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What are the human consequences of war, conflict and terrorism, and what are the appropriate policy and service responses? This book seeks to provide some answers to these important questions, drawing upon over 25 years’ work by the author in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. Focusing on the work undertaken following the Omagh bombing in 1998, the book describes how needs were assessed and understood, how evidence-based therapy services were put in place and the training and education programmes that were developed to assist first those communities affected by the Omagh bombing - and later the wider population affected by the years of conflict. The author places the mental health needs of conflict-affected victims and communities at the heart of the political and peace processes that follow when conflicts end. This is a practical book and will be of particular interest to those planning for and responding to conflict-related disasters and terrorism, policy makers, service commissioners and providers, politicians, diplomats, civil servants, leaders of religion, peace builders and peace makers. It also includes an extensive overview of the efforts to understand the mental health impact of the years of violence in Northern Ireland, reviewing for example, the impacts of loss and PTSD, why it seemed to take so long to recognise the impact, and the challenges of undertaking research in a community that is in violent conflict.

This book makes a contribution to the discussion on the crisis of anti-racism and the need to rethink anti-racism. The author argues that rethinking anti-racism necessitates clearing up some important confusions regarding racism and anti-racism. The author argues that capitalism creates the conditions for both racism and anti-racism. The author argues that anti-racism and racism express the contradiction between the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity on the one hand and the reality of restrictions on human freedom, inequality and ‘racial’ division on the other. The book illustrates the argument through an in depth analysis of racisms (and anti-racisms) in Northern Ireland. The book places the development of anti-racism in the region in the wider context of the development of anti-racism globally and in the UK. The author argues that the failure to include Northern Ireland in broader discussions about racisms in the UK has had a detrimental impact on emancipatory anti-racism in the UK. The author argues that rethinking anti-racism needs to involve an examination of the whole of the UK, not just the UK minus Northern Ireland.

In 1960–62, a large number of white autochthonous parents in Southall became very concerned that the sudden influx of largely non-Anglophone Indian immigrant children in local schools would hold back their children’s education. It was primarily to placate such fears that ‘dispersal’ (or ‘bussing’) was introduced in areas such as Southall and Bradford, as well as to promote the integration of mostly Asian children. It consisted in sending busloads of immigrant children to predominantly white suburban schools, in an effort to ‘spread the burden’. This form of social engineering went on until the early 1980s. This book, by mobilising local and national archival material as well as interviews with formerly bussed pupils in the 1960s and 1970s, reveals the extent to which dispersal was a flawed policy, mostly because thousands of Asian pupils were faced with racist bullying on the playgrounds of Ealing, Bradford, etc. It also investigates the debate around dispersal and the integration of immigrant children, e.g. by analysing the way some Local Education Authorities (Birmingham, London) refused to introduce bussing. It studies the various forms that dispersal took in the dozen or so LEAs where it operated. Finally, it studies local mobilisations against dispersal by ethnic associations and individuals. It provides an analysis of debates around ‘ghetto schools’, ‘integration’, ‘separation’, ‘segregation’ where quite often the US serves as a cognitive map to make sense of the English situation.