Undesirables

Through the early twentieth century, the British Government locked away over 50,000 innocent people. Their ‘crimes’? Being poor and unyielding. This is their story. 'The heartrending stories Sarah Wise has unearthed beggar belief… beautifully researched and truly compelling.' Catherine Bailey, author of Black Diamonds By 1950, an estimated 50,000 people had been deemed ‘defective’ by the British government and detained indefinitely under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. Their ‘crimes’ were various: women with children born out of wedlock; rebellious teenagers caught shoplifting; those with epilepsy, hearing impairments and chronic illnesses who had struggled in school; and many who were simply ‘different’. Forcibly removed from their families and confined to a shadow world of specialist facilities in the countryside, they were hidden away and forgotten – out of sight, out of mind. Through painstaking archival research, award-winning historian Sarah Wise shines a light on this shameful chapter. Piecing together the lives irrevocably changed by this devastating legislation, The Undesirables provides a compelling study of how early twentieth-century attitudes to class, gender and disability resulted in a nationwide scandal – and how they continue to shape social policy to this day.

In this gripping graphic novel, a Jewish journalist flees Hitler's Berlin, only to encounter an extension of the horrors of the Holocaust in the forced labor camps of wartime French North Africa. In the lead-up to World War II, the rising tide of fascism and antisemitism in Europe foreshadowed Hitler's genocidal campaign against Jews. But the horrors of the Holocaust were not limited to the concentration camps of Europe: antisemitic terror spread through Vichy French imperial channels to France's colonies in North Africa, where in the forced labor camps of Algeria and Morocco, Jews and other "undesirables" faced brutal conditions and struggled to survive in an unforgiving landscape quite unlike Europe. In this richly historical graphic novel, historian Aomar Boum and illustrator Nadjib Berber take us inside this lesser-known side of the traumas wrought by the Holocaust by following one man's journey as a Holocaust refugee. Hans Frank is a Berlin-born Jewish journalist, the son of an apolitical bookseller, Josef, and a Marxist political activist, Rachel. He has returned to Berlin to cover politics for the Munich Post, growing increasingly uneasy as he witnesses the Nazi Party consolidate power. Just after Hans and his father clash over the urgency of the threat posed by Hitler's ascent, Josef is taken in for questioning about his son's political activities, and Hans decides to flee Berlin. Through connections with a transnational network of activists organizing against fascism and antisemitism, Hans ultimately lands in French Algeria, where days after his arrival, the Vichy regime designates all foreign Jews as "undesirables" and calls for their internment. On his way to Morocco, he is detained by Vichy authorities and interned first at Le Vernet, then later transported to different camps in the deserts of Morocco and Algeria. With memories of his former life as a political journalist receding like a dream, Hans spends the next year and a half in forced labor camps, hearing the stories of others whose lives have been upended by violence and war. Through bold, historically-inflected illustrations that convey the tension of the coming war and the grimness of the Vichy camps, Aomar Boum and Nadjib Berber capture the experiences of thousands of refugees through the fictional Hans, chronicling how the traumas of the Holocaust extended far beyond the borders of Europe.

THE INTER CITY JIBBERS. WHERE UNITED WENT, THEY FOLLOWED. MAYHEM WAS NEVER FAR BEHIND.The Inter City Jibbers were the most notorious Manchester United hooligan crew of the last thirty years, and Colin 'Beaner' Blaney was up to his neck in it. His years as an ICJ and Wide Awake Firm (WAF) footsoldier saw him blacklisted as an 'Undesirable' by Interpol for smuggling Ecstasy, tearing through gangland warfare with rival crooks, and carrying out daring jewellery thefts as far afield as Taiwan and South Korea.Spurred on by the overwhelming acclaim for his first book, Grafters, Blaney's latest account includes stories originally deemed too risky to tell. This shocking, searingly honest new work from the core of the Inter City Jibbers tells of four attempted jailbreaks, and describes members of the ICJ's experiences in numerous hellish overseas jails. These include the gang rape of one WAF member in a Pakistani prison, a brutal time spent in a county lock-up in Virginia and a stint in a Yakuza-filled Japanese jail, as well as run-ins with gun-wielding foreign thugs. Above all, this is a chronicle of twenty-five years of life as an Undesirable, stealing anything that wasn't nailed down.

The second novel from the author of Guernica (a top ten bestseller and winner of the Richard & Judy Summer Read 2009) is a deeply moving, intimate portrait of family, friendship and love, set against the backdrop of the second Boer war. Aletta Venter was on the family farm when the British troops arrived. She watched them burn her home to the ground before she was transferred, with her mother and siblings, to a prison camp. Never complaining, just living day by day, Lettie grows out of her innocent childhood. She is determined to be a good person, but everything is so complicated in this place where making the wrong decision can be life-threatening. What should she do about Maples, for example, the nineteen-year-old British guard who tries to befriend her? Is his kindness genuine, or would trusting him be a betrayal of herself and her country? A deeply moving, intimate portrait of family, friendship and love, set against the backdrop of the second Boer war at the turn of the twentieth century, The Undesirables (the British name for the residents of the camps) is the heart-rending yet life-affirming new novel from the top ten bestselling author of Guernica, winner of the Richard & Judy Summer Read.

Historical story of the ship Komagata Maru and Canada.

Official figures classify some fifty million of the world’s people as 'victims of forced displacement'. Refugees, asylum seekers, disaster victims, the internally displaced and the temporarily tolerated - categories of the excluded proliferate, but many more are left out of count. In the face of this tragedy, humanitarian action increasingly seems the only possible response. On the ground, however, the 'facilities' put in place are more reminiscent of the logic of totalitarianism. In a situation of permanent catastrophe and endless emergency, 'undesirables' are kept apart and out of sight, while the care dispensed is designed to control, filter and confine. How should we interpret the disturbing symbiosis between the hand that cares and the hand that strikes? After seven years of study in the refugee camps, Michel Agier reveals their 'disquieting ambiguity' and stresses the imperative need to take into account forms of improvisation and challenge that are currently transforming the camps, sometimes making them into towns and heralding the emergence of political subjects. A radical critique of the foundations, contexts, and political effects of humanitarian action.

When it comes to asylum seekers on Nauru, we learn only what the Australian government wants us to know. In the wake of The Nauru Files, see eyewitness accounts of what is happening inside the Nauru detention centre through The Undesirables.

Mark Isaacs went to work inside the Nauru detention centre in 2012. As a Salvation Army employee, he provided humanitarian aid to the men interned in the camp. What hesaw there moved him to write this book.

The Undesirables chronicles his time on Nauru, detailing daily life and the stories of the men held there; the self-harm, suicide attempts, and riots; the rare moments of joy; the moments of deep despair. He takes us behind the gates of Nauru and humanises a political debate usually ruled by misleading rhetoric.

In a strange twist of fate, Mark’s father, Professor David Isaacs, travelled to Nauru in December 2014 to investigate how children were treated in detention. This revised edition of The Undesirables reveals the human rights abuses Professor Isaacs discovered on Nauru, and interrogates how little has changed for people in detention.

Mark Isaacs is a writer, a community worker, an adventurer, and a campaigner for social justice. He resigned from the Salvation Army in June 2013 and spoke out publicly against the government’s No Advantage policy. After returning from Nauru, Mark worked at an asylum seeker settlement agency in Sydney. Mark appeared in Eva Orner’s 2016 documentary Chasing Asylum and has written for Foreign Policy, World Policy Journal, Huffington Post, New Internationalist, Mamamia, New Matilda and VICE.