Dear IRR News subscriber,
This week on the News Service the IRR comments on the plans by Newham council to move its homeless to Stoke-on-Trent: ‘Learning the lessons of dispersal‘ and Frances Webber reviews a recent legal decision on the detention of mentally ill foreign offenders.
In news from across the UK, a BNP supporter has been jailed for life for the racially motivated murder of Inderjit Singh in Bedford on Christmas day in 2010 and the family of David Kester, who was found burned to death in July 2010, have criticised the Met police for failing to start disciplinary action against the officers involved in the investigation despite a report finding a ‘catalogue of errors’. The Met police are still under fire after a black fireman, Edric Kennnedy-Macfoy, accused the Met of racism after he was tasered while attempting to help them. There will also be a demonstration outside the offices of the IPCC on Tuesday 1 May 2012.
It has also been reported that Stephen Yaxley-Lennon the leader of the English Defence League (EDL) is set to become the deputy leader of a new far-right party and an EDL supporter has also been arrested for making bomb threats in South Shields. In other news on the far Right there are reports that the National Front is remerging and both the EDL and Unite Against Fascism have been banned by the police from Luton town centre on 5 May.
And finally No Borders protestors disrupted a recent Barnardo’s fundraising concert at the Royal Albert Hall in protest at the company’s involvement in the detention of children.
Harmit Athwal
Editor, IRR News