Dear IRR News subscriber,

Who would have thought that anyone could think it a good idea that the self-publicist Katie Hopkins, who has, among other things, described migrants as ‘cockroaches’, should be allowed into schools in a ‘Stand Strong School Tour’? This week on IRR News, educational consultant Bill Bolloten takes issue with the Association of School and College Leaders for suggesting that the tour could go ahead, as long as alternative views to Hopkins’s are presented.

The IRR also continues its appraisal of the Lammy Review into the over-representation of BAME people in the criminal justice system. This week, IRR Council Member, Emeritus Professor Lee Bridges, looks carefully at the Review’s statistical analysis and recommendations. He argues that because the police were excluded from the Review’s remit, the end result is a ‘disjointed analysis of the criminal justice process’ – and one which fails to come to grips with two of the most contested aspects of current policing and prosecutorial policies, the use of gang databases and the law on joint enterprise.

The October issue of Race & Class suggests societies are attempting to corral non-white surplus populations, especially when they resist their racialisation. With articles on the US sanctuary movement; policing in Detroit and Toronto and detention on Manus Island in Australia. 

And in a second article for IRR News, campaigner John Grayson examines the asylum markets for private companies involved in providing services under the Direct Provision (DP) system for asylum seekers in Ireland.

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