Kitchener’s Memorial or HMS Hampsire Memorial?

In a recent post I wrote about visiting Kitchener’s Memorial for the first time. As a child I lived a few short miles from it and growing up it was a familiar landmark in a prominent position on a headland on the northwest coast of Orkney. It marks the closest landfall from the sinking ofContinue reading “Kitchener’s Memorial or HMS Hampsire Memorial?”

Refugee Stories by Refugees

So much of the chatter around refugee stories are from people who are neither refugees nor involved with the support of refugees. Refugee Radio Times: Voices of Asylum, Identity and Resistance, edited by Lorna Stephenson and Stephen Silverwood, is a welcome focus on the lived experiences of refugees from very different backgrounds and with differentContinue reading “Refugee Stories by Refugees”

Hating Peter Tatchell

What began as a small project funded by a Kickstarter campaign, to document the threats and violent hostility against a human rights activist, was eventually picked up by David Furnish and Elton John who have produced an interesting documentary on the life of socialist gay activist Peter Tatchell, a man who is possibly not allContinue reading “Hating Peter Tatchell”

Refugees: Myths and Realities

For seventy years the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees has been very clear about who a refugee is; “A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationalityContinue reading “Refugees: Myths and Realities”