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Racist on Student Executive at Nottingham University

Notts IMC | 07.09.2008 09:47 | Anti-racism

Recent news that Craig Cox, incoming Education Officer at the University of Nottingham, is being investigated by the police for an alleged race hate incident was no surprise to some students. Cox, who waved a sign saying 'Bring Back Slavery' at a recent National Uniont of Students (NUS) event, is the latest in a succession of students who have flirted with racism and fascism at the university.

Former examples include the the editor of a student paper that gave free reign to Phil Edwards (real name: Stuart Russell) of the British National Party (BNP), the debating society, Forum, who invited Holocaust denier David Irving to speak, and former BNP councillor, Sadie Graham.

Newswire: Yet Another Racist at Nottingham Uni | Meeting called at uni after BNP article published in student paper

Previous Features: Anger Over "Terror Arrests" at Nottingham University | Heavy Handed Police Condemned Over Peaceful Protest | BNP wins seat in Broxtowe

Links: University of Nottingham Students Union | NUS Anti-Racism/Anti-Fascism Campaign | Ceasefire Magazine | Notts Indymedia Anti-racism topic page

Craig Cox
Craig Cox


Cox was participating in a four day event along with 100 other student union officers held at the University of York. The training sessions were designed to train participants in the handling of crises and controversial situations at their universities. Along with another participant who called black students "undesireables", Cox's actions prompted a walk out by a number of black students and a subsequent NUS investigation.

Like his predecessors, Cox has no grip on the grim facts of everyday racist violence and discrimination. Apparently showing no recognition that the slave trade was one of the most disgraceful episodes in history, and that its repercussions might still be affecting race relations today, Cox claimed he was just trying to "wind up" participants at the NUS training seminar where the event took place. He now claims to be part of a "show trial that would make Stalin blush", pursued by well known communist sympathisers, the North Yorkshire Police. Cox told the Daily (Hate) Mail that "These witch-hunts have got to stop. It's about time the NUS started representing ordinary students again and stopped acting as a front for Left-wing zealots." His language is not far from that of the BNP who are always crying about being the innocent victims of plots by 'the reds' or Marxists.

Presumably, the 'ordinary students' Cox wants to represent are the kind he meets in the Nottingham University Conservative Association, traditionally a bastion of right wing nationalist ideology. Former member, Tim Akers, also ran for an NUS position, calling for a "Campaign for a British History Month, no more trashing our past!" Akers was reacting against the events organised through Nottingham Students Union for Black History Month and, we can assume, wished to lead a campaign to glorify the racist and genocidal history of the British empire. Did he forget that a very large number of the student body did not consider Britishness to be part of their past? He also called for "More Campaigns on the issues relevant to us and not on Iraq, Israel or Palestine!" The 'us' he was talking about presumably didn't include the majority of the British citizens who were opposed to the war in Iraq, or anyone who didn't wish to endorse his Union Jack bedecked campaign fliers.

Akers was a regular contributor to the short-lived student paper The Sanctuary. The paper regularly baited liberal and left wing students with its features, which railed against travellers and included giving the BNP's press officer a page to rant to his heart's content. Stuart Russell wrote that non-white students were not intellectually capable of keeping up with white students and that the "normal aspirations" of women were best served by staying at home in the kitchen rather than going to university. Editor Tom Freeman defended his decision with the tired old argument that he was experimenting with the boundaries of free speech. It looked rather like he was taking sides though. No opinion opposing the BNP article was published alongside it, and Freeman and Akers did their best to rubbish anti-fascists who wrote in to complain.

It's not the first time privileged white students have flirted with fascism to stir up a bit of PR for themselves. In 2002, Nottingham Student's Union Forum invited holocaust denier David Irving to speak at an event . In the face of widespread condemnation, the organisers defended their decision as a blow for free speech. Fortunately, the threat of massive protests forced the University to pull the plug. The university's links with fascism go deeper still. Former Cultural Studies student Sadie Graham went on to become a BNP member of Broxtowe Council and, until her expulsion from the party, was tipped to go far in British fascism.

The impression that the university is tolerant of racists is not helped by its own recent actions in rounding up politically active Muslims on trumped up charges. The recent wrongful arrests of staff member Hicham Yezza and student Rizwaan Sabir for alleged terrorist involvement were indicative of a pervasive atmosphere of suspicion regarding Muslims amongst the university authorities. A police officer involved in the arrests claimed that they would never have happened if those involved had been white. It was the second time that Sabir had been arrested on campus in recent times, having already been silenced for his participation in a pro-Palestine demonstration. Those who leapt to the defense of free speech for Irving and the BNP were noticeable by their absence in the campaigns for justice for Yezza and Sabir.

So it is not surprising that another racist loudmouth has found sanctuary at the University of Nottingham. What is particularly worrying about the most recent dabbler-in-racism to come out of the closet is that he has just been elected to serve as the Student Union Education Officer for 2008-2009. According to the SU's website, Cox's job is to "represent the concerns of all students on course related matters, both within the University, in the community and on a national scale." Seeing as Cox has disgraced himself nationally and demonstrated that he holds views that are entirely unacceptable to large sections of the university community, he seems to have proved himself wholly unsuitable for his new job. Can Cox really claim to represent black and ethnic minority students, or anyone who thinks that racism is a serious matter, after the way that he has behaved? We can only hope that, as has been the case in the past, anti-racist students will campaign to make sure that Cox and his ilk will regret their stupidity.

Notts IMC

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

Student Racism

24.09.2008 14:06

I for one am not surprised about the likes of Cox (Irish origin not British/English) find solice for thier facist views in Univeristies up and down the land.

I was at Derby University in the early 1990's and witnessed a number of BNP so-called sympathesers at the university grounds seeking support.

I see nothing has changed ansd the far-right are still using the universities up and down Britain to spew thier racist revisionist crap.

What white people like cox seem niot to understand or deliberately fail to understand is the "Britian" made its wealth upon the blood, sweat, murder, rape, testicle and penis cutting, lynching and brutalisation of Afrikan (Black) people.

The whle Fabric of Britian was made possible by enslaved Afrikan labour. Cities like London (now the world's largest fiancial centre) ,Hull, Liverpool, Nottingham,Derby, Portsmouth, Southhampton, Glasgow, edinburgh, Cardiff, Bristol etc all made thier wealth by killing and selling Afrikans.

The royal family (Royal Afrikan Company which had a 20 year monopoly on selling Afrikans), The Church of England and other instituitons were involved in this brutalization of Afrikan people. Companies like Barclays Bank, Lloys of London, Tate and Lyle sugar, Cadbury's, the bank of England, ALL the Merchant banks and Insurance companies, Unilever, Shell, BP, etc etc were all started by mega profits the founders of these slave blood suckers made on the backs of Afrikan people.

Your textile industry in Northern england again was made possible by mudering and raping and killing my ancestors - name me any cotton plantations in Bradford, oldham, rochdale, Blackburn, Burnley etc? I can name you though cotton plantations all over the caribbean and Afrikan that brought cotton to the north of england and made thar industry flourish up there.

So what i am saying is simply this - becuase of a mis-education process of 99.9% of the white British populace, idiots like Cox who refuse to look at thier shameful past of which the lagacy is still with us, like stop and search and school exclusions to name but two, come up with thier white power crap and instill that in gullible whote people who think that Afrikans are to blame for thier woes.

Until this country pays significant reparations towards Afrikan people and thier countries and white people in the UK accept this barbaric chapter of thier history just like Kevin Rudd has accepted the brutal past of white australia and the Germans on the jews, then we will also have idiots like cox who will just play on the innate ignorance and satupidity of most white people who know notrhing of the true history of this country.

Oh and before some clever dick comes with the counter arguement - yes some Afrikan people were guilty of selling thier own people justr like some jews who calaborated with the nazis and some british people who sold thier own brethern to australia (the stolen generation)so its no arguement and two name me ant Afrikan king or queen or asantehene or togbenuhene or yaa naa or gaa manchi or benin oba who insured a slave ship or owned a plantation in the Caribbean or the Americas or who brutally raped or castrated Afrikans on the Slave ship.

No Afrikan was invloved in any of the above - it was the sheer brutality, inhumane, macriox, moronic, psychotic behaviour of white people that created this monster called the slave trade. Cox and his like and for the majority of white people my advice is to READ history WELL and CORRECTLY and STOP bleiving the BBC, Daily (Hate) Mail and its ilk's false racist propaganda.

Dr. Kwame Osei
mail e-mail: nanaoseikwame@hotmail.com


Afrikans should not get carried away if Obama is next US President

24.09.2008 14:19

Many Afrikan people and their descendants in the West beleive that IF Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States, things especially towards the Afrikan continet will change. This article strongly dis-agrees with that pronosis.

NOTE: Should Barack Obama be elected the next US President he will NOT, I REPEAT WILL NOT BE THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN as the western media claim to become president of the United States of America. There have been 6 other African-Americans who wre president. They include beleive it or not, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson. The last "Black" president was military hero Dwight D Eishenhower whose mother was Black. Her name was Ida Stover. GO CHECK IT OUT!! so let us stop this nonsense of Obama becoming the first"Black" president.

In American race hierachy one drop of Afrikan blood makes you Black. Therefore yuo couild have the blondest of hair and the bluest of eyes but if your great, great, great, great, grandfather or grandmother was an Afrikan you too are Afrikan.

Dr. Kwame Osei
mail e-mail: nanaoseikwame@hotmail.com