Dear IRR News subscriber,

This week, as the twentieth anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence approaches, on 22 April, the IRR examines racial violence since his death.

Jenny Bourne also reviews a new book which is ‘getting unwarranted coverage in the media’, and in case you missed it last week, her assessment of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy on race is well worth reading.

And in news from across the UK, the death of a 52-year-old Pakistani man, on a train, hours after he was released from Colnbrook immigration removal centre on health grounds is being investigated. A Bristol man who held a knife to the throat of woman, who was with her 8-year-old son, and demanded that she remove her hijab has been given a two-year community order. In Northern Ireland an ex-DUP candidate has been sentenced to three years in prison for his part in making a pipe bomb which was found at the home of a Polish couple in Antrim.

Harmit Athwal

Editor, IRR News