Refugees and Migrants

Janine performs her poem 'Babyface' in Cambridge in 2016.

Published in RMT News, July/August 2021

RMT members have helped to win justice for Osime Brown, a young, black, autistic, learning-disabled man. The union saw this as an issue that deserved our support and solidarity. Janine Booth, Secretary of RMT’s Disabled Members’ Advisory Committee, explains why.

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A version of this was published in Solidarity 568:

This story of colour bars in the UK railway and bus industries begins after the Second World War, when Britain had a labour shortage and people moved to Britain in increasing numbers from Caribbean countries and elsewhere.

NUR Opposes Racism

Speaking at an online meeting of rail workers in September, Janine Booth tells the story of the period after the end of the Second World War when black people came to Britain but met opposition from some white workers, until the 'colour bar' was defeated in 1966.

Janine addresses the protest in support of Osime Brown outside the Home Office on Friday 4 September - includes the poems Free Osime Brown and Bearing Down.

Please sign Osime's petition here.

• published in Solidarity 564

British courts’ application of ‘joint enterprise’ is unjust, and criminalises black and working-class youth.

‘Joint enterprise’ is a common-law doctrine that allows courts to convict not only the person who carried out a crime, but others who helped them to do it. In principle, that sounds reasonable. But since 1984, British courts have used it to convict people who they think knew the crime was going to happen, even if they did not help carry it out.

Published in Solidarity 562:

To see the roots of poverty

the plight of the have-nots

Don't look at little dinghies

but at massive super-yachts

You have no skills – you’re just a carer,
a labourer, an apron-wearer,
You smear on cream and dish out pills –
you don’t have skills.

You have no skills, you just wipe arses,
the underside of the underclasses,
You wipe up drool, make tea and chat –
Where’s the skill in that?!

Edward lived in Hoxton
boxed in
Stitching boots
digging roots
Labouring his load
on the neighbouring road
to new arrivals
migrated for survival 
from Poland, from Russia
to the holy crush of London
Under the same sky
came together, made ties
meeting in the streets
Tars and bars and beats
tasting gifts and eats
More than metropolitan