in newspapers across Europe (except the UK), they were the occasion for demonstrations and riots throughout both the Muslim and non-Muslim world. In this wide-ranging interview, originally conducted for the No…
Race, terror and civil society
The London bombings of 7 July brought home in the deadliest way one facet of globalisation. New anti-terrorist legislation has been brought forward; multiculturalism has come under attack; anti-Muslim racism has increased at every level of British society. Political and public debate are threaded through with the politics of fear. This wide-ranging analysis provides a framework for understanding the dynamic interconnections between the new racism…
Race & Class - the future
Jan Carew, Renaissance Man
Commentary
Poverty is the New Black
L'A. de cet article revient sur les constructions socioculturelles des notions de racisme et xenophobie. Si le racisme tient particulierement a la couleur des etres humains, la xenophobie se definit par rapport a l'anthropocentrisme des civilisations riches. Le capitalisme et la globalisation actuelle renforcent ces sentiments afin d'asservir a nouveau les populations defavorisees. En Grande Bretagne, le racisme possede trois visages, etatique, i…
Commentary
Eqbal Ahmad 1932-1999
Globalism and the Left
If imperialism is the latest stage of capitalism, globalism is the latest stage of imperialism – and, yet, nowhere in the whole literature of the Left is there any evidence of a systematic attempt to understand, let alone combat, the havoc being wreaked on Third World countries by capital in its latest avatar. Instead, the Left has either sought refuge from the storms of change in the Orthodox Marxist Church, intoning capitalism is capitalism is …
Capitalism, Globalization, and Epochal Shifts: An Exchange
Ellen Meiksins Wood wants to know what is epochal about the shift in capitalism wrought by the new technologies (Monthly Review July/August 1996). Capitalism, she maintains, is still capitalism and is still bent on "extracting more value from labor"—only now, "the logic of the old mass production economy" can be "diversified and extended," reaching "whole new sectors" and affecting "types of workers more or less untouched before."This article can…
Heresies and prophecies: The Social and Political Fall-Out of the Technological Revolution: An Interview
Uk: La trahison des clercs
Poverty is the New Black
L'A. de cet article revient sur les constructions socioculturelles des notions de racisme et xenophobie. Si le racisme tient particulierement a la couleur des etres humains, la xenophobie se definit par rapport a l'anthropocentrisme des civilisations riches. Le capitalisme et la globalisation actuelle renforcent ces sentiments afin d'asservir a nouveau les populations defavorisees. En Grande Bretagne, le racisme possede trois visages, etatique, i…
RAT and the degradation of black struggle
From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain
Race, class and the state: The black experience in Britain
Race, terror and civil society
The London bombings of 7 July brought home in the deadliest way one facet of globalisation. New anti-terrorist legislation has been brought forward; multiculturalism has come under attack; anti-Muslim racism has increased at every level of British society. Political and public debate are threaded through with the politics of fear. This wide-ranging analysis provides a framework for understanding the dynamic interconnections between the new racism…
All that melts into air is solid: The hokum of New Times
Cheerleaders and ombudsmen: The sociology of race relations in Britain
Introduction Challenging racism: Strategies for the '80s
This is a revised version of a talk given on 12 March 1983 at the Greater London Council Ethnic Minorities Unit Consultation on Challenging Racism
New circuits of imperialism
Race and resistance: The IRR story
What lay behind the founding of the Institute of Race Relations in 1958 and its subsequent transformation in the early 1970s, through the agency of its staff, radical academics and black activists, is told here by a major protagonist of that change. Edited and abbreviated from a 1974 pamphlet, long out of print, not only does the article give an object lesson in how to effect far-reaching and radical organisational change, but it also contextuali…
Sri Lanka: Racism and the Politics of Underdevelopment
Imperialism in the Silicon Age
One epoch does not lead tidily into another. Each epoch carries with it a burden of the past—an idea perhaps, a set of values, even bits and pieces of an outmoded economic and political system. And the longer and more durable the previous epoch the more halting is the emergence of the new.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this arti…
The liberation of the black intellectual
develop an intellectual elite in tune with America’s interests and aspirations, would do more to turn that country into a client state than an entire army. But by the middle of the century, two revolu-tions and many independences later, the tactic had changed (though the strategy remained) to accord with the new colonialism, and led to the reproduction of a comprador class of third world intellectuals in the universities of the metropolis itself.…
Race, Class and Power: An Outline for Study
Freedom of speech is not an absolute
In September 2005, the right-wing Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published specially commissioned cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were judged, by Muslims and many non-Muslims, to be racist and offensive. Republished in February 2006 in newspapers across Europe (except the UK), they were the occasion for demonstrations and riots throughout both the Muslim and non-Muslim world. In this wide-ranging interview, originally conducted for the No…
Commentary
Commentary
The enigma of the colonised: Reflections on Naipaul's arrival
Imperialism and disorganic development in the silicon age
Globalism and the Left
If imperialism is the latest stage of capitalism, globalism is the latest stage of imperialism – and, yet, nowhere in the whole literature of the Left is there any evidence of a systematic attempt to understand, let alone combat, the havoc being wreaked on Third World countries by capital in its latest avatar. Instead, the Left has either sought refuge from the storms of change in the Orthodox Marxist Church, intoning capitalism is capitalism is …
Capitalism, Globalization, and Epochal Shifts: An Exchange
Ellen Meiksins Wood wants to know what is epochal about the shift in capitalism wrought by the new technologies (Monthly Review July/August 1996). Capitalism, she maintains, is still capitalism and is still bent on "extracting more value from labor"—only now, "the logic of the old mass production economy" can be "diversified and extended," reaching "whole new sectors" and affecting "types of workers more or less untouched before."This article can…
Uk: La trahison des clercs
UK commentary: Racism 1992
The market state vs the good society
In this polemical analysis of the rise of neoliberalism in the UK and the political culture it threw up, the author argues that the market state no longer serves the nation, but transnational capital. Consequently, inequality and poverty have been structured into society. Government rhetoric about the small state, 'big society' and localism are cons that smooth the way to privatisation, the undermining of democracy, and the imposition of market m…
Ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka
In a speech made on 3 July 2009 to the 'Marxism 2009' conference in London, the author examines the roots and development of ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka from British colonial rule to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009. Sri Lanka today is at the cross-roads between parliamentary dictatorship and fascism
Black Power: The Politics of Existence
Enclosing an article which appeared in The Liberator in June 1970, A. Sivanandan, a Ceylonese living in England since 1958, wrote a covering letter which ran as follows:" I have written this piece with great trepidation. I am not, in the literal sense of the term, a Black man, or an American. Nor do I merit, in terms of action, that title of revolutionary which might allow me an entry into your parleys. I have, further, no right to talk to you ab…
Race, Class and Power: An Outline for Study
Race, class and the state: The black experience in Britain
Report from Sri Lanka, August 1977
The liberation of the black intellectual
develop an intellectual elite in tune with America’s interests and aspirations, would do more to turn that country into a client state than an entire army. But by the middle of the century, two revolu-tions and many independences later, the tactic had changed (though the strategy remained) to accord with the new colonialism, and led to the reproduction of a comprador class of third world intellectuals in the universities of the metropolis itself.…
Imperialism and disorganic development in the silicon age
Articles
Current Africana no.23
Imperialism in the Silicon Age
One epoch does not lead tidily into another. Each epoch carries with it a burden of the past—an idea perhaps, a set of values, even bits and pieces of an outmoded economic and political system. And the longer and more durable the previous epoch the more halting is the emergence of the new.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this arti…
Cheerleaders and ombudsmen: The sociology of race relations in Britain
From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain
Race, class and caste in South Africa- an open letter to No Sizwe
Introduction Challenging racism: Strategies for the '80s
This is a revised version of a talk given on 12 March 1983 at the Greater London Council Ethnic Minorities Unit Consultation on Challenging Racism
Sri Lanka: Racism and the Politics of Underdevelopment
RAT and the degradation of black struggle
UK commentary
UK commentary Left, Right and Burnage
On 17 September 1986, 13-year-old Ahmed Ullah was stabbed to death at Burnage High School, Manchester, by a white schoolmate. The local education authority commissioned an inquiry, under Ian Macdonald QC, but refused to publish its findings on grounds of defamation. In April 1988, some of its conclusions were leaked to a local paper. These included, among other things, a strong criticism of the way the school had applied its anti-racist policies.…
UK commentary: Racism 1992
New circuits of imperialism
The enigma of the colonised: Reflections on Naipaul's arrival
All that melts into air is solid: The hokum of New Times
A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance
UK commentary: Introduction to Deadly Silence
Address to the 10th National Congress of the Azanian People's Organisation (Azapo): 22 December 1990, Langa, Cape Town
A Black perspective on the war
Political science (44 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Law (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (16 works) · Gender Studies (15 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · History (12 works) · History (9 works) · Political economy (8 works)