ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY
19 October: In Ranst, a municipality in the Belgian province of Antwerp, local parties PIT and Vrij Ranst agree to form a coalition with the far-right Vlaams Belang party, breaking Belgium’s cordon sanitaire against the nationalist party for the first time since 1989. (Belga, 19 October 2024)
24 October: Freedom party politician Walter Rosenkranz is elected as the new speaker of the Austrian parliament, marking the first time a far-right politician has held the post. (Deutsche Welle, 24 October 2024)
25 October: In Portugal, the former justice minister and other citizens lodge a criminal complaint against André Ventura, leader of the CHEGA party, who called for the police officer who killed Odair Moniz (see policing section) to be decorated. Complaints are also lodged against CHEGA’s parliamentary party leader Pedro Pinto, who said that if security forces ‘shot more to kill, the country would be more in order’. (Portugal Resident, 25 October 2024)
25 October: Speaking to LBC in an attempt to justify taking Britain out of the ECHR, one of the two candidates for leadership of the Conservative party, Robert Jenrick, claims that ‘pensioners are waking up with illegal migrants in their bedrooms’. (Left Foot Forward, 25 October 2024)
25 October: Labour MPs urge Keir Starmer to clarify his stance on non-cash slavery reparations as he says the issue is off the table and indicates, on the way to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, that he wants to ‘look forward’ rather than have ‘endless discussion about reparations on the past’. (Guardian, 25 October 2024)
ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
15 October: A 20-year-old neo-Nazi from Portsmouth is sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison at Winchester crown court for attempting to 3D-print a gun. The defendant, who had previously expressed antisemitic views and possessed Nazi memorabilia, was also found to be in possession of videos showing people executed under a swastika flag and more than 700 indecent images of young children. (Standard, 15 October 2024)
16 October: An undercover investigation into an international network of ‘race science’ activists finds that the Human Diversity Foundation received funding from Andrew Conru, a multimillionaire US tech entrepreneur, who pulls his support following the revelations. (Guardian, 16 October 2024)
19 October: The IRR and other thinktanks warn of the danger posed by far-right attempts to normalise ‘scientific racism’, drawing particular attention to the implications for ethnic minorities using health services. (Guardian, 19 October 2024)
21 October: In Germany, police make 39 arrests after violent clashes between neo-Nazi and left-wing protesters in the Berlin borough of Marzahn-Hellersdorf. The neo-Nazi protest, titled ‘Against Left-Wing Propaganda and Antifa Lies’, saw fewer than 100 participants and was heavily outnumbered by 1,300 counter-demonstrators. (Berliner, 21 October 2024)
22 October: Hungary calls on the EU to strip parliamentary immunity from Italian MEP Ilaria Salis, who was arrested in Budapest in February 2023 following a counter-demonstration against neo-Nazis. Salis was charged with three counts of attempted assault and membership of an extreme left-wing organisation but was released after winning a seat in the EU parliament as a Greens and Left Alliance candidate. (Guardian, 22 October 2024)
25 October: In France, two far-right activists are charged with the murder of Federico Martin Aramburu, a former international Argentinian rugby player, in March 2022. (PlanetRugby, 25 October 2024)
25 October: It is revealed that the Traditional Britain Group, which emerged from the Conservatives, now serves as a forum for the British far Right, recently holding a private conference attended by members of the Homeland party and Patriotic Alternative. (Guardian, 25 October 2024)
26 October: Thousands of anti-fascists assemble in central London to oppose a 15- to 20,000-strong far-right ‘Uniting the Kingdom’ demonstration in support of Tommy Robinson. (Guardian, 26 October 2024)
28 October: Tommy Robinson is jailed for 18 months for contempt of court after repeating false allegations against a Syrian refugee. The judge reports that breaches of an injunction had been carried out in a ‘sophisticated’ way to ensure the false claims would reach tens of millions of people online. (Guardian, 26 October 2024; Guardian, 28 October 2024)
POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
16 October: In the first such arrest in Ireland, gardaí in Co. Wicklow arrest a far-right agitator on suspicion of spreading misinformation on social media about a migrant, whose sleeping photograph was circulated alongside a claim that he exposed himself to women and girls on a bus journey. (Irish Times, 16 October 2024)
18 October: Counterterrorism police raid the home of Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley, whose reporting focuses on Palestine, confiscating electronic devices as part of an investigation into suspected terrorism offences of ‘support for a proscribed organisation’ and ‘dissemination of terrorist documents’. (Middle East Eye, 18 October 2024)
21 October: The family of Chris Kaba, shot dead by firearms officer Martyn Blake in south London in 2022, say that they are ‘devastated’ after an Old Bailey jury clears the officer of murder. The family’s lawyers condemn the IOPC and the CPS for failing to treat key officers as suspects from the start. The Met commissioner criticises the systems used to hold firearms officers to account, while the home secretary says that the jury’s conclusion should be respected. (Inquest, 21 October 2024; ITV, 21 October 2024)
21 October: Research by the Law Centres Network and Harrow Law Centre, initiated after an increase in hate crime, finds that police forces lack consistency in supporting victims with limited English proficiency and that reforms are needed if they are to be compliant with the Victims’ Code. (Business Mole, 21 October 2024)
21 October: The Criminal Bar Association criticises new powers granted to magistrates in England and Wales to try more serious crimes and to hand down longer custodial sentences, warning that the move could worsen the prison capacity crisis. (Inside Time, 21 October 2024)
22 October: Police data reveals that Black people are more than twice as likely to be stopped and searched than white people on the Isle of Wight. Asian people and those with ‘mixed ethnicities’ are 1.6 times more likely to be stopped. (Yahoo News, 22 October 2024)
22 October: The lifting of legal restrictions allows the media to report that Chris Kaba was pictured on CCTV shooting a man at a nightclub days before he was shot by police, with allegations also made that he was a core member of the south London-based 67 gang. The police officer who shot Kaba dead did not know these details, nor who was in the car. (Guardian, 23 October 2024)
22 October: The European Roma Rights Centre reports on the acquittal by Bulgaria’s supreme court on 1 October of four defendants of the racially motivated murder of a Romani man, Malin Iliev, with a homemade bomb in Sandanski in 2012. The ERRC says that the court’s ruling on the evidence required for conviction sets a ‘dangerously high bar for proving racial motivation in hate crime’. (ERRC, 22 October 2024)
23 October: In response to the acquittal of the firearms officer who shot dead Chris Kaba, the National Police Chiefs Council asks the government to make it harder to investigate and prosecute officers. The Met also calls for reforms. This is a cynical attempt by police leaders to secure ‘effective immunity’ for their officers, says INQUEST. (Guardian, 23 October 2024)
23 October: The home secretary announces reforms to police misconduct hearings in England and Wales and ‘a presumption of anonymity for firearms officers subject to criminal trial following a police shooting… up to the point of conviction’. Prior to new legislation, a policy package on police accountability is published. (Mountford Chambers, 24 October 2024; Guardian, 23 October 2024)
24 October: In Greece, the trial of four people who allegedly attacked a journalist while filming an organised racist mob attacking a refugee boat in Lesvos, opens after having been postponed three times. (X [Michael Trammer], 24 October 2024)
25 October: Edwin Afriyie, a Black youth worker Tasered by City of London police during a road stop in 2018, wins his civil claims appeal for damages on the grounds that ‘the use of a Taser was not objectively reasonable in the circumstances’. (Guardian, 25 October 2024)
25 October: In Portugal, a police officer who four days earlier, shot dead 43-year-old Odair Moniz, originally from Cape Verde, is reportedly indicted for homicide. Police say they are trawling social media accounts with a view to holding the organisers of protests against Moniz’s death criminally responsible for the unrest that followed the death. (Portugal Resident, 25 October 2024; Portugal Resident, 25 October 2024)
26 October: In Lisbon, Portugal, after five nights of unrest following Odair Moniz’s fatal shooting by police, thousands march and rally against police violence, while the far-right CHEGA party organises a counter-protest in solidarity with police. (US News, 26 October 2024; Portugal Resident, 26 October 2024)
26 October: At the United Friends and Families Campaign’s annual remembrance procession, Chris Kaba’s cousin tells the press that the home secretary’s new measures on anonymity for firearms officers seem to be a ‘punishment’ for her cousin’s case having made it ‘as far as trial’. (Independent, 27 October 2024)
Our annual procession to mark 25 years of fighting for Justice and remembering our loved ones who died at the hands of British police or the state or due to negligence is tomorrow, Saturday 26th October. We assemble at 12pm at Trafalgar Square.
Thank you @ukblm for your support pic.twitter.com/7842GZY4xE
— United Families & Friends Campaign (UFFC) (@UFFCampaign) October 25, 2024
ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
16 October: The EU’s international partnerships commissioner announces a €30 million deal with Senegal to stop the embarkation of migrants to Europe, expanding the bloc’s border externalisation programme in West Africa. (EU Observer, 17 October 2024)
17 October: As the Home Office recruits 200 staff to clear a backlog of 23,000 modern slavery cases, a report by the House of Lords Modern Slavery Committee finds that Conservative immigration legislation undermines the 2015 support infrastructure and prioritises law enforcement over survivors’ welfare. (EIN, 17 October 2024, Guardian, 18 October 2024)
18 October: The German parliament votes to toughen asylum laws, including removing benefits from refugees already registered in other EU countries and listed for deportation, and those committing ‘antisemitic’ or homophobic crimes. (Le Monde, 18 October 2024)
18 October: A report from youth support charity Young Roots finds that the age assessment process for young refugees varies greatly across the country and lacks ‘fairness, nuance and good reasoning’. (EIN, 18 October 2024)
23 October: The EU refuses to publish the results of a human rights inquiry into Tunisia that it conducted shortly before signing its controversial migration deal with the increasingly authoritarian country, where migrants are reportedly abused. (Guardian, 23 October 2024)
24 October: Evidence from the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, presented to an inquiry by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, shows that hundreds of children are being wrongly assessed as adults in a process that is causing further harm to an already traumatised group. (National, 24 October 2024)
25 October: The Home Office seeks to rush through legislation to legalise a charge of up to £400 for language tests and qualification assessments, following the discovery that thousands of people applying for visas since 2008 were charged unlawfully, though fees continue to be demanded. (Guardian, 25 October 2024)
25 October: A monitoring report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance identifies that the Home Office’s 28-day refugee move-on period results in homelessness and destitution, and recommends as a priority that the period be significantly extended. (EIN, 25 October 2024)
Borders and internal controls
15 October: Plans for a digital tag on the NHS records of overseas patients, monitoring charges of those accessing healthcare, will further isolate undocumented migrants and prevent them from accessing healthcare, say migrant support and medical charities, who cannot reassure patients that it is safe to go to hospital or that medical confidentiality is protected. (InfoMigrants, 15 October 2024)
17 October: A four-month-old baby dies as an overloaded boat making the Channel crossing gets into difficulties off the French coast. (BBC, 18 October 2024)
18 October: The Rome Tribunal invalidates Italian authorities’ decisions to send twelve Egyptian and Bangladeshi asylum seekers to Albania, pursuant to the two countries’ agreement, ruling that neither Egypt nor Bangladesh were safe countries of origin—a prerequisite condition for the transfer. (ELENA, 25 October 2024)
21 October: The Italian government adopts a decree on safe countries in an attempt to circumvent the judicial ruling preventing asylum seekers rescued in Italian waters from being sent to camps in Albania. (Reuters, 21 October 2024)
23 October: Three people die as a boat sinks off the French coast attempting to cross the Channel. 46 people are rescued after a lifejacket is spotted floating off Calais. (Guardian, 23 October 2024)
❤️🩹 5 years since the Essex 39, and yet again we mourn the deaths of more people in the channel this week.@FrancescaHumi examines this deathly border regime to see what has changed in migration & border policies in UK & France since the elections. https://t.co/kjSRsbvI8P pic.twitter.com/SVHBr79tsL
— Institute of Race Relations (@IRR_News) October 24, 2024
27 October: A 40-year-old man dies of heart failure in a dinghy carrying 50 people as it deflates immediately after leaving the French coast for the UK. (Guardian, 27 October 2024)
Reception and detention
16 October: Inquest jurors identify ‘multiple failings’ surrounding the death in March 2023 of Colombian Frank Ospina, whose body lay undiscovered at Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre for two hours despite his having been placed on suicide watch due to a sharp deterioration in his mental health. (inews, 16 October 2024)
17 October: The government reverses a decision to hold a statutory inquiry into the deplorable conditions and mistreatment suffered by thousands of detainees at the Manston immigration centre, which would compel former home secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman to give evidence, opting instead for a non-statutory investigation with lesser powers. (Independent, 17 October 2024)
19 October: Hundreds gather in a national demonstration outside the Derwentside IRC in support of the ‘No to Hassockfield’ campaign calling for the women’s immigration removal centre in county Durham to be shut down. (North East Bylines, 21 October 2024)
What a day we had yesterday at the national demo against detention! 🧡
Joined by groups from Newcastle, Durham, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, London, Northampton, Kent and beyond!
A day of compassion, hope & solidarity. Women detained could hear us🧡#EndDetention pic.twitter.com/P82XK8JwZQ
— The No To Hassockfield (Derwentside) Campaign (@No2Hassockfield) October 20, 2024
21 October: An unannounced inspection at three short-term immigration holding facilities in Kent finds multiple issues, including children held in breach of the 24-hour limit; a lone 10-year-old Afghan boy denied a phone call to his mother and interviewed without an appropriate adult; failure to make safeguarding referrals; and children being mistaken for adults and sent to the Manston facility. (Independent, 21 October 2024)
22 October: The European Court of Human Rights condemns Malta for its detention of unaccompanied children seeking asylum and the conditions of their detention. (ELENA, 25 October 2024)
24 October: A local housing association in the Grand-Est region of France sends letters to dozens of Ukrainian refugees telling them that they must give up their sheltered accommodation on the grounds that they have not integrated. (Le Monde, 24 October 2024)
24 October: An IPPR report, Transforming asylum accommodation, condemns the conditions and costs of the current system and calls for ‘a re-imagined approach to asylum housing’. (IPPR, 24 October 2024)
27 October: A 26-year-old man dies at the Serco-run Brook House IRC near Gatwick airport. Medical Justice says an earlier inquiry found clinical safeguards in detention ‘dysfunctional’, with ongoing systemic failures and assurances of improvements in safety not honoured by the Home Office. (Guardian, 28 October 2024)
Deportations
15 October: The ECtHR condemns Germany for sending Syrian asylum seekers to Greece without a proper asylum procedure, and Greece for their conditions of detention. (ELENA, 25 October 2024)
18 October: The Home Office forcibly deports 44 Nigerians and Ghanaians as part of a ‘major surge’ in enforcement and returns which has seen over 3,600 deportations in Labour’s first two months of government. The government also plans to send all asylum seekers arriving in Diego Garcia before the signing of the treaty with Mauritius to the remote island of Saint Helena. (Guardian, 19 October 2024)
27 October: Hundreds of Syrian refugees protest in the Hague at the Dutch government’s plans to declare parts of Syria safe and to begin returning them there. Prime minister Dick Schoof also announces that new refugees will not be granted permanent residence, but temporary three-year permits. (Dutch News, 28 October 2024)
HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION
18 October: Following a complaint from the Belgian-Palestinian Association, the federal prosecutor in Belgium announces that an investigation has been launched into possible war crimes by a Belgian-Israeli citizen who is allegedly an active member of a special forces sniper unit in Gaza. (Agence France Press, 18 October 2024)
20 October: The Fairness Foundation calls for extreme wealth inequality, higher in the UK than anywhere in the world except the US, to join climate change and terrorism on the government’s national risk register because of the threat it poses to our collective wel-being. (Observer, 20 October 2024)
EDUCATION
Although we do not cover student protests for Palestine, we do track university administrative measures that deny the right to protest and authorise the use of force, or silence pro-Palestinian voices and display anti-Palestinian bias.
19 October: A group of 200 lawyers from the School Inclusion Project call for legal aid for families challenging school exclusions under the Equality Act, as ‘racialised minority and SEND children… are disproportionately excluded from school’. (Observer, 19 October 2024)
20 October: The Observer reveals that the UN special rapporteur on the right to freedom of assembly has accused the London School of Economics of Islamophobia after it placed seven pro-Palestine student protesters under ‘precautionary measures’ in July. (Guardian, 21 October 2024)
22 October: A report from Demos finds that current levels of educational inequality are hindering social mobility, as ‘significant and hard to explain employment and earnings gaps persist’, and mobility in higher education may not produce expected results in occupational advantage. (Guardian, 28 October 2024)
24 October: Department for Education (DfE) data show that in 2022-23 the gap between Free School Meal (FSM) eligible and non-FSM eligible pupils progressing to university increased to the highest level recorded; Black students were the only ethnic group to see a fall in progression rates, and Black Caribbean students were among the least likely to progress to ‘high tariff’ higher education. (TES, 25 October 2024)
25 October: A report from Child of the North and the Centre for Young Lives on higher persistent non-attendance rates among ‘pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds’ recommends that schools ‘foster a sense of belonging and inclusivity’ with ‘culturally relevant resources’, rather than continuing the current ‘uniform and punitive’ approach. (TES, 25 October 2024)
27 October: An NEU report shows that Black teachers are more likely to leave the profession before retirement; twice as likely to experience stress as a result of workplace discrimination; less likely to progress to leadership roles; and, outside of London, earn 4.5% less on average than white teachers. (TES, 27 October 2024)
HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE
16 October: Research from the Museum of Homelessness finds that deaths of rough sleepers in the UK increased by 42% in a year, with 1,474 people dying while homeless in 2023 (up 12%) and those experiencing homelessness at least three times more likely to remain homeless. (Independent, 16 October 2024)
Join us this evening at #DowningStreet remember all those we’ve lost.. 💔
Will @Keir_Starmer join us? https://t.co/596QTE4efG pic.twitter.com/gTp3OzDk90
— Streets Kitchen (@streetskitchen) October 17, 2024
20 October: A study by Every Penny Counts, commissioned in Scotland, finds that the two-child benefits policy entrenches poverty, with three-quarters of the 160 families interviewed saying that they suffered direct financial hardship as a result, nearly two-thirds forced to use a foodbank and 84.6% forced to skip meals. (Morning Star, 20 October 2024)
21 October: Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali loses her building safety brief after Grenfell survivors complain of her attendance at the Franco-British Colloque, a conference sponsored by Saint-Gobain, a majority owner of Celotex, a firm heavily criticised in the Grenfell inquiry. (Inside Housing, 21 October 2024)
HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
17 October: A spokesperson for GPs in the British Medical Association criticises NHS England and the UK Biobank after revelations that a fringe network of ‘race scientists’ with links to the Human Diversity Foundation circumvented controls to access sensitive health data from the UK Biobank trove, donated by 500,000 volunteers. (Guardian, 17 October 2024)
21 October: A 10-year study finds that menopausal women of Chinese and Black African backgrounds are 80% less likely to received hormone replacement therapy than white women, while more than twice as many women in affluent areas are offered it than those in socially deprived areas. (Guardian, 21 October 2024)
25 October: A senior scientist warns that public confidence in the UK Biobank could be compromised if the Human Diversity Foundation is allowed to access sensitive data. (Guardian, 25 October 2024)
EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION
18 October: A group of over 100 Nigerian nurses call on health secretary Wes Streeting to intervene to correct ‘a significant injustice’ after the nursing regulator accused them of cheating in tests to practice in the UK, forcing them to take low-paid care jobs. (Guardian, 18 October 2024)
CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT
While we cannot cover all incidents of racist abuse on sportspersons or their responses, we provide a summary of the most important incidents. For more information follow Kick it Out.
15 October: An investigation by Sky News and open-source intelligence group Prose finds that of the top 20 Telegram accounts most influential (in terms of reach, views and interaction) in promoting the idea that an immigrant was responsible for the Southport killings that sparked the far-right riots, only six were in the UK. (Sky News, 15 October 2024)
17 October: Meta’s content watchdog Oversight Board investigates the company’s decision to keep two Facebook posts online after having acknowledged receiving a significant number of user complaints over anti-immigrant content. The platforming of the posts, which include Polish racial slurs against Black people and describe immigrants as ‘gang-rape specialists’, has raised questions over the adequacy of the Meta’s hate speech policy. (Guardian, 17 October 2024)
19 October: A documentary on the Human Diversity Foundation which investigates a ‘race science’ network of far-right activists is pulled at the last minute from the London Film Festival ‘due to safety concerns’. (Guardian, 19 October 2024)
24 October: In Spain, four people are arrested on suspicion of conducting a viral hate campaign encouraging Atlético Madrid fans to racially abuse Real Madrid’s Vinicius Jr in the buildup to the Madrid derby match on 29 September. (Al Jazeera, 24 October 2024)
28 October: UN special rapporteurs on cultural rights, minority issues, and freedom of religion and belief, along with members of the UN working group on discrimination against women and girls, have warned that France’s hijab bans in sports are ‘disproportionate and discriminatory’ and that ‘Muslim women and girls who wear the hijab must have equal rights to participate in cultural and sporting life’. (Le Monde, 28 October 2024)
28 October: A campaign to boycott Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that are ‘complicit in violating Palestinian rights’, organised by the Palestine festival of literature (PalFest), receives over 1,000 signatures from writers and publishing professionals, including Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy. (Guardian, 28 October 2024)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
15 October: The Never Again Association in Poland publishes the latest edition of its ‘Brown Book’, which documents attacks on minorities in 2023 and 2024, including brutal assaults on an Azerbaijani student and several Indians at a workers’ hostel, and warns against a further mainstreaming of hate. (Never Again Association, 15 October 2024)
This calendar is researched by IRR staff and compiled by Sophie Chauhan, with the assistance of Graeme Atkinson, Sam Berkson, Margaret McAdam and Louis Ordish. Thanks also to ECRE, the Never Again Association and Stopwatch, whose regular updates on asylum, migration, far Right, racial violence, employment and policing issues are an invaluable source of information. Find these stories and all others since 2014 on our searchable database, the Register of Racism and Resistance.