STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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‘Man's Inhumanity to Man*’
Narratives from detained refugees who exist in a virtual lawless world with no fixed sentences
INCOMPREHENSION: Protesters outside the Crowne Plaza London hotel in Heathrow which is being used as accommodation for asylum seekers
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
Refugee Tales IV
Edited by David Herd & Anna Pincus
Comma Press £9.99
“We were aware of what was going on outside, we heard about coronavirus…lockdown…we said ‘So now everyone in the whole world is in prison, it’s just that our prison is a bit smaller!’”
There is, however, an essential difference. The evidence from all 14 of these “Tales” from detained refugees demonstrates that detention centres, unlike HM prisons, exist in a virtual lawless world with no fixed sentences, offering little or no hope.
The Windrush scandal has recently woken public attention to the nature of the Tory government’s notorious “hostile environment,” but the figures speak for themselves.
In 1973, 95 people were indefinitely detained, rising in 2020 to 23,073.
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