Dear IRR News subscriber,

Two giants of the Caribbean diaspora died this week – Stuart Hall, academic and cultural theorist; Buzz Johnson, publisher and people’s educator. Their lives and legacies are discussed by David Edgar and Jenny Bourne.

With a new Home Office manual on deportation expected in the near future, IRR News has obtained evidence through Freedom of Information requests indicating that the recommendations made in an earlier Home Office report were never implemented. Had they been, the death of Jimmy Mubenga in 2010 may have been prevented.

In news from across the UK, outsourcing services company Mitie has won a Home Office contract, valued at £180 million over eight years, to manage and bring together Colnbrook and Harmondsworth immigration removal centres. The Home Office has been criticised after a document was leaked revealing the ‘shockingly degrading’ lines of questioning used to interview gay and lesbian asylum seekers. And a taxi driver in Lancashire has been robbed by three passengers who racially abused him, damaged his vehicle and beat him with a belt.

Finally, a video of Professor Phil Scraton’s lecture on the Hillsborough struggle for justice, delivered last year at the London School of Economics, is now available.

Jon Burnett

Assistant Editor, IRR News