Dear IRR News subscriber,

Twenty-eight years for the Hillsborough families to see anyone charged over the ninety-five deaths. And the so called wheels of justice would not have ground at all had it not been for tenacious families campaigning. Stephen Lawrence was killed in 1993 and two convictions secured nineteen years on. The Grenfell Tower inquiry head has just been appointed, but, in a corporate case like that of Hillsborough, it will clearly takes years and years of tough campaigning for all the relatives and families to finally hold those responsible to account.

As the Brexit negotiations start in earnest, the proposal for EU residents in the UK has finally been unveiled. Its meanness, contrasting with the generosity of the EU’s offer to British citizens to which it was a response, has drawn severe criticism. But as Frances Webber argues, by assimilating the post-Brexit family reunion rights of EU residents with those of British citizens and settled migrants, the proposal shows up the comparative lack of rights enjoyed by these groups – and campaigners should be arguing for decent, EU-standard family reunion rights for all UK residents.

The proposed treatment of EU residents shows how Theresa May’s government seems unable to transcend its fixation with immigration control, even in such crucial negotiations in which the UK’s economic and political future is at stake. The treatment of undocumented migrants by the Home Office when Theresa May was home secretary is the subject of Go Home? The politics of immigration controversies, reviewed by Samiha Begum.

We have a new post on Race & Class, view details here and finally, our regular calendar of racism and resistance, a fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, is available here.

IRR News Team