Islamist extremism, politicians' failure to tackle terrorism and immigration blamed by people in multicultural, multifaith London community

From al-Muhajiroun's open-air stall on Powis Street, where suspect Michael Olumide Adebolajo was a volunteer, it is a five-minute walk to the Royal Artillery Barracks, where Drummer Lee Rigby was hacked to death in broad daylight.

A small white and blue tent marked the location on Thursday; police had cordoned off the road; locals left floral tributes on the wall of Woolwich's green-signed jobcentre. London's mayor Boris Johnson swept into the municipal building to meet officials. A few people heckled him.

As the political class groped towards a response to Wednesday's horror, people from Woolwich were pondering what – if any – conclusions could be drawn from this shocking incident, for them and for their multicultural, multi-faith community. "For someone to do this changes the whole harmony of life," Amrik Singh reflected, adding his flowers to the pile. "It's just terrible really that something like this can happen on our doorstep."

For Atma Singh, a long-term Woolwich resident and a former advisor to Ken Livingstone, the answer was clear: Westminster had been dozing and needed to take a tougher approach towards Islamist extremism. "You have to create an environment where there is a clampdown on terrorism advocacy," he said. "I also think the intelligence services need to step up. It's a huge effort. And there are lots of sensitivities involved with home-grown terrorism since you are dealing with British citizens."

"But I think not enough has been done to get into these radical groups. This is a failure. Politicians have taken their eye off the terrorism issue. People thought we are pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq, so we'll be OK. But Syria is going on. You have lots of points were extremists congregate. The number of young people going from the UK to Syria is huge. Perhaps not from Woolwich, but certainly from London."

For sure, Woolwich is one of London's most ethnically diverse areas. The borough is home to numerous faiths - Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Christians. And to a kaleidoscope of different nationalities: Nigerians, Congolese, Nepalese, Gujaratis, Tamils, Vietnamese, eastern Europeans, and many others.

Tensions are rising. Hours after the murder, supporters of the English Defence League pelted the police with bottles and chanted anti-Muslim slogans, a response both ominous and predictable.

"What's behind all this is immigration. It's got to be stopped," said Robert Irvine, a 63-year-old Scot who has lived in Woolwich for more than three decades. Irvine, who lives two minutes away from the murder scene, said the two suspects should be hanged if they were convicted, "otherwise they will spend 20 years in Belmarsh prison at the ratepayers' expense. This has got to change".

Irvine, one of those who heckled Johnson, said both Labour and the Tories had failed. "We need to try a far right-wing party like the National Front."

Such views may reflect hardening attitudes towards immigration at a time of austerity and with Ukip on the rise. But they were not universal. Other Woolwich residents said immigration and its impact on the local community had little to do with the soldier's murder. "The problem is radical Islamists trying to gain a bit of infamy and trying to incite hatred," said Josh Clerkin, a 22-year-old barman, as he dropped off a bunch of carnations. "This was an absolutely sadistic crime."

Inside Woolwich town hall, a group of immigrants were going through a British citizenship ceremony. The wood-panelled council chamber had been decked in Union flags; a loudspeaker was playing the march from Colonel Bogey, followed by Vivaldi's Four (non-British?) Seasons.

A Polish photographer, Anna, was taking photographs of the applicants declaring their oath of loyalty to the Queen. One of its paragraphs reads: "I will respect the UK's right and freedoms. I will respect its democratic values." A marble statute of a former Queen, Victoria, stood on the balcony.

"What happened here in Woolwich was horrible," said Kalosh Fostino after picking up his new citizenship certificate. Fostino, 45, said he was originally from Zambia and had been living in Woolwich for eight years and was working for a chemicals' firm. Britain, and Woolwich, was preferable to home, he said.

After all the bigwigs left, a group of teenagers from Woolwich Polytechnic school milled around the police cordon in their uniforms. Sam Godwin, 15, said he was born in Woolwich but his family were Nigerian; his friend Jazz, also 15, said he had a Nigerian mum and a British dad. Since the murder and news that Adebolajo was of Nigerian origin, the atmosphere at school had grown darker, he said.

Godwin said: "Some of the white kids at my school have been saying offensive things, like: "Why don't you go back to where you came from?" They support the EDL.

"But I was born here in Woolwich. It's my home. These comments are really annoying."

What would happen now? "There will be more attacks. More from the EDL and more from radical Muslims," he said.

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With freedom of expression under threat in South Africa again, Anton Harber recalls an electric confrontation between two Booker prize winners, JM Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer, about the censorship of a third – Salman Rushdie

It started on a Thursday midday, when the organiser of the Weekly Mail Book Week put the phone down, walked across the newsroom and interrupted me and my co-editor. "I think we might have a problem," she said. It was October 1988 and the "problem" was Salman Rushdie, due to arrive a week later to headline the event. "He says his book has been banned in India, he is getting death threats," she said. "I asked him what he wrote about and he said, 'I ripped into the Qur'an'."

Ours was a small, anti-apartheid newspaper, the Weekly Mail. Gail Berhmann was an artist who was organising our annual literary event, with Rushdie billed as this year's star guest.

We had other problems too. A few months earlier, we had received a five-page letter from the government warning that we would be closed down under State of Emergency regulations if we continued to muster support for revolutionary organisations and foment feelings of hatred for the security forces. Shortly after that they closed another "alternative" newspaper, the New Nation, for 13 weeks, and we thumbed our noses at them by running articles New Nation had intended to publish under the front page headline "What New Nation Would Have Said".

We were young and cheeky and enjoying a time of rebellion and defiance of what was still a formidable apartheid machinery. Two weeks later, a special Government Gazette was published giving us a formal warning to desist or face closure.

Another warning arrived in April and the government closed another paper, South. There was little doubt that we were next. The only question was for how long they would shut us down. We could survive a couple of months without any income, but after that we would have to find jobs. We threw everything we had into a campaign to get the government to limit the closure, if not to stop it.

We had every Fleet Street editor sign a letter to the South African government. We visited three embassies a day in Pretoria to urge them to protest. The formidable British Ambassador, Sir Robin Renwick, organised a European Community démarche. US Ambassador Edward Perkins issued an unusual statement of support. Stephen Spender of Index on Censorship organised an advert which appeared across the country with the names of 500 journalists and prominent figures protesting against the threat.

We were consumed with this campaign, tapping the power of local and international solidarity. At the same time, we were putting out our weekly newspaper with a small and nervous staff trying to cover the popular uprising that was spreading across the country at that time. And the Book Week was upon us.

The festival was themed "Censorship under the State of Emergency" and the programme headlined the Heinrich Heine quote, "Wherever they burn books, they will also in the end burn people." It was apposite to our situation, and it would certainly become appropriate to Rushdie's. Also, we had been through months of difficult negotiations to secure agreement from the broad anti-apartheid movement to allow for Rushdie's visit, and did not want to relinquish the breakthrough this represented.

For two decades there had been a sport, arms, cultural and growing economic boycott of apartheid South Africa, and at the Weekly Mail we broadly backed it (within the limitations of a law which prevented active support). But there had been long debate about contradictions in the cultural boycott and the fact that, because conservatives easily flouted it, it sometimes affected anti-apartheid organisations more than others. The previous year, Oliver Tambo, the leader of the exiled ANC, which championed the sanctions, had cautiously and tentatively announced that they would try a selective boycott: they would allow progressive artists, writers and academics to be hosted by non-racial, anti-apartheid organisations, under the right circumstances.

Approval came just a few weeks before the event, and with the anti-apartheid writers' union, Cosaw, we sent a joint invitation to Rushdie. We announced the event in our paper, with Booker Prize Winners Speak, which would bring Rushdie together with Gordimer and JM Coetzee, as a highlight. You could not hope for a better combination of literary stars and it sold out quickly. In Johannesburg, Rushdie would deliver a keynote on censorship, read from his latest work and take part in a panel discussion.

I was particularly thrilled. I had consumed and loved Rushdie's two early masterpieces, Midnight's Children and Shame. There could be no better candidate to speak about colonialism, literature, censorship and freedom. Besides, the Booker Prize was being announced a few days before our event, and the Whitbread while he was here, and his latest book was tipped for both.

Then came the Thursday call which alerted us to "a problem".

I got hold of a copy of the book and gave it to a Muslim friend, Ghaleb Cachalia, asking him to read it and tell me how serious the problem was. He opened it up, read a few lines and gasped; read a few more and frowned. It seemed to be critical of the Qur'an on almost every page, he said. He took it home and called in the morning to say he had been up all night reading it, and it was brilliant and provocative. It was bound to cause trouble.

On the Friday, as the mosques emptied, we began to receive angry calls and threats of violence, at the office and at some of our homes. The Africa Muslim Agency called for the book to be banned, the invitation withdrawn and apologies offered. The Islamic Missionary Society said that "there was every likelihood that he [Rushdie] would be assaulted and that blood will flow. There are secret Muslim hit squads who have vowed to avenge the honour of the Holy Prophet Muhammed." The Islamic Council said Rushdie had to face the "justifiable wrath and anger" of hundreds of millions of Muslims. "His presence in South Africa is most unwelcome and it will only aggravate the injury has inflicted on the Muslims. Those who associate with him in South Africa will be judged accordingly."

We issued a statement: "We are most perturbed to learn that Mr Rushdie's book has caused religious controversy. We had no intention of offending anybody's religious sensibility. However, we have invited him to highlight the issue of censorship and the situation in this country – and that need remains stronger than ever."

Then Rushdie phoned to say he had a cold and was pulling out. He had just returned from an abortive trip to Toronto where he faced massive protests. "I fell ill. I began to doubt the wisdom of going halfway across the world to have a fight I was already having at home," he wrote later.

I called him and said in no uncertain terms that many people had stuck their necks out for him and he could not let us down. He agreed to come. A delegation of about a dozen Muslim leaders came to our offices to try and hammer out a solution, along with Gordimer and Cosaw representatives. Among them were prominent Muslims who were sympathetic to our plight, but fearful of what would happen if Rushdie came. They were eager to find a compromise, but were outnumbered by the militants.

The meeting went on for six hours. Gordimer later said that there was understanding that their faith had been offended; but so had ours: "Freedom of speech was as much an article of faith for us as Islam was for you," she said. It was an unexpected challenge: could we hold up a secular article of faith against a mainstream religious one? Was our allegiance to free expression one of "faith"?

I was called out early on because a sheriff of the court had arrived with a letter from the minister: "The production and publishing, during the period from the date of publishing of this order up to and including 28 November 1988, of all further issues of the periodical Weekly Mail is hereby totally prohibited." It was the blow we had feared, but it was also a victory. The ban was for only a month, and we knew we could survive that.

Meanwhile, the meeting with the Muslim leadership broke up without a resolution. The next day Cosaw withdrew their support for Rushdie's visit "with regret".

Gordimer phoned London to convey the view that, to avoid violence and division within the liberation movement, he should not come. We issued a statement: "This decision will bring shame and disrepute upon the progressive movement in this country, and we condemn it in the strongest terms. It is a victory for intolerance." It was quite a moment to criticise our friends, but we were angry and upset.

There was a suggestion that Rushdie address the Cape Town book week via telephone, but the publishers and bookstores which backed the event opposed it, fearing the repercussions. Mongane Wally Serote, one of our best-known writers in exile and head of the ANC cultural desk, did so instead. Again, a small victory in the face of defeat: getting a banned exile's voice was some compensation for Rushdie's absence, a lesser but not insignificant show of anti-censorship defiance.

But there was a deep sense of discomfort, and it was the inscrutable and unpredictable JM Coetzee, in his quiet, soft voice, who provided the fireworks which ignited one of the most electric encounters in literary South Africa. "We have been overtaken by the politics of writing in an ugly, violent and unexpected form," he told the Cape Town gathering. The "disinviting" of Rushdie left the Weekly Mail organisers "more than a little embarrassed" and "the South African intellectual community, among which I count myself, comes out of the affair looking pretty stupid", he said. He asked how we had ever got ourselves into the position where the writers' union had a veto over our event.

"I believe and will continue to believe until I am otherwise convinced that some kind of trade-off took place in the smoke-filled room, some kind of calling-in of debts, some kind of compromise or bargain or settlement in which the Rushdie visit was given up for the sake of the unity of the anti-apartheid alliance and for the sake of not making life too difficult for Muslims in the alliance," he said.

With the freedom of a non-aligned writer unlikely to have ever joined a body like Cosaw, sitting alongside the firmly-aligned Gordimer, he lambasted everyone involved: the Weekly Mail, "which stands by the principal of free speech, but finds that it can live with the fact of free speech for selected persons only"; the booksellers who opposed the telephone link with Rushdie; Cosaw "which is dedicated to freedom of expression, as long as it does not threaten the unity of the struggle"; and by implication Gordimer.

Why, he asked, did he still involve himself in this "sorry spectacle"? It was to register his protests against the silencing of Rushdie, and to say certain things about fundamentalism.

What followed started quite plainly and mildly but gathered pace into what must be one of the most eloquent and devastating denunciations in literary record: "Islamic fundamentalism in its activist manifestation is bad news. Religious fundamentalism in general is bad news. We know about religious fundamentalism in South Africa. Calvinist fundamentalism has been an unmitigated force of benightedness in our history.

"Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, South Africa, wherever there is a bleeding sore on the body of the world, the same hard-eyed narrow-minded fanatics are busy, indifferent to life, in love with death. Behind them always come the mullahs, the rabbis, the predikante (ministers), giving their blessings."

And then he turned on the writers' union, represented that evening by Gordimer, who was looking shell-shocked. "These words are addressed particularly to Cosaw. Don't get involved with such people, don't get into alliances to them. There is nothing more inimical to writing than the spirit of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism abhors the play of signs, the endlessness of writing. Fundamentalism means nothing more or less than going back to an origin and staying there. It stands for one founding book and thereafter no more books.

"As the various books of the various fundamentalisms, each claiming to be the one true book, fantasise themselves to be signed in fire or engraved in stone, so they aspire to strike dead every rival book, petrifying the sinuous, protean, forward-gliding life of the letters on their pages, turning them into physical objects to be anathematised, things of horror not to be touched, not to be looked upon. This is what Rushdie wrote about in Satanic Verses and why the fundamentalists of Islam want him dead. Rushdie presents the prophet not as prophet but as writer.

"Cosaw ought to decide where it stands on the central question: on the right of Mr Rushdie to write against authority, and ought then to act according to its decision."

He ended with a powerful questioning of the values of the liberation struggle, one which resonates powerfully today when – 25 years later, living in democracy and freedom – the ANC government threatens freedom of expression. "I am here with my tail between my legs like the rest of the participants, like the organisers too. That loose and fragile alliance of people, those who believe in freedom of expression and those who believe in freedom of expression for some people, we have suffered a crushing defeat.

"There are smiles in the mosques, there are chuckles in the corridors of Pretoria, where they issued Rushdie with an entry visa and then watched as we proceeded to self-destruct. We are so demoralised, afraid to pick up a phone and dial Mr Rushdie's London number for fear someone will throw a bomb at us, that we have no sense of whether the Rushdie affair will in a year's time will have vanished from peoples' memories or in a year's time will go down in history as the moment after which people simply got tired of pretending there was any place for the liberal shibboleths like freedom of expression in the anti-apartheid struggle."

There was long and extended applause. Gordimer's small frame and hard-bitten face was frozen solid.

She took the microphone and said she was "surprised, shocked and distressed" that, having come to speak out about the treatment of Rushdie, she now needed to defend Cosaw. "I think that it is very surprising to me that my friend and colleague John Coetzee, without really discussing it with me or anyone in Cosaw, has sprung this public attack upon us. But that is a democratic right and that is what we are here to defend."

She said that his and the audiences views were based on incomplete facts, partly as a result of the Weekly Mail being banned and unable to relay the details of what happened. She described how Cosaw had stood firm in the meeting with the Muslim leadership and sought a compromise which did not prevent Rushdie's from coming; how they had attempted to at least get assurances that he would not be harmed. But the threats were real and the violence imminent. "What would you have done?" she asked. "Do you think Cosaw has the right to bring a man here to risk his life and safety for our principles?

"We did not think so and neither did the majority of people in the Weekly Mail." She was speaking for us, though we had distanced ourselves from the rude dis-invitation. In any case, our presence at the meeting had been disrupted by the simultaneous state attack on us.

She challenged Coetzee's argument that the final question of whether to risk the violence should have been left with Rushdie, rather than to actively disinvite him. "What a copout? How was he to judge? He had not met these people, he had not seen the threats, the dangerous harassments, the notes under the door ... We could not agree to thrust the decision upon him and go out of it with clean hands."

Gordimer's applause was more polite and respectful than enthusiastic. It was, after all, an elite, largely white, Cape Town literary audience. Here were two of the world's most eminent and engaged writers, both passionately anti-apartheid, both with impeccable anti-censorship records, one who lived and practiced aloofly, who was uncomfortable in public activities and was decidedly not a joiner, the other who was active in protest circles and was now embroiled in liberation movement realpolitik, having to explain an organisational decision she did not seem wholly comfortable with.

Coetzee had kept his hands clean in a dirty situation, Gordimer had been prepared to grubby herself in the messy world of struggle politics. Both spoke and wrote from positions of relative privilege, protected by their white skins and international standing, but dealt with it – and used it – in different ways. The debate about the role of the writer, which we might have hoped Rushdie to lead, was brought to life: it could not be more visible, even tangible, in the tension between these two powerful and very different personalities. If we wanted rich and memorable debate about the complications of writing under apartheid, we certainly got it.

Gordimer then read a statement from Rushdie in which he explained and defended his book. We were surprised that he had nothing to say about our country in its State of Emergency, or our silenced newspaper which was using up some of its support and goodwill in his defence, but we could understand why he should be tied up with his own situation.

It was Behrmann who found the way to carve a victory out of this. Frustrated by not being able to pipe in Rushdie's voice in Cape Town, she was not going to let anyone stop her when the Book Week moved to Joburg. She set it all up, researched the right technical solutions, deceived the state-owned telephone company into providing the necessary equipment for what they thought was a theatre production (it was happening in the Market Theatre), secured Rushdie's agreement, and then told us and the publishers about it when it was too late to pull back.

We had told other media that the event was off and had no newspaper of our own, so we could only spread it by word of mouth over two days. We were astounded when about 500 people crowded into the room to stare at a near-empty stage while Afrikaans writer Ampie Coetzee, sitting in a large armchair, conversed with an absent Rushdie, who voice boomed through speakers and filled the room: "I'm very pleased to be with you, if only in this rather ghostly way." The atmosphere was magical: in the gloom of a state of emergency, in the horrors of the last few weeks, it was another small triumph against those trying to silence Rushdie and ourselves. We had no newspaper, but we were doing what we always tried to do: find imaginative ways to get around censorship, and share those ideas most challenging to authority.

Again, Rushdie had nothing to say about his hosts, the newspaper that was now closed down but still taking risks to give him a voice in far-away Johannesburg. But then his own life was at risk, perhaps more than ours.

Twenty-five years later, Rushdie records this series of events briefly in his memoir, Joseph Anton. When I heard that I was the other Anton in the book, I read it nervously, having been made aware of how he had berated all those who had not stood by his side as firmly as he expected. He writes that he was "saddened to hear that he had precipitated a quarrel between South Africa's two greatest writers". But, after Gordimer had told him not to come, "a solution of sorts was found" for what he calls "the South African problem".

It was the telephone link from London. In his odd third-person style, Rushdie writes: "His voice went to South Africa, his ideas were heard in a Johannesburg hall, but he stayed at home. It wasn't satisfying, but it felt better than nothing."

He still had nothing to say about his hosts, about the closure of our newspaper, about our censorship. This is a man who commands solidarity from anti-censorship activists around the world, condemns those who hesitate in giving it, but is slow to offer it himself.

Three decades later, South Africa confronts the issue of free speech again. We have enjoyed it, in fact reveled in it's abundance since Nelson Mandela's release in 1994, protected by a strong constitution and a constitutional court which has stood firm on the issue. But we have a government, dominated by the ANC, which finds the print media to be hostile and intrusive and which now threatens media freedom. They complain of intrusions into privacy and a lack of respect for dignity – a particularly sore point in a country still healing the sores of apartheid. More substantially, they decry what they see as a cynicism towards the "transformation project", the bid to break the racial patterns inherited from the country's troubled history. They feel under siege from a highly critical media, which in many cases has moved into an oppositional role in the absence of a strong parliamentary challenge to the ANC.

It is not uncommon for a former liberation movement now battling with the challenges of government to be sensitive to criticism and to feel under siege from a hostile world. Indeed, some of the newspapers are relentless watchdogs, offering a constant flow of investigations into corruption which haunt the ANC government. This is a triumph of open democracy, but for the government it feels like fodder for racists who wish to see them fail.

The ANC have proposed a statutory Media Appeals Tribunal to adjudicate on complaints against the press, and passed a Protection of State Information Bill, known as the "Secrecy Bill", to clamp down on leaks and whistleblowing and threaten investigative journalists with hefty sentences for a wide range of "state security" offences. The first draft of the Bill was draconian, but, in the face of formidable public and media opposition, it was delayed for two years. Once again, we had to take to the streets and corridors of power to fight measures to restrict free media. Once again, we plot ways to get around potential censorship. The final version approved last week was considerably improved, but still threatened 25-year sentences for those who leaked information that might endanger "state security", loosely defined.

At the forefront of the fight to prevent this clampdown, again, is Gordimer, as engaged and vocal and firm as ever. She wrote a lengthy condemnation in the NY Review of Books and led a posse of prominent writers in a call for these measures to be scrapped.

Coetzee now lives in Australia, having put in place a physical distance from these fights which matches the emotional one he always had. But it is his ringing words of 1988 that leave us wondering: when the writers' union backed off from the Salman Rushdie invitation in 1988 under threat from religious extremists, was this the moment when freedom of expression was downgraded in liberation movement priorities? Or was it when we allowed for a selective boycott that gave the movement the capacity to decide which culture exchanges were acceptable, and which not? Has this come back to haunt us now?

Is there still a place for "the liberal shibboleths like freedom of expression" in the post-apartheid struggle?

Anton Harber is now Caxton professor of journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The Weekly Mail is now the Mail & Guardian. Salman Rushdie is still Salman Rushdie

*With thanks for material from You Have Been Warned, the First Ten Years of the M&G, by Irwin Manoim (Viking, 1996)

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There are golf clubs across England that still have no members from ethnic-minority backgrounds

When Tiger Woods was 14 he was acutely aware of the racist undertones that lingered in country clubs across the US. The world No1's success ever since may have challenged golf's outdated perceptions of race, but 23 years after conducting that interview there remains a worrying shortage of non-white amateurs playing the game in England.

"I can always feel it, I can always sense it," said Woods in 1990. "People staring at you and thinking: 'You shouldn't be here.'" It is a sentiment mirrored in figures obtained from Sport England, which reveal that only 2% of a total 850,500 people who play on a weekly basis are non-white. It is an alarming statistic and falls significantly below the equivalent figures in football, rugby union, cricket and tennis.

There are certain things one must put up with on a golf course to appease the elitist status quo. Yet although it is possible to bite your tongue while getting barracked for walking into the clubhouse with a shirt untucked or having the temerity to wear a cap indoors, ignoring the game's stark failure to embrace all demographics across society is harder to stomach.

There are clubs across England that still have no members from ethnic minority backgrounds, while high-profile incidents such as Sergio García's comments on Tuesday night and the assertion from Woods's former caddie Steve Williams in 2011 that he would "like to shove it up that black asshole" have cast shadows over the game.

It was only last year when Augusta National first permitted two women to become members, meanwhile, one being the former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, following concerted pressure.

Jaz Athwal became the first Asian captain of a golf club in England 13 years ago and organises the annual UK Asian Open. Based in Bradford, Athwal believes that racial abuse on the course has reduced during that time, but more needs to be done to improve participation levels.

"I think things are changing for the better but you're never going to eradicate it and I don't think Sergio's comments help," he said. "The old twitching of curtains and people thinking: 'What's he come for, no one's ordered a taxi or a takeaway', have gone. They don't have to worry that there will be a corner shop on every tee or their 18-hole course won't be reduced to 17 because someone's nicked one. We pay in pound coins, not rupees.

"It doesn't bother me these days. It used to but now I shrug my shoulders and think if people don't want my money then I'll go and play somewhere that they do.

"The governing bodies are concentrating on things that are important to them, and maybe the 2% aren't as important as sponsorship. They need to be more engaging and take people's advice. We go into schools and try to break down the perceptions of golf clubs to kids, and change the perceptions of the kids because they think it's a white middle-class game that's unattainable to them.

"The wealthy clubs can pick and choose the members that they want, not just if they are black and white. But Tiger Woods, for all his faults, has made golf cool and brought it to the masses. Sergio saying what he says, that doesn't help and doesn't do golf any good."

In recent years the issue of racism has caused huge controversy in football after two high-profile incidents. The García-Woods incident now threatens to cause a similar furore, but the more serious concerns lie at grassroots level.

The 2% participation figure, which is made up of participants over 16, compares with 29.4% in cricket and 18.3% in football. However, Brendan Pyle, the development manager at the Golf Foundation charity that encourages participation for young people in deprived areas, insists work is being done to improve the problem. "We've had a focus on city areas in recent years. We're developing a new way of playing golf away from the golf club which is known as street golf, which uses a safe ball which will travel approximately 100 yards and means we can take the game into disadvantaged and underprivileged areas."

Teaching ethnic minority youngsters away from the surroundings of a club may be one way to improve participation levels. But changing perceptions that golf is a sport for only the elite is a long battle that requires much more attention.

"When we do coaching sessions in Bradford's inner-city schools we don't say: 'Oh, you're white, you can't play'," said Athwal. "Next time the governing bodies are at their board meeting, have a look at how many black faces are around the table – that's exclusivity."

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Rightwing organizations with a history of illegal discrimination or crime under 'religious' pretences give the IRS reason to question

At last week's ways and means committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of tax-exempt organizations, Representative Aaron Schock (an Illinois Republican) helped propel a new firestorm across conservative media: in addition to tea party groups, Schock maintained, anti-abortion organizations were also being subjected to "horrible instances of IRS abuse of power, political and religious bias, and repression of their constitutional rights".

In one of the hearing's most charged moments, Schock interrogated the outgoing acting IRS Commissioner, Steven Miller, about how IRS personnel asked one of the groups to describe its public prayers. Senator Charles Grassley (an Iowa Republican) joined the fray during the Senate's finance committee hearings Tuesday.

For anyone who knows the history of the religious right, the possible revocation of tax-exempt status for claimed religious belief is a potent flashpoint. In his book, Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament, religion historian Randall Balmer argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, which Balmar calls the "abortion myth", evangelical voters were not propelled to political activism by the supreme court's 1973 decision in Roe v Wade.

Instead, the issue that mobilized these voters was the IRS's 1975 revocation of the tax-exempt status of the segregationist Bob Jones University. Rightwing religious architect Paul Weyrich told Balmer that it was "the federal government's moves against Christian schools" that actually "enraged the Christian community".

Bob Jones University claimed its ban on interracial dating and admission of students in interracial marriages was rooted in the Bible. It did not end its ban on interracial dating until 2000. The IRS's decision – which went through protracted litigation that ultimately ended when the supreme court let the revocation stand – was in response to new IRS regulations and a 1972 Supreme Court case holding that educational institutions with racially discriminatory policies were not entitled to tax exemption.

Balmar concluded:

"The Religious Right arose as a political movement for the purpose, effectively, of defending racial discrimination at Bob Jones University and at other segregated schools."

Denying tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory schools – regardless of whether they claim their religion commands it – is not the only issue which the IRS can lawfully examine an applicant's or organization's activities. Under IRS regulations, tax-exempt organizations "may not have purposes or activities that are illegal or violate fundamental public policy". The Bob Jones University case is just one example of the IRS applying this test. Its treatment of anti-abortion groups may be another.

Questioning anti-abortion groups – even the content of their prayers – could very likely have been aimed at determining whether these groups engaged in activities outside abortion clinics that ran afoul of the law. Because of the history of abortion clinic violence by those claiming a religious imperative, the IRS could have been attempting to determine whether the groups' activities were in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (Face), a 1994 law which prohibits the use of force, the threat of force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate or interfere with someone's access to or provision of reproductive health services.

At last week's hearing, Schock entered a 150-page exhibit into the congressional record, a compilation of correspondence about tax-exempt status of three anti-abortion organizations. Two of them, Christian Voices for Life and Coalition for Life of Iowa, claim they were subjected to "unwarranted" questioning during the application process. A third, Small Victories, which already had tax-exempt status, claims to have been "harassed" and exposed to an "intrusive investigation". Christian Voices for Life and Coalition for Life of Iowa eventually obtained their tax-exempt status, and Small Victories' remained intact.

The exhibit was assembled by the groups' attorneys at the Thomas More Society, a rightwing law firm that defended anti-choice activists in National Organization for Women v Scheidler. The National Organization for Women (Now) brought that lawsuit aiming to put an end to clinic violence that had included: "invasions, violent blockades, arson, chemical attacks and bombings of women's health care clinics, assaults on patients, death threats and shootings of health care workers and administrators, including the murder of eight abortion providers."

Although Now's efforts to sue these protestors under federal racketeering laws was ultimately unsuccessful at the supreme court, the Thomas More Society still calls the litigation "a transparent attempt to gag pro-life activism at abortion clinics nationally".

The Face statute was enacted while this litigation was ongoing. It would not be unprecedented, for example, for an anti-choice activist to pray that an abortion provider die. While we still do not know what the IRS's thinking on this matter was, it is not entirely irrelevant or intrusive for the IRS to make such inquiries, including the nature of prayer.

Despite the hype and outrage about the Thomas More Society's clients' treatment by the IRS, the IRS ultimately did not penalize any of these organizations. But a religious right grudge against the IRS runs deep – back to its defense of Bob Jones University. It was just waiting to surface again.

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My recent experience at Dartmouth College has shown me that we are still not the society we want to be

Like many universities, Dartmouth College has venerated traditions. The annual Dimensions show – a festive, student-organized musical revue performed to entice admitted, but undecided, students to come to Dartmouth – is one such tradition. Many prospective students decide to attend Dartmouth because of how much they enjoy the performance.

On 19 April, a group of students calling themselves "#Realtalk" interrupted the show, protesting sexual assault, racism, and homophobia at the university. It was a real jolt for the campus community. President Carol Folt cancelled classes on 24 April for the first time since the mid-1980s due to the backlash: a barrage of rape and death threats on social media sites and internet forums. The ugliness and volume of these threats – not to mention the negative PR – convinced the administration that the school was in a state of crisis.

In place of its usual academic schedule, we had a day of reflection that entailed a rally on the college green and a series of facilitated discussions. But even that was not enough to heal us. The school faces a possible Title IX complaint by students and alums who claim that Dartmouth fosters a hostile environment to women, racial minorities, and LGBT students.

Dartmouth is not alone. Similar problems and complaints at Oberlin College, Swarthmore College, Occidental, and Amherst show that Dartmouth is not alone in believing that the campus fosters respect and care for all, when, in reality, it might not. This isn't a Dartmouth problem. It is an American problem.

We are often too fragmented, insular, and uncaring – excluding those who don't fit into our perception of ourselves. At a time when basic American civic responsibilities from voting to jury duty to paying taxes are perceived as burdensome, it should be no surprise that lethargy about cross community dialogue manifests itself at Dartmouth (or any other college campus).

The "#Realtalk" protestors at my school speak for a larger constituency of students who find Dartmouth's traditions, which are both reinvented and reinforced with each incoming class, unhealthy and destructive. The protests and backlash expose our basic tensions. Can Dartmouth shed its more damaging aspects while still remaining Dartmouth? I argue that it can.

College culture introduces many opportunities for inclusivity through personal interactions. After being rejected from the Greek house (aka fraternity) to which I felt affiliated, I adopted a sorority as my house, flippantly joking that I was a "sister" and planned on attending the organization's events uninvited. The women rejected my attempts to get involved. While it was a humorous circumstance, it reminded me that even students aware of social problems unconsciously reinforce our community's deepest sexist assumptions.

We need to listen to each other if we truly are committed to the stakes of "real talk". At this moment, the Dartmouth community is a series of fragmented groups, for example, athletes and members of the Greek community. There are very few shared notions of mutual care.

I am not excusing myself. I don't have concern for community members who operate in circles I perceive as hostile to gays, minorities, and women. Should I care enough to feel a sense of accountability and engage insular communities in dialogue? I absolutely must.

Like many colleges, Dartmouth has a Principle of Community that expects students to respect one another. We passively assume that respect happens. If care were explicitly questioned on campus, then students would engage in discussing these issues consistently and with respect. We would understand criticism as an act of caring and a form of investment, rather than separation. The issues that the protestors mentioned should instigate outrage within every community member, but they haven't.

The Dartmouth motto, vox clamantis in deserto – a voice crying out in the wilderness – is old, yet highly relevant. The protests were a cry in the wilderness, but one that many students did not want to hear. Once we as a student body admit that the presence of care has become a question, then there is an incentive to start to care. We can turn stigma into leadership by making what people recognize as problematic the basis for social transformation.

It is not that Dartmouth students don't care about racism, rape, and homophobia, but the assumed tolerance makes change impossible. Singling out certain fraternities as racist or the protestors as anti-Dartmouth will not move us to a place of social transformation. We are all racist – or sexist, or homophobic – in ways we won't, or can't, acknowledge. We have begun these tough conversations, and I am optimistic that our campus and others can prove that caring is true to those "old traditions".

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When film-maker Anna Hall found out about the exploitation of girls in Telford, she had to bring the evidence to a wider public

Anna Hall is nothing if not patient. It was 17 years ago, over a cup of coffee in her adopted home city of Leeds, when she first heard that some British Pakistani men were grooming, raping and trafficking young white girls. She immediately knew she should bring the evidence to a wider public, yet it took three years for the film-maker to win a commission from Channel 4 and many more to make three harrowing documentaries, culminating in The Hunt for Britain's Sex Gangs, which will air on Channel 4 this Thursday.

Hall, born in Scotland, was working for a group of commercial radio companies in Leeds as a social action producer when she first heard of the abuse while chatting with Barnardo's staff. "They had documented a pattern, now all very familiar. They knew exactly what was going on," she says.

Barnardo's staff were working with police but they seemed powerless to catch them, let alone gain convictions. "I thought, I don't care what race these guys are, a group of men are being allowed to violate young girls and get away with it."

This was the start of emotionally draining investigations, which she kept up while having twins and a third child. For Hall, the initial breakthrough only came in 2002 when she gained access to nearby Bradford social services child protection team, for her first observational documentary, Edge of The City.

"A senior divisional figure said to me: 'Of course everyone knows it is happening but you'll never get anyone to go on the record.' That was the red rag for me."

In neighbouring Keighley she worked with two mothers. "One had three daughters. Both older daughters had been groomed. She was terrified it would happen to the youngest, aged 12. She moved away from the area after we finished the film." The other had a daughter who was sent away to a secure unit, only to return to her abuser's clutches. Neither felt they could do anything to protect their children.

Ahead of transmission, Channel 4 was asked by West Yorkshire's chief constable to delay the documentary in May 2004, because it was three weeks before local elections and he feared riots. Local BNP candidates still managed to get hold of the film and use it as propaganda.

When her documentary was broadcast in August 2004 it was watched by 1.8 million people but, in Hall's words, "nothing happened". "We raised some awareness [but it was] almost the case that the film was swept under the carpet. I really wondered if I had done the right thing. I knew at the bottom of my heart I wasn't racist."

In the following years, while continuing to work as an independent television maker, she noticed the police starting to use trafficking laws to gain convictions. The legislation helped with the problem of consent, an issue because defence lawyers would sow doubt in juries' minds by claiming the girls were complicit because they didn't say no.

In 2009 came another opportunity: she negotiated access to Operation Chalice, an investigation run by Telford police. "The problem with this abuse is that it is very hard to explain the level of psychological manipulation. I thought this would be a way forward in helping people to understand what a complex crime this is."

But the documentary is only now ready for broadcast four years later because the original trial, which stemmed from Operation Chalice, collapsed in September 2011, making all the footage sub judice.

In the meantime, Hall changed tack by making Britain's Sex Gangs, broadcast in November 2012, in which she spoke to members of the British Pakistani community. It included a Keighley-based Muslim imam and youth worker Alyas Karmani holding a workshop on the abuse: "We found 35 guys in a room; they all said they wanted to be on camera, it was so important, making a stand against this." But the encounters also explained the cultural pressures on some young British Pakistani men, often forced into arranged marriages.

Now, 18 months later, the defendants in the Operation Chalice trial have been taken back to court, and reporting restrictions are lifted. Seven men were jailed last year. The Hunt for Britain's Sex Gangs is essentially the programme she prepared 18 months ago.

One of the critical things now is learning how to treat psychological abuse, says Hall. "The film makes the point that in other countries they're much better, helping with a place of safety. We don't have proper psychological counselling. I know lots of girls – one is so damaged – you really, really wonder how they are going to make it into adulthood."

"Why do the girls keep going back if they are being gang-raped? They are terrified of what is going to happen – threats against parents, their brother. Young people believe what they are being told. One of the things is that they are just gullible 12-year-old kids. I look at my 12-year-olds now and they would not have a clue how to deal with this situation."

"Child sexual exploitation is nowhere on the agenda in schools," she adds. Another key solution is acting as soon as a child goes missing. "It's a massive indicator. In the past, they were naughty children who ran away, or were seen as wayward girls wanting to have sex with these guys. Lots of these girls are doing really well at school, aged 12, then suddenly they are not; they become massively withdrawn, then start truanting. That is the way forward. That is how we are going to get better at it."

• The Hunt for Britain's Sex Gangs is on Dispatches on Channel 4 this Thursday at 9pm.

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NAACP challenged 2011 state elections over legislature's failure to draw new district lines according to 2010 census

The US supreme court will not order new legislative elections in Mississippi over complaints about the timing of the state's redistricting, under one of several decisions that were handed down on Monday.

The Mississippi National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had challenged the state's 2011 state elections, because the legislature did not immediately use the 2010 census to draw new district lines in 2011. The state house and senate instead argued for several weeks before ending their 2011 session, without adopting new maps. The NAACP had asked for that election to be set aside and special elections to be held under a court-ordered plan. It said that using the old maps violated the one-person, one-vote principle by diluting African-American voting strength.

Courts affirmed a ruling that allowed state lawmakers to run in their old districts that year. The Supreme Court justices, without comment, upheld the lower court rulings.

Also on Monday, the court affirmed the authority of federal regulators to try to speed local government decisions on proposals to build or expand cell-phone towers. The court voted 6-3 to uphold an appeals court ruling in favor the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The case involves complaints to the FCC by telecommunications companies and the wireless industry that local authorities are delaying the placement and construction of wireless service facilities. The FCC said that local jurisdictions generally should act on applications within three months for existing structures and five months for new towers.

The court also said that it will hear a new case on the intersection of religion and government in a dispute over prayers used to open public meetings. The justices said they would review an appeals court ruling that held that the town of Greece in suburban Rochester in upstate New York violated the constitution by opening nearly every meeting over an 11-year span with prayers that stressed Christianity.

The 2nd US circuit court of appeals said the town should have made a greater effort to invite people from other faiths to open its monthly board meetings. The town says the high court already has upheld prayers at the start of legislative meetings and that private citizens offered invocations of their own choosing. The town said in court papers that the opening prayers should be found to be constitutional, "so long as the government does not act with improper motive in selecting prayer-givers."

Two town residents who are not Christian complained that they felt marginalized by the steady stream of Christian prayers and challenged the practice. They are represented by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Born of a desire to tackle totalitarianism, the society is increasingly intolerant, yet some Labour MPs still support it

Ever since the Iraq war, and to a lesser extent prior to it, popular perception has had it that humanitarian intervention is a cause célèbre of the right rather than the left.

One might even go so far as to say that, until the 2008 financial crisis hit and reignited the squabble between Keynesians and austerity hawks, the single biggest area of disagreement between left and right was on foreign policy.

"Hawks", "neocons" and "imperialists" were invariably of the right whereas "doves", "peaceniks" and "stoppers" were, with a few exceptions, on the left.

As with most attempts at compartmentalising political ideologies there were of course glaring exceptions. While many on the left were instinctively uneasy at the concept of George W Bush's "war on terror", others conceded that, to paraphrase American author Peter Beinart, liberal principles could be threatened by forces other than western conservatism.

In other words, totalitarianism – whether in its Islamist or secular guise – required a firm, and where appropriate, military response.

When it was first created in 2005, the London-based Henry Jackson Society (HJS) appeared to offer a base for those on the centre-left and right who believed in a variant of "muscular liberalism". Much like the senator after whom it was named, the HJS sought to fuse a concern for social justice at home with a hardline approach to totalitarianism and autocracy abroad.

As a result the organisation attracted broad parliamentary support, including 11 Labour MPs, who continue to sit on the organisation's advisory council to this day.

In February, Labour's shadow secretary for defence, Jim Murphy, even gave a speech on policy at an event organised by the HJS.

According to those who've worked behind the scenes at the HJS, however, in recent years the organisation has degenerated into something that is anything but liberal.

The associate director of the HJS is Douglas Murray, a columnist for the Spectator and Standpoint, who joined the organisation in April 2011. In March, Murray wrote an article following the release of the results of the 2011 census in which he bemoaned the fact that in "23 of London's 33 boroughs 'white Britons' are now in a minority".

It wasn't so much integration that Murray wanted to talk about, however, but skin colour:

"We long ago reached the point where the only thing white Britons can do is to remain silent about the change in their country. Ignored for a generation, they are expected to get on, silently but happily, with abolishing themselves, accepting the knocks and respecting the loss of their country. 'Get over it. It's nothing new. You're terrible. You're nothing'."

In 2009 Murray also described Robert Spencer, the leader of a group calling itself "Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA)", as a "very brilliant scholar and writer".

A number of years before Murray saw fit to praise this "brilliant scholar", the latter wrote that there was "no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists".

And just to keep you up to date, this week Murray effectively endorsed Ukip in an article for the Wall Street Journal.

The spirit of intolerance at the HJS appears also to extend to those who have taken issue with Murray's rhetoric.

Marko Attila Hoare, a former senior member of the Henry Jackson Society who left the organisation in 2012, told me that his opposition to Murray's anti-Muslim and anti-immigration views saw him driven out of the organisation.

"It rapidly became clear that Murray had not tamed his politics, and that actually they were becoming the politics of the whole organisation," Hoare told me.

Murray's boss, HJS executive director Alan Mendoza, has form too. In March of this year he claimed that the increasing European Muslim population was to blame for Europe's "anti-Israel feelings", adding that the voices of Muslims "are heard well above the average Europeans".

Eleven Labour MPs are still associated with this organisation. How, one wonders, do the views of the Henry Jackson Society sit with one-nation Labour?

I wrote to all 11 Labour MPs with my concerns about the Henry Jackson Society but none were available for comment.

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Unfounded fears have driven some Christian groups to co-opt the language of discrimination for their reactionary policies

Christians make up 78% of the American population, 90% of Congress, and 100% of presidents thus far. But to hear some conservative Christians tell it, they are a persecuted minority. Newt Gingrich recently claimed that LGBT rights have caused Catholic adoption services to be "outlawed" in Washington DC and Massachusetts. In a loaded speech on the House floor last week, Representative Steve King accused President Obama of racial favoritism and "[eroding] western Judeo-Christendom", unfavorably comparing his congratulatory call to Jason Collins, the newly out NBA player, with strangely unspecified slights against Tim Tebow, "who will kneel and pray to God on the football field."

Fears of marginalization because of Christian faith, even persecution, have deep roots in white American evangelical culture, dating back to the Scopes Trial and before. As with Representative King's comments, they're often steeped in white racial anxiety and resentment. This persecution complex is also taught – actively promoted and reinforced through fearmongering aimed at youth.

One example: "The Thaw", a modest viral hit produced by Reach America, a "Christian youth leadership program" based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. In the video, about 20 local teens – all white except but one – list ways in which Christians are systematically "frozen out of the public sphere" and public schools. Christian students are expected to "check [their] religion at the door," forbidden to pray, or to "write about God" in school. They hazard bullying and "rude and disrespectful" treatment, "dirty jokes" from fellow students, and "pornography" disguised as "sex education". The curious notion that Tim Tebow has been punished for his public faith comes up here, as well.

The teenagers wax nostalgic for an America where "school prayer and pledge to the flag was welcomed [sic]," before God was taken "out of … history books" and the country was "stolen" by "people who do not love our God". They call on students to join an "army … with Christ [as] commander", to reverse this political and religious decline.

In stark contrast to this dour picture, Idaho reporter Maureen Dolan writes that two high schools near where The Thaw was made have active prayer groups that meet on school grounds. At Lake City High, principal Deanne Clifford prays with students. At Coeur d'Alene High, local churches "regularly" send "representatives … as 'approved visitors' [who join] the students for lunch in the cafeteria".

It's this cognitive dissonance that's most striking, and disturbing, about "The Thaw". The language of bullying and social isolation of students who don't fit in, increasingly a concern for many parents and schools, is harnessed for a defense of the imagined good old (viz segregated) days when conservative Christian tenets were even more privileged in school curricula: abstinence-only education, creation science, mandatory school prayers, etc. The absence of such privileges – infringements on the equal rights of students and families who believe differently – is presented as bullying and persecution. As Reach America director Gary Brown says:

"Bullying is in the eyes of the beholder, I guess."

This is precisely the sort of counterfactual reasoning and co-opted rhetoric of social justice that influential groups on the religious right use to promote their policies, rather than actually help students who are truly vulnerable to bullying and discrimination. Focus on the Family, for example, has developed a "True Tolerance" program to defend "parental rights" and help students stand up to "homosexual indoctrination" and "bullying" of Christians in public schools – by opposing anti-bullying programs that work to make schools safer for LGBT and gender non-conforming students.

Fueling such reactionary activism is a powerful sense of grievance, stoked by a thriving cottage industry that churns out misinformation like "The Thaw". In such a climate, dubious accounts of anti-Christian discrimination or coercion are believed readily. In recent weeks, for example, tales of students forced to engage in "lesbian kissing", or disqualified from athletic events for religious gestures have circulated widely in conservative media, only to be debunked shortly thereafter.

Factual rebuttals, however, have little impact in a culture where people are trained to overlook the considerable influence of conservative Christianity in society, and to instead believe their communities need more political capital. Paradoxically, children like those in "The Thaw" are encouraged to seek influence, even run for office, in a system they're taught to deeply distrust. This disconnect is embodied in Reach America, which "[encourages] Christian parents to remove their children from traditional public school systems", but counts among its supporters a member of the Coeur d'Alene School District Board of Trustees and a candidate for election to another local school board.

This mindset obscures serious problems of discrimination and bullying that many students face in schools – not usually for being white conservative Christians. And indeed, these problems are often perpetuated by the direct influence or complicity of the religious right. In Florida, Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old African American girl, was arrested and transferred to an "alternative school" after an experiment resulted in a small explosion with no injuries or damage. Her case has brought attention to the criminalization of black students and other students of color in public schools – far more likely than white students to be suspended, expelled, and funneled into the "school-to-prison pipeline" by zero-tolerance policies.

The same conservatives likely to complain that the Bible has been "taken out of schools" have spearheaded efforts to censor the history of white supremacist violence and colonialism from public education, overhauling history textbooks in Texas and shuttering a Mexican-American studies program in Tucson, Arizona on the grounds that it "encouraged students to resent white people". In my own town of Medford, Massachussetts, representatives from state "family values" organizations have shown up at city council meetings to oppose guidelines to protect transgender students in public schools, claiming, among other things, a violation of parental rights.

Ultimately, this is what is most troubling about "The Thaw": it represents a generation raised to believe their divine mission is to entrench a racialized and politicized Christian supremacy – not Christian inclusion – in the public sphere. Children on the religious right are being taught that they've been robbed of their voice, and that they have a calling to to reclaim it through political and cultural activism. In a lot of ways, they're succeeding.

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