Fears of ‘Fortress Europe’

Britain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, the same year that its 1971 Immigration Act came into force. Under these provisions, EEC migrants seeking jobs in the UK could enter the country more easily than Commonwealth citizens of colour (non-Patrials).¹⁴ This situation led to local mobilisations and denunciations by Labour leaders against what was considered a racist piece of legislation that affected not only the entry of racialised immigrants but also the perceptions held on minorities living in the country.¹⁵ But the issue was mostly understood as a domestic matter until the end of the 1970s and resulted in few political incentives to network with other antiracist Europeans of colour or reaching out to EEC institutions.¹⁶ The political context of the 1981 Brixton riots alongside the signing of the British Nationality Act the same year acted as catalysts for a few British antiracist activists and leftist MPs. As recalled by Ann Dummett, a white British female activist involved in organising one of the first informative conferences on the issue in 1983: ‘The event had to be organized so as to provide a starting-point for a completely new kind of discussion, bringing together people who had never before had to consider British immigration policy with others who had working experience of it and with people who know about other countries’.¹⁷ Among the participants who hadn’t had to consider immigration for themselves until then was Lord Pitt. He was a London-based antiracist activist and Labour MP born in Grenada and who migrated as a British subject in the 1930s. Yet, he had to re-register under the new 1981 Nationality Act, which came into force in January 1983 and which tightened the conditions under which British citizenship could be acquired.¹⁸ The representatives who, on the other hand, were perceived as more knowledgeable about the internal impact of immigration policies than their British counterparts provided insights on the French, German, Dutch and Swedish contexts, alongside case studies taken from Canada, Australia and the United States.

Amid political disenfranchisement and because their country was a relative latecomer in the European Community (EC), British activists and political leaders increasingly felt the need to come to terms with EC politics and disenclave their national experiences. Eventually, the signature and announcement of the Single European Act (SEA) in 1986 (ratified in 1987) provided them with new urgency to inform themselves and come into closer contact with other antiracist politicians and activists in continental Europe. The Act set 1992 as the date for the completion of the European Single Market that would result in the free movement of goods, services, people and capital among the twelve member states.¹⁹ This announcement, its mediatisation, and the fact that it took place in a conservative political context marked by the rise of far-right political parties nourished the anxieties already felt by antiracist organisations and individuals. During the last decade, they had been witnessing a general tightening of legislation pertaining to immigration, citizenship and asylum that increasingly affected them.²⁰ Concerns were namely raised on the degree, areas and consequences of such policy harmonisation on racialised minorities.

In Britain, fears around the 1986 Act firstly pertained to the status of third-country nationals. Commonwealth citizens living in Britain and registered in 1981 still had the same social and political rights as British citizens, but they were not understood as citizens under the British EC agreement. Thus, questions were raised about the impact of the liberalisation of services and people, and the likelihood that it would negatively impact the economic sectors where (working-class) Black and minority people were mainly concentrated. The latter was of particular concern since Commonwealth citizens could not benefit in turn from freedom of movement in the EC because they were not considered citizens under EC law.²¹ On the other hand, British antiracist activists and leftist politicians equally feared for the protection of British citizens of colour who could circulate and potentially benefit from the liberalisation of services and people. These fears were rooted in the numerous experiences made by British tourists of colour in France who had been racially harassed by customs officers.²² They were also direct responses to the racial violence in Germany and France being featured in the British press, and of reports of the racial profiling of Black people framed as illegal immigrants.²³ The question then was on what basis would any harmonisation of antiracist legislation take place, when no country in Europe had the equivalent of the British Race Relations Act of 1976.²⁴ On that note, British antiracist and critical leftist political leaders were also worried about the TREVI group, formed in 1976 to coordinate policies on terrorism, radicalism, extremism and international violence (hence its name), and the Schengen group on mobility, established following the signing of the agreement of the same name in 1985. Both were perceived as secret intergovernmental meetings aiming to limit immigration and increase security measures upon racialised people.²⁵ Antiracist actors feared that decisions taken within those groups would be the basis for European harmonisation on racism and immigration, and lead to further tightening of legislation. Finally, with regards to women of colour, the EC presented some advances, as article 119 of the Treaty of Rome stated equality between women and men in employment. Nonetheless, this provision did not consider the racialised dimension of gender discrimination for women of colour.²⁶ Furthermore, since the Treaty of Rome did not cover non-citizens, women with third-country citizenship could not benefit from its legislation.

The Standing Conference on Racial Equality in Europe (SCORE)

Antiracists’ anxieties depicted above led to several local conferences, studies and the creation of groups in Britain and across Europe.²⁷ The British Commission for Racial Equality, established by the 1976 Race Relations Act,²⁸ was among the bodies to take action on the matter. Initially set to eliminate racism and promote equality within Britain, its mission progressively extended to ‘identify[ing] possible discriminatory effects contained in the … implement[ation] of the Single market’.²⁹ In June 1990, it convened a conference with the aim of coordinating efforts among groups with very diverse agendas and understandings of the impact of the SEA. The conference gave birth to a working group comprising of representatives of the Commission for Racial Equality, the British Council of Churches, the Trades Union Congress, the Greater London Action for Race Equality, the Confederation of Indian Workers, Labour MP Bernie Grant and the Runnymede Trust, among others. These various bodies and leaders had a history of collaborating with each other on matters pertaining to racism in Britain at least since the late 1970s.³⁰ In 1990, their discussion centred on whether to create a national information group – in order to remedy the lack of knowledge on the SEA’s implications for Britain and for European institutions – or to become a campaigning group lobbying British and European institutions. The Standing Conference on Racial Equality in Europe (SCORE) was the outcome of these debates, and it was launched in Birmingham on 24 November 1990. It aimed to facilitate the exchange of information; to work for the equality of all residents of EC member states; to promote action and legislation at a European level; and to cooperate with other groups in the EC.³¹ Throughout its lifespan, it benefited from grants and support by the Commission for Racial Equality, the World Council of Churches, the Churches Committee for Migrants in Europe and the Commission of Churches for Racial Justice.³²

Labour MP Bernie Grant was elected as SCORE’s chair and was influential during its initial stages in pushing for an organisation that would be led by people of colour and focused on racism in Europe. Born and raised in Guyana, Grant was a man of African descent who migrated to London in the early 1960s. There, he became involved in trade union politics and joined the Labour Party in 1973. In 1978, he was elected councillor of the Borough of Haringey, an activity he led in parallel to founding and working full-time for the Black Trade Unionists Solidarity Movement.³³ By 1985, he was the leader of the Haringey Council, a position from which he notoriously denounced the murderous effects of police brutality following the death of Cynthia Jarret and the uprising at the Broadwater Farm Estate.³⁴ It is in that context that he generated strong activist ties with Nigerian-born activist Martha Osamor, whom I will return to subsequently.³⁵ In 1987, Grant was the leader of the Black Sections – an internal Black pressure group within the Labour Party – and one of the four Black people to enter the House of Commons alongside Diane Abbott, Keith Vaz and Paul Boateng.³⁶ All had been known for their previous engagement with antiracism and gender equality in Afro-Asian communities in Britain, and their elections coincided with the re-instatement of the Conservative government headed by Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. Amid this political context and mounting racial tensions in the country, the four Black MPs joined forces with Lord Pitt, mentioned above, and founded the Parliamentary Black Caucus inspired by the American Congressional Black Caucus.³⁷ The difference between the two was their numbers – the British Black Caucus being only composed of five members – and their understanding of racial identification – the British Black Caucus forming along the lines of political blackness, a politically constructed identification along which radical British activists of colour had been organising since the 1960s and 1970s.³⁸ In this sense, Black referred to all racialised minorities who faced colonial legacies, anti-immigration policies and the effects of structural racism regardless of whether they were of African descent. Such ‘politics of solidarity’ – as Nydia Swaby refers to³⁹ – also reverberated in SCORE’s racial understanding and coalition building both inside Britain and across Europe.

Before SCORE’s creation and its willingness to foster a pan-European perspective on racism and antiracism, Grant had already toured Europe as a Labour MP. For example, he, Keith Vaz and Martha Osamor were part of a UK-delegation of twenty people who participated in a pan-European conference titled ‘Immigration and Citizenship in Europe’ that was held in Amiens, France, in October 1989, in conjunction with the celebrations of the Bicentenary of the French Revolution.⁴⁰ There, they networked with local and European deputies of colour, such as Djida Tazdaït and Nora Zaidi, both members of the European Greens. The aim of the conference was to gather information about measures taken by local politicians of colour to tackle matters of racism, immigration, civil rights and citizenship. Grant’s time in Amiens and subsequent travels to Belgium, Portugal and Germany led to his feeling that the centrality of racism was missing in those countries, and that ‘the dominant concept was still Assimilation’.⁴¹ He also deplored his party’s lack of a clear position on matters of racialised and ethnic minority groups, a situation he considered as ‘an important gap in policy provision’.⁴² On matters of race, he and other members of the Black Sections already disagreed with mainstream Labour MPs because they felt their conceptions of racism remained liberal and not critical enough with regard to police brutality and structural racism.⁴³ Thus, SCORE was an additional attempt to put race and racism on the political and European agenda of leftist politicians in a general context that was prone to deny their ongoing relevance to understand postcolonial European contexts.⁴⁴ Nevertheless, Grant oversimplified continental antiracist responses in equating them to ‘assimilation’ when in fact many grassroots activist groups were also race-conscious and challenging the denial of European racism. But he was right in insisting that many continental European politicians and publicly recognised leaders objected to using race as a signifying and political category, the same way they were less prone to push forth the leadership of people of colour as was advocated in British critical activist and leftist contexts.⁴⁵ SCORE did both: it focused on European racism and its leadership was held by people of colour.

Despite differences in experiences, identifications, and in apprehending race, SCORE’s members admitted they still needed to network with their continental counterparts. In doing so, they extended their political concerns and activities to the European level when the latter became relevant and potentially impactful. Hence, the accelerated process of Europeanisation through the Single European Act led to a Europeanisation of British social justice initiatives, a conclusion which Gordon also comes to.⁴⁶ My understanding of ‘Europeanisation’ builds upon the definition suggested by historians Ulrike von Hirschhausen and Kiran Patel.⁴⁷ I use the term to address the transnationalisation of activists’ agendas, strategies and collective identities which led to the creation of networks, groups and campaigns with a European scope, even if not all European countries were involved. I thus consider the impact of political Europeanisation on social movements even when they took place outside of European institutions; I therefore depart from a purely institutional perspective on the matter.⁴⁸ I also contend that Europeanisation never resulted in the abandonment of national or global concerns, but rather evolved simultaneously with them. In fact, mobilisations at a city-level and national level remained far more significant even when targeting ‘Fortress Europe’.⁴⁹ As such, SCORE was one of the few British initiatives that responded to European integration by actively seeking transnational outreach across the Channel. But like other cross-national initiatives of its time, it remained British-centred in terms of its power base and in its approach to race and political blackness.⁵⁰

Indeed, in terms of networking, SCORE’s strategy was first to secure branches across the United Kingdom (in Wales, the Midlands, the North West, the South West and Scotland) and then to encourage the establishment of SCORE branches in other European states.⁵¹ The latter would then be granted associate membership.⁵² In Britain, more than 200 organisations and individuals joined during its first year, among which were the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, the Trades Union Congress and the Commission for Racial Equality, as well as local authorities, academics and people from civil society.⁵³ At a European level, SCORE was in contact with groups in France, Portugal, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands.⁵⁴ The latter identified along a variety of lines, including as immigrants or under national lines; only a few people who were not of African descent called themselves Black in the political sense. Josephine Ocloo, SCORE’s vice-president, played an important role in developing these transnational networks. SCORE’s Alternative Summits were also important transnational venues which took place in parallel to EC Council of Ministers meetings (Edinburgh in 1992, and Brussels in 1993).⁵⁵ The first one happened in Maastricht and Brussels in 1991 on signature of the treaty, and was ‘an attempt by SCORE (UK) to bring together Black and Minority ethnic groups together … as a first step towards the establishment of a permanent European wide networking system for Black and Minority Ethnic people’.⁵⁶ Attendees also participated in a picket in front of the building where European Ministers were having their Summit, and gave press conferences.

Regarding lobbying, Bernie Grant’s political position facilitated SCORE’s communication with other Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and other Euro-deputies, as well as with British and German Prime Ministers because he more legitimately had access to them. In 1992, Britain – still led by the Conservatives but now under John Major – presided over the European Community, and therefore SCORE counted on the country’s leadership to push for 1) an amendment of the Treaty of Rome that would give the European Commission competence in the field of antiracism and protection of minority people, migrants and asylum seekers; 2) EC antiracist legislation that would bind EC states to implement antiracist legislation nationally; and 3) freedom of movement for third-country nationals established in EC countries.⁵⁷ The response of the Home Office was that it would not encourage EC legislation, but rather support and advise each EC member state. It also stated that only nationals would be concerned by EC provisions on freedom of movement.⁵⁸ Despite this negative response, SCORE continued to lobby British and European parliamentarians, in the context of the European elections of 1994. To do so, it formulated its ‘Black Manifesto for Europe’ which, again, demanded an amendment of the Treaty of Rome to outlaw racial discrimination; free movement for all EU residents; the end of racial violence and harassment; the creation of ‘an anti-racist and anti-sexist’ immigration policy; an independent status for ‘Black, Migrant and Minority’ women, and the mainstreaming of their issues across Europe. The Manifesto also called for all Black, Migrant and Minority residents to have the right to vote, equal housing, equal education inclusive of their own specificities, equal health and social services, as well as the right to family reunion.⁵⁹

In terms of gender, around 1993, SCORE established a Black Women Sub-Committee, chaired by Anne-Marie Harding and which put Black women’s issues on SCORE’s general agenda.⁶⁰ The sub-committee denounced racist and sexist immigration policies in Europe, and demanded that women who migrated as a result of family reunion have an independent status from their husbands. They also pushed for the mainstreaming of Black women’s specific issues.⁶¹ Thus, SCORE opted for a women’s section within the main group in order for sexism to be considered in its articulation with class and racial discrimination. The archives consulted don’t allow me to investigate the gendered dynamics within SCORE, nor how women’s agendas were effectively promoted. But Black women seem to have been in leadership positions as testified by Ocloo’s appointment as the organisation’s vice-president and Harding as the leader of its women’s section. But again, these facts say little about the overall gender dynamics. On the other hand, Britain had one of the most vibrant Black women’s movements in 1980s Europe, and many of its participants had experience in shaping gender inclusive agendas and in organising as Black women.⁶² Like for others, the passing of the Single European Act raised the anxieties of several Black feminist activists in Britain who feared that more regional integration would lead to further political disenfranchisement for women of colour. The closer the term to ‘Europe 92’, the more they felt called to organise. As a result, they launched the Black Women and Europe Network (BWEN) in 1993.

The Black Women and Europe Network (BWEN)

When BWEN was in the process of being created, initiatives with a European scope and inclusive of minority women’s specific issues existed.⁶³ As seen above, this was the case of SCORE, but also of the Cross-Cultural Black Women’s Studies Institute established in London in 1987 or of the World Council of Churches’ subprogram Women under Racism, created in 1980.⁶⁴ Some of BWEN’s constituents even participated in their activities and collaborated with their members. For example, Bernie Grant and Martha Osamor, who went on to become BWEN’s first chair, worked together within the Black Trade Unionists Solidarity Movement and the Black Sections. As mentioned above, they also travelled together in Europe in 1989 to network with other antiracist protagonists. Furthermore, once established, BWEN used SCORE’s bi-monthly newsletter Scoreboard to advertise its actions and boost its membership.⁶⁵ But what characterised BWEN was that it sought to be an independent and minority women-led initiative guided by self-determination which put minority women’s issues at the forefront of its actions.

BWEN was the direct result of two meetings held in 1991. The first was a one-day seminar in February convened by a group of Women’s Equality officers in London who had emerged from the British Black women’s movement. The meeting focused on the impact of the Single European Act ‘for black, migrant and refugee women’ within the British context.⁶⁶ The event gathered about 130 women from the UK and was chaired by Valerie Amos, a woman of Guyanese descent, who was then the Chief Executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission.⁶⁷ The panellists were female researchers, equality officers, professionals, social workers, members of women’s organisations and European lobbyists of African and Asian descent – such as Wangui Wa Goro, Naseem Khan and Umran Beeler – as well as white women allies such as MEP Pauline Green. Most of these women had been active during the women’s movement of the 1970s and 1980s and were now at the forefront of experiencing and gathering knowledge about the Single European Act. The meeting resulted in a set of thirty-one recommendations which included gathering expertise and documentation on European institutions and policies; demanding that all women, no matter their civil status, have access to the same rights as EC citizens; creating national and ‘cross-European networks’; and the formation of a ‘black, migrant, and refugee Women’s lobby in Europe’ as a long-term goal.⁶⁸

The second meeting that stimulated the creation of BWEN was convened by the European Green Party nine months later, in November 1991, under the leadership of Euro-deputy Djida Tazdaït. Tazdaït was a French politician of Algerian background who had been the co-founder of the Maghrebi women’s group Zaâma d’banlieue (women from the suburbs) and an activist against racial discrimination. She had formerly met Grant and Osamor in Amiens in 1989, and had taken part in SCORE’s Alternative Summit in Maastricht in 1991.⁶⁹ Her activism translated in the aims of the November gathering, which were to articulate the issues facing Black and minority women in Europe, and to create a ‘pressure group at European level’ as soon as possible.⁷⁰ Consequently, the British delegates of the November conference networked with the organisers of the February seminar and took the initiative to create such a network that was to be politically independent.

The steering group named itself ‘Black Women and Europe Network’ and elected Martha Osamor as its interim president. Osamor was a Nigerian London-based community activist, trade-unionist, and member of the Labour Party. She had co-founded the United Black Women Action Group in Tottenham – Bernie Grant’s constituency – in the mid-1970s, and the Group had been a member of the Organisation for Women of African and African/Asian Descent (OWAAD) from 1978 to 1982.⁷¹ In 1977, she worked for the Tottenham Law Centre where she met Bernie Grant. By 1980, she was a member of the local Labour Party and eventually became the national vice-chair of the Black Sections.⁷² She, however, remained committed to grassroots activism and co-founded the British Movement for Civil Rights and Justice in 1987 after the murder of Cynthia Jarret which sparked the Broadwater Farm uprising in 1985.⁷³ In this context, she and Bernie Grant took a radical public stand against police brutality and racial inequality. In 1986, Osamor became Labour Councillor for the Borough of Haringey, a position she kept until 1990 when she was nominated Deputy leader of the Haringey council.⁷⁴ She was thus an active Labour leader when she was chosen as BWEN’s first chair.

BWEN was officially launched in April 1993 at its constitutional meeting. The latter was financed by European grants and attended by more than sixty women from eleven European countries, some of which were not part of the EEC: twenty-six participants were from the United Kingdom; thirteen from France; eight from Germany; six from Spain; four from the Netherlands; two from Denmark; one each from Ireland, Greece and Norway.⁷⁵ This representation speaks of an understanding of Europe in more geographical terms than political. Since most of the women present came from women’s groups, female self-determination was to be the basis of the BWEN, as stressed by Tazdaït: ‘We mobilise together because we want to avoid marginalization, discrimination and subordination. Most importantly, if we do not mobilise to do this, no one else, no matter how liberal they might be, can achieve this for us’.⁷⁶ Black and minority female self-determination was thus understood as being the only effective way for Black and minority women’s issues to be central to the fight against racism and ‘Fortress Europe’. Given the context, I suggest that this stance emerged out of their experiences of working in or with male-led groups, in addition to a practice of organising autonomously as women. Nevertheless, this posture did not exclude working in partnership with mixed or male-led groups, nor did it mean that larger community issues were not tackled, as testified by the BWEN’s initial objectives and collaboration with SCORE with which it was aligned. Its main aims were to voice the special needs of ‘black, migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women’ and to combat all forms of discrimination, including the distinction between non-citizens and citizens.⁷⁷ To do so, it envisaged linking women’s groups at a national and transnational level to produce information and knowledge on women specifically, and their communities in general; to act as a consulting body vis-à-vis European institutions and as a pressure group both at the European and national levels; and to conduct transnational campaigns. Some of its British and Dutch members thus joined the European Women’s Lobby to increase their impact through multi-affiliations.

This agenda testifies to the founders’ understanding of themselves as racialised minority women whose struggle for social justice included oppressions linked to race, class and gender (sexuality was left out) and aimed at the liberation of themselves and their communities. Yet, they did not publicly call themselves feminists since they still equated the term with white women’s struggle solely based on sex oppression (a conception in itself limited).⁷⁸ Thus, in the same way as SCORE, the BWEN was not only responding to political Europeanisation, but also aiming to Europeanise the fight for social justice from an autonomous Black women’s standpoint. Their strategy was rooted in the idea that a cross-border coalition was a necessary and relevant strategy in the face of such a regional geopolitical development. Nevertheless, due to the BWEN seeking a transnational scope, debates around membership and the group’s identity were raised from its foundation. As was also the case of SCORE, BWEN’s initiators identified as politically Black regardless of whether they were of African descent. Thus, for them, the focus of the network was to be for women commonly seen and oppressed as non-European due to their phenotype and/or cultural attributes; it did not comprise white European immigrants who had immigrated to another European state as contracted workers (such as Portuguese women in France).⁷⁹ In this sense, political blackness applied to people ‘marked as racially different’ through dominant gazes.⁸⁰ On the other hand, other participants did not identify as ‘Black’, either because they were not of African descent (i.e. Turkish women in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium) or because they did not endorse a racialised identity but rather a national identity (i.e. Cameroonian) or an identity based on their civil status (i.e. immigrant).⁸¹ As a result, alternative names to ‘Black Women in Europe’ were suggested. In the end, the name ‘Black Women and Europe Network: Black, Migrant, Refugee, Asylum Seeking Women in Europe’ was chosen.⁸²

This choice of name, I argue, reveals that a compromise was sought between participants embracing the notion of political blackness, and others identifying differently, perhaps as migrant, refugee, asylum seeking, and so on. Nevertheless, ‘Black Women in Europe’ – without its extension – remained the common name used by the network. Whether this was the result of an embrace of political blackness with time by all the members, a lack of contestation, or the departure of those who still didn’t identify with the name remains to be further researched. The name also testifies to an attempt to Europeanise a concept and strategy that initially sprung from the British context, at a time where political blackness as a collective identity and politics of solidarity was challenged in the country itself.⁸³ Thus, it could also be that BWEN’s insistence on focusing on political blackness as a collective identity was perceived as British and Anglo-Saxon domination, which could explain why the number of active members at a transnational level dropped from sixty to a dozen the year after.⁸⁴ Indeed, as much as BWEN sought to Europeanise its scope, not only did its member organisations remain more active at a national level, but its base and leadership remained mainly British until 1997. In this sense, it shared a similar fate to SCORE, which also remained a British-centred initiative despite its initial ambitions towards continental Europe.

Conclusion

As presented, SCORE and BWEN were responses to political Europeanisation at a time when its policies were understood as direct threats to British and other European people of colour’s freedom of movement within the EU, their socio-economic welfare, and their protection from racism and xenophobia. The networks’ chairs were elected Labour leaders and their members had been politically socialised in minority-led antiracist and/or antisexist groups prior to their transnational mobilisations. Building upon their political and activists’ practices, they further decided to organise collectively and publicly against ‘Fortress Europe’ as a consequence of the shared fears and sense of urgency surrounding the announcement of the Single European Act, while embracing the idea that a regional development necessitated a transnational reply. Their main demands were to grant non-citizens the same right to circulate and establish within the Single Market, and to amend the Treaty of Rome so that it included an explicit provision covering racial discrimination. Networking and building coalitions, outside and autonomously from EU institutions, became important, first in order to gather information across borders, then to attempt to put more pressure on European states by increasing their ranks.⁸⁵ Consequently, not only were they responding to Europeanisation, but, in turn, also contributing to producing a Europeanisation of social justice on the basis of British understanding of race and political blackness.

SCORE and BWEN were not the only British initiatives with a European scope. Another example is the European Action for Racial Equality and Social Justice (European Action group) formed in London in November 1990 and co-chaired by London-based activist and publisher John La Rose and lawyer Ian Macdonald. The association’s membership was racially mixed yet overwhelmingly constituted by men. During its lifespan, between 1991 and 1993, European Action had coordinators in Germany (Nii Addy from the Initiativ Schwarze Deutsche (ISD)-Berlin) and in France (Mogniss Abdallah from Rock Against Police – RAP).⁸⁶ Another initiative was the European Race Audit launched in 1992 by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) with the aim of collecting data on racism in Europe and undertaking analysis of its different expressions depending on context.⁸⁷ Whether these initiatives were successful in reaching all their aims and effectively impacting governments’ decisions on racism still needs to be scrutinised. But antiracist provisions were inserted into the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997.

Notes

1. 1.  See Les Black and Anoop Nayak, eds., Invisible Europeans? Black People in the “New Europe” (Birmingham: AFFOR, 1993), 1–2.

2. 2.  Desmond Dinan, Europe Recast: A History of European Union (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), 222.

3. 3.  Imaobong Denis Umoren, Race Women Internationalists: Activist-Intellectuals and Global Freedom Struggles (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018).

4. 4.  Eleonore Kofman and Rosemary Sales, ‘Towards Fortress Europe?’, Women’s Studies International Forum 15, no. 1 (1992); Frances Webber, ‘From Ethnocentrism to Euro-Racism’, Race & Class 32, no. 3 (1991); Tony Bunyan, ‘Towards an Authoritarian European State’, Race & Class 32, no. 3 (1991); Ann Dummett, ‘Racial Equality and “1992”’, Feminist Review 39, no. 1 (1991); Mirjana Morokvasic, ‘Fortress Europe and Migrant Women’, Feminist Review, no. 39 (1991). Doug Imig, ‘Contestation in the Streets: European Protest and the Emerging Euro-Polity’, Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 8 (2002); Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow, ‘Political Contention in a Europeanising Polity’, West European Politics 23, no. 4 (2000); Donatella della Porta and Manuela Caiani, Social Movements and Europeanization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

5. 5.  Imig, ‘Contestation in the Streets’; Imig and Tarrow, ‘Political Contention in a Europeanising Polity’; della Porta and Caiani, Social Movements and Europeanization; Ruud Koopmans et al., Contested Citizenship. Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

6. 6.  Research on racism and antiracist activism in Europe is however expanding. For recent comparative studies in European scope, see namely Rita Chin, The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); Elizabeth Buettner, Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Britta Timm Knudsen et al., eds., Decolonizing Colonial Heritage: New Agendas, Actors and Practices in and beyond Europe (London: Routledge, 2021); Gurminder K. Bhambra and John Narayan, eds., European Cosmopolitanism: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Societies (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2017); Natasha A. Kelly and Olive Vassell, eds., Mapping Black Europe: Monuments, Markers, Memories (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2023).

7. 7.  Daniel A. Gordon, ‘French and British Anti-Racists Since the 1960s: A “Rendez-Vous Manqué”?’, Journal of Contemporary History 50, no. 3 (2015).

8. 8.  Chin, The Crisis of Multiculturalism, 84, 93–94; Gordon, ‘French and British Anti-Racists’, 24.

9. 9.  Tiffany N. Florvil, Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of Transnational Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020), and Tiffany N. Florvil, ‘May Ayim’s Cosmopolitanism from Below in Europe’, History Workshop (blog), 2 October 2023, https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/feminism/may-ayims-cosmopolitanism-from-below-in-europe/.

10. 10.  Pamela Ohene-Nyako, ‘Black Women’s Transnational Activism and the World Council of Churches’, Open Cultural Studies 3, no. 1 (2019), and Pamela Ohene-Nyako, ‘Contexts and Spaces of Intersectionality: The Black Feminism and Internationalism of Lydie Dooh-Bunya, 1970–1990’, Journal of Women’s History 35, no. 3 (2023).

11. 11.  Among recent publications following this perspective: Florvil, Mobilizing Black Germany; Keisha Blain and Tiffany Gill, eds., To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019); Félix F. Germain and Silyane Larcher, eds., Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848–2016 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018); Quito Swan, ‘Giving Berth: Fiji, Black Women’s Internationalism, and the Pacific Women’s Conference of 1975’, Journal of Civil and Human Rights 4, no. 1 (2018); Cheryl Higashida, Black Internationalist Feminism: Women Writers of the Black Left, 1945–1995 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013).

12. 12.  More specifically correspondence, minutes, pamphlets, circulars and publications.

13. 13.  Philomena Essed, ‘Gender, Migration and Cross-Ethnic Coalition Building’, in Crossfires. Nationalism, Racism and Gender in Europe, ed. Helma Lutz, Ann Phoenix and Nira Yuval-Davis (London: Pluto Press, 1995); Philomena Essed, ‘Transnationality. The Diaspora of Women of Colour in Europe’, in Diversity. Gender, Color, and Culture, ed. Philomena Essed (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).

14. 14.  Ann Dummet, ‘The Law of Citizenship and Nationality’, in Immigrant Voice Supplement, undated, Pennsylvania State University, University Libraries, Special Collections Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Ann Dummett papers (hereafter Dummett Papers) (9466), Box 1, file 1.4. See also Buettner, Europe after Empire; Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

15. 15.  George Padmore Institute Archives (hereafter GPI), Black Panthers News, file 17, Freedom News, editorial, 19 February 1972; Black Panthers Movement, ‘Stop the racist immigration bill’, March 1971; Chin, The Crisis of Multiculturalism, 93.

16. 16.  Jenny Bourne, ‘IRR: The Story Continues’, Race & Class 50, no. 2 (2008); Gordon, ‘French and British Anti-Racists’; Report on the AGIN conference concerning Reform of British Immigration Law and its Administration, Somerville College, Oxford, 1–3 July 1983, Dummett papers (9466), Box 1, file 1.4

17. 17.  Report on the AGIN conference, 2.

18. 18.  Report on the AGIN conference, 3–4.

19. 19.  Which included France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Greece, Portugal and Spain.

20. 20.  Buettner, Europe after Empire.

21. 21.  Minutes of conference launch 24 November 1990, Bishopsgate Institute Archives – Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE.

22. 22.  Gordon, ‘French and British Anti-Racists’, 25.

23. 23.  Minutes of conference launch 24 November 1990.

24. 24.  Minutes of conference launch 24 November 1990. Expanding on the Race Relations Act of 1965 and 1968, the new legislation in 1976 included indirect discrimination in its definition of the term, and established a new body, the Commission for Racial Equality, which was given responsibility to enforce legislation and advise British governments on issues of race relations.

25. 25.  Working group meeting minutes, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 6/1. More generally on Trevi and Schengen, see Virginie Guiraudon, ‘Schengen: une crise en trompe l’oeil’, Politique étrangère, no. 4 (2011), 773.

26. 26.  Minutes of conference launch 24 November 1990.

27. 27.  Proposal to set up a Standing Conference, undated, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 6/1. See also Black and Nayak, Invisible Europeans?

28. 28.  The body was disbanded in 2007 and replaced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

29. 29.  ‘Commission for racial equality. Submission to the European parliament’s committee enquiry into racism and xenophobia’, undated but before 1992, Dummett Papers (9466), Box 1, file 1.33.

30. 30.  They were namely present at the 1983 conference mentioned previously. Report on the AGIN conference.

31. 31.  Constitution, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 4/1.

32. 32.  Report 1993/1994, 4, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE file 4/2.

33. 33.  For more information, see biographical note accompanying his archival records https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/bernie-grant.

34. 34.  https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/bernie-grant.

35. 35.  Harmit Athwal and Jenny Bourne, ‘It Has to Change: An Interview with Martha Osamo’, Race & Class 50, no. 1 (2016), 91.

36. 36.  Athwal and Bourne, ‘It Has to Change’, 91.

37. 37.  Bernie Grant Collection PBC files 1–5.

38. 38.  James G. Cantres, Blackening Britain (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).

39. 39.  Nydia A. Swaby, ‘ “Disparate in Voice, Sympathetic in Direction”: Gendered Political Blackness and the Politics of Solidarity’, Feminist Review 108, no. 1 (2014).

40. 40.  Rapport du colloque d’Amiens, Centre des Archives du Féminisme (Angers), Papers of the feminist network Ruptures, 49AF88.

41. 41.  Working group meeting minutes, undated but most likely 1990, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 6/1.

42. 42.  Working group meeting minutes, most likely 1990, Bernie Grant Collection.

43. 43.  Athwal and Bourne, ‘It Has to Change’, 90–91.

44. 44.  On Europe’s relation to race and racism, see David Theo Goldberg, ‘Racial Europeanization’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 29, no. 2 (2006); Fatima El-Tayeb, European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Buettner, Europe after Empire; Philomena Essed and Kwame Nimako, ‘Designs and (Co)Incidents: Cultures of Scholarship and Public Policy on Immigrants/Minorities in the Netherlands’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology 47, no. 3–4 (2006); Gloria Wekker, White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016); Alana Lentin, ‘Europe and the Silence about Race’, European Journal of Social Theory 11, no. 4 (2008); Chin, The Crisis of Multiculturalism; Rita Chin et al., After the Nazi Racial State. Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009).

45. 45.  El-Tayeb, European Others; Florvil, Mobilizing Black Germany; Gordon, ‘French and British Anti-Racists’; Ohene-Nyako, ‘Contexts and Spaces of Intersectionality’.

46. 46.  Gordon, ‘French and British Anti-Racists’. See also Florvil, ‘May Ayim’s Cosmopolitanism’.

47. 47.  Ulrike von Hirschhausen and Kiran K. Patel, ‘Europeanization in History: An Introduction’ in Europeanization in the Twentieth Century. Historical Approaches, ed. Martin Conway and Kiran K. Patel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 2–3.

48. 48.  Johan P. Olsen, ‘The Many Faces of Europeanization’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 40, no. 5 (2002).

49. 49.  Della Porta and Caiani, Social Movements and Europeanization; Pierre Monforte, Europeanizing Contention: The Protest against “Fortress Europe” in France and Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014).

50. 50.  On activists’ British-centredness, see Gordon, ‘French and British Anti-Racists’, 23–5.

51. 51.  Briefing. Undated but probably end of 1992, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 2/2.

52. 52.  Briefing. Undated but probably end of 1992, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 2/2.

53. 53.  Grant to Clarke, 18 August 1992, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 2/2.

54. 54.  Report 1993/1994, 9, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE file 4/2.

55. 55.  Report 1993/1994, 5, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE file 4/2.

56. 56.  Invitation to Maastricht Alternative Summit, November 1991, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 10/1, 1.

57. 57.  Grant to Clarke, 18 August 1992, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 2/2.

58. 58.  Letter from Peter Lloyd to Bernie Grant, 2 October 1992; Letter from John Major to Bernie Grant, 24 December 1992, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 2/2.

59. 59.  Report 1993/1994, Black Manifesto for Europe, 4, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE file 4/2.

60. 60.  Report 1993/1994, Black Manifesto for Europe, 4, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE file 4/2, 4.

61. 61.  Report 1993/1994, Black Manifesto for Europe, 4, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE file 4/2, 4.

62. 62.  Julia Sudbury, ‘Other Kinds of Dreams’: Black Women’s Organisations and the Politics of Transformation (London: Routledge, 2003); Natalie Thomlinson, Race, Ethnicity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1968–1993 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Swaby, ‘Disparate in Voice, Sympathetic in Direction’.

63. 63.  Ohene-Nyako, ‘Black Women’s Transnational Activism’.

64. 64.  Ohene-Nyako, ‘Black Women’s Transnational Activism’; Florvil, Mobilizing Black Germany, 166–77.

65. 65.  Scoreboard, April 1995, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE file 5/8. The documents consulted do not allow me to determine precisely the number of issues released, nor its readership.

66. 66.  The Effects of 1992 and the Single European Market on Black, Migrant, and Refugee Women. A report of a seminar held in February 1991, 2, GPI – EAC file 02/02/04/05.

67. 67.  Amos, a member of the Labour Party, was appointed to the House of Lords in 1997. She is notably known for being the first Black woman to become a British Minister in 2003 and the director of a higher education institution in 2015 when she became head of SOAS.

68. 68.  The Effects of 1992, 33–35, GPI – EAC file 02/02/04/05.

69. 69.  Déclaration de Maastricht, 7–8 November 1991, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 9/8.

70. 70.  Minutes of the constitutional conference, 16–17 April 1993, London, Atria Archives, Personal papers of Helen Felter, folder 17.

71. 71.  Athwal and Bourne, ‘It Has to Change’, 87–90.

72. 72.  Athwal and Bourne, ‘It Has to Change’, 91.

73. 73.  The Black Cultural Archives – Martha Osamor’s personal papers/file 2 and Oral/1/28/1-3, Martha Osamor interviewed by Hayley Reid, March 2009 (with transcript).

74. 74.  In 2018, Martha Osamor was granted the title of Baroness.

75. 75.  Minutes of the constitutional conference, 16–17 April 1993, Felter Papers/17.

76. 76.  Minutes of the constitutional conference, 16–17 April 1993, Felter Papers/17.

77. 77.  BWEN constitution, Felter Papers/17.

78. 78.  For a more nuanced understanding of the women’s movement in Britain, see Thomlinson, Race, Ethnicity and the Women’s Movement in England.

79. 79.  Minutes of the constitutional conference, 16–17 April 1993, Felter Papers/17.

80. 80.  Minutes of the constitutional conference, 16–17 April 1993, Felter Papers/17. See also Noémi Michel and Joëlle Scacchi, ‘Enoncés dans le présent, Les actes de discours racialisés ravivent une longue histoire d’exclusion et de violence’, Tangram, no. 33 (2014).

81. 81.  Minutes of the constitutional conference, 16–17 April 1993, Felter Papers/17.

82. 82.  Minutes of the constitutional conference, 16–17 April 1993, Felter Papers/17.

83. 83.  Namely due to the rise of islamophobia leading to limited solidarity with Muslim Asians who then formed identities around their racialised religious oppression, Buettner, Europe after Empire.

84. 84.  ‘Report BWEN Office 13–14 August 1994’, France, Felter Papers/17.

85. 85.  Briefing. Undated but probably end of 1992, Bernie Grant Collection/SCORE 2/2.

86. 86.  GPI – EAC files (01 and 02). See also Gordon, ‘French and British Anti-Racists’; Florvil, ‘May Ayim’s Cosmopolitanism’.

87. 87.  Bourne, ‘IRR’.

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