ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY
11 November: In a TV interview, prime minister Keir Starmer says that decades-old racism is returning to politics and divisive, hard-right policies are ‘tearing our country apart’. (Guardian, 11 November 2025)
13 November: Reform UK appoints Matthew Goodwin, who says being born and brought up in the UK does not make people British, as honorary president of its student organisation, Students4Reform. (Guardian, 13 November 2025)
13 November: Alternative for Germany welcomes Trump’s banning of Germany’s Antifa Ost, along with three other left-wing revolutionary organisations, as alleged foreign antifa groups, following his September executive order listing US antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation. AfD accuses the German state of tolerating far-left violence and says it must follow the US lead. (Guardian, 14 November 2025)
15 November: The Home Office says that Lord Macdonald KC will lead an independent review of laws on public order and hate crime, addressing ‘concerns around community tensions and the impact of disruptive and intimidating protests and hate crime on the cohesion and safety of society’. (Gov.UK, 15 November 2025)
17 November: Gwent police say they received no reports of safety concerns from Llyr Powell or Reform UK, after Powell, who campaigned for Reform in the recent Caerphilly Senedd by-election, claims that he received 55 death threats during the campaign and had to move home to an undisclosed location. (BBC News, 17 November 2025)
19 November: Testimonies from contemporaries of Nigel Farage at Dulwich College claim that he targeted ethnic minority children for abuse, sang a ‘Gas ‘em all’ song that referred to the killing of Jewish, Black and south-east Asian people and burned a school roll in a year when there were said to be more Patels than Smiths. Farage denies everything. (Guardian, 19 November 2025)
19 November: In the Danish municipal and regional elections, the far-right Danish People’s Party’s share of the vote rises slightly from 4.09 percent to 5.0 percent on a night when the Social Democrats lost control of Copenhagen (to the Red-Green alliance). Social Democratic prime minister Mette Frederiksen points to crime committed by ‘people coming from outside’ as one factor in her party’s defeat. (Guardian, 19 November 2025)
20 November: The Chamber of Commerce and Jarkko Eloranto, the head of Finland’s largest trades union, criticise the government’s hostile immigration policies, with Eloranta saying ‘often it is foreign workers who are exploited, even though they help keep society running’. (YLE News, 20 November 2025)
20 November: More than 80 leading lawyers and legal scholars warn the home secretary that amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill requiring police to look at the ‘cumulative impact’ of repeated protests in imposing conditions represent a significant weakening of protest rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, and will have a particularly chilling effect on protests opposing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. (Middle East Monitor, 20 November 2025)
Over 80 leading lawyers and legal scholars have signed a letter to the Home Secretary calling on the government to withdraw its extreme proposal to effectively ban protests based on their so-called ‘cumulative impact’.https://t.co/s8vhZeWaY5
— Palestine Solidarity Campaign (@PSCupdates) November 21, 2025
23 November: Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin says receipt of welfare benefits will be taken into account in decisions on granting citizenship, in a planned shake-up of asylum and migration policy which will also see tougher rules on family reunion. The Irish Refugee Council says the plans are ‘deeply alarming’. (RTÉ, 23 November 2025)
24 November: Two government departments warned the Home Office that its reforms of asylum and immigration law, particularly revoking legal rights to asylum support, and withholding support from and deporting families with children, breach international law on children’s rights and will increase street-homelessness, it is revealed. (Times (£), 24 November 2025)
ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
11 November: A German-Polish man with alleged neo-Nazi links is arrested in Dortmund, Germany, after allegedly running a darknet platform called ‘Assassination Politics’ that posts personal data, death sentences, and explosive instructions while soliciting crypto ‘bounties’ for killing top politicians. Authorities say he targeted more than 20 figures, including Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz. (Guardian, 11 November 2025)
11 November: A new far-right francophone party in Belgium called TRUMP launches as the successor to Chez Nous and the old Belgian Front National. Founder Salvatore Nicotra calls Trump the symbol of their populism and says the party promotes a unitary Belgian state. Its executive committee includes figures previously linked to extremist views. (Euronews, 11 November 2025)
14 November: A Sinn Féin activist arrested in a far-right terror probe over an alleged plot to attack a mosque previously admitted selling cocaine and twice had his party membership application rejected for drug possession, it is revealed. Although not a member, he campaigned with Sinn Féin, appeared in photos with Mary Lou McDonald, attended recent party events, and twice entered the Irish parliament building Leinster House as a guest of a member. (Irish Independent, 14 November 2025)
15 November: A Manchester climate justice march led by young people and promoted as a family-friendly event is constantly harassed by far-right ‘streamers’ who seek to intimidate and threaten people. A group of women protesters is violently attacked. (Friends of the Earth, press release, 15 November 2025)
19 November: British vigilantes are travelling to beaches in France and filming themselves slashing small migrant boats, it is revealed. They are calling on others, including football hooligans, to join them in ‘Operation Stop the Boats’. (The I paper, 22 November 2025)
23 November: As Wealden District Council passes a motion opposing the government proposal to temporarily house 600 single male asylum seekers at an army barracks in Crowborough, East Sussex, UKIP’s Nick Tenconi leads a march of hundreds of people through the town, chanting ‘Crowborough says no’ and ‘protect our community’ while police increase ‘reassurance patrols’. (BBC News, 23 November 2025; The Argus, 23 November 2025)
ANTI-TERRORISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY
12 November: Prevent Watch cautiously welcomes the findings of the Bingham Centre’s Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism Law, Policy and Practice, but warns that the proposal to remove Prevent to a locally led, multi-agency safeguarding model risks repackaging securitisation. (Prevent Watch, 12 November 2025)
23 November: An anonymous member of the Home Office’s homeland security group warns that Prevent could be overwhelmed by a surge in referrals, especially from frontline settings such as schools and healthcare, on Palestine advocates wrongly labelled extremists when they pose no threat, leading Prevent to become an unwitting gateway for criminalisation. (Guardian, 23 November 2025)
POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
12 November: The chief constable of Northamptonshire police is found guilty of contempt of court after the force repeatedly failed to hand over video footage to complainant Nadine Buzzard-Quashie, who alleges physical assault by three officers in 2021. (BBC News, 12 November 2025)
13 November: Metropolitan police officer PC Philip Neilson is dismissed without notice via an accelerated procedure after BBC Panorama undercover footage shows him boasting about using pressure points to harm a vulnerable child detainee and making shocking comments about Muslims and immigrants. (Misconduct 999, 13 November 2025)
14 November: Citing attacks on asylum hostels in Ireland, the Garda Commissioner says that police are monitoring the activities of a small number of activists who want to take ‘violent action’. ‘We have values in this country’ and ‘the idea that children were endangered in Drogheda and Citywest is unacceptable’, he says. (RTE, 14 November 2025)
15 November: Veteran human rights lawyer Fahad Ansari reveals that North Wales police stopped him under the Terrorism Act Schedule 7 on his return from Ireland, seized his phone and days later tried to access his daughter’s phone, since he took on the case to de-proscribe Hamas. (Middle East Eye, 15 November 2025)
18 November: Roma organisations in Slovenia say a new law, which empowers police to enter any property or vehicle in designated ‘security risk areas’ to search for firearms, treats the whole Romani minority as a security threat. (Guardian, 18 November 2025)
18 November: An 80-year-old Holocaust survivor is among 20 people, all over the age of 60 and including a local vicar, arrested in Aberystwyth for showing public support for Palestine Action. (Cambrian News, 18 November 2025)
19 November: The Criminal Cases Review Commission refers the 2017 joint enterprise murder convictions of Durrell Goodall, Deano Walters and Trey Wilson to the Court of Appeal after fresh evidence undermines the prosecution case that they were gang members. (Guardian, 19 November 2025)
19 November: A judge finds that as justice secretaries, David Lammy and his successor Shabana Mahmood subjected a prisoner to inhuman and degrading treatment by failing to consider his history of trauma and his mental health needs when approving his segregation, which left him with PTSD. (Guardian, 19 November 2025)
19 November: On appeal, Cardiff Crown Court rules the prosecution of pro-Palestinian activists Ayeshah Behit and Hiba Ahmed on charges of harassing Alex Davies-Jones, Labour MP for Pontypridd, in the run-up to the 2024 general election ‘not necessary’. (Sky News, 19 November 2025; X [Hodge Jones & Allen], 19 November 2025)
21 November: The Runnymede Trust and 50 racial justice organisations call on the home secretary and police chiefs to scrap guidance to reveal the ethnicity and nationality of suspects in high-profile cases, which falsely links criminality with ethnicity or migration status, inflaming prejudice. Research shows that the term ‘asylum seeker’ is used in articles relating to serious crime five times more often than before the policy was introduced in August. (Guardian, 23 November 2025)
We’ve joined @RunnymedeTrust & over 60 organisations, who have written to the Home Secretary & Chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council raising concerns about guidance encouraging police forces to disclose the ethnicity & nationality of suspects charged in high-profile cases. pic.twitter.com/nKDJ62MsJm
— Institute of Race Relations (@IRR_News) November 25, 2025
21 November: At Warwick crown court, an Afghan national pleads guilty to the rape of a child in a case that prompted anti-asylum protests in Nuneaton and a subsequent claim by Reform Warwickshire county council leader George Finch that police were attempting to cover up the immigration and asylum status of two men arrested. (Guardian, 21 November 2025)
25 November: Campaigners describe as ‘deeply alarming’ the last-minute replacement of the senior judge scheduled to hear the legal challenge against the proscription of Palestine Action, due to start tomorrow, by three judges, one of whom was on the panel upholding as lawful the government’s export of fighter jet parts to Israel. (Guardian, 25 November 2025)
25 November: Bereaved family members of Black, minoritised and migrant women hold a vigil outside Downing Street to protest police and judicial belittling of domestic killings and call for action and accountability. (Morning Star, 25 November 2025)
ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
11 November: Two fathers granted humanitarian protection in the UK, whose families have successful family reunion decisions, are forced to take legal action against the government as their families remain In Gaza, with the Foreign Office saying they cannot be assisted at present. (Guardian, 11 November 2025)
17 November: The home secretary announces radical changes to the asylum system, including temporary basic protection, with deportation if the home country is deemed safe, a 20-year wait for settlement; no automatic right to family reunion; reduced access to public funds; discretionary asylum support; seizure of ‘assets’ to pay for it; reduced appeal rights and deportation of refused families with children; along with small-scale ‘safe and legal’ routes. (EIN, 17 November 2025; GMIAU, 18 November 2025; Observer, 16 November 2025)
19 November: Windrush scandal campaigners, with Lady Floella Benjamin, attend a House of Lords event where they call for a statutory inquiry, which successive governments have refused, into ongoing Home Office errors that leave injustices unresolved and claims to compensation refused. (Guardian, 19 November 2025)
20 November: The home secretary launches a public consultation, open until 12 February 2026, on ‘earned settlement’, doubling the basic threshold to ten years, increased to 15 years for health and care workers, 20 years for refugees, with five or ten years added for recourse to public funds and 20 years added for illegal entry. High earners and entrepreneurs will get settlement in 3 years. Access to benefits and social housing will be restricted to British citizens under the proposals. (Free Movement, 20 November 2025)
Borders and internal controls
18 November: Under mounting pressure from the British government to intercept migrant boats at sea, the French interior ministry confirms that several law enforcement officers will use 30-metre wide nets to trap boats by blocking their propellors, which coastguard members of the Solidaires Douanes union say will lead to deaths. (Independent, 18 November 2025)
20 November: Statewatch reports on an EU payment to Senegal of €30 million for border surveillance and control, maritime interception of migrant boats and reception/detention infrastructure. (Statewatch, 20 November 2025)
Reception and detention
14 November: Two senior Mitie staff responsible for the running of the Manston processing centre are escorted from the site under investigation for alleged misconduct, during an independent inquiry into a series of scandals in 2022. (Guardian, 14 November 2025)
14 November: Coventry city council loses its legal fight against the Home Office decision to house more asylum seekers there. (BBC News, 14 November 2025)
16 November: Video footage and photographs at the ex-RAF base, Wethersfield, Essex, which houses up to 1,245 male asylum seekers, captures squalid conditions at the site, including overflowing urinals, giant rats crawling under portacabins, blocked and leaking toilets, flooded hallways, and rubbish piled up in rooms. (The i paper, 16 November 2025)
18 November: The Helen Bamber Foundation and Freedom from Torture take the Home Office to court for failing to consult charities before making policy changes that force survivors of torture and trafficking to share rooms with strangers in ‘prison-like’ sites or hotels. (Independent, 18 November 2025)
24 November: In a report from Every Child Protected Against Trafficking and Missing People, data received from 135 local authorities reveals that of 2,335 children identified as trafficked, 864 (37 percent) are reported as missing, while data from 141 local authorities with 11,999 lone child asylum seekers in their care reveals that 1,501 (13 percent) are missing. The report warns that insecure status heightens young people’s vulnerability to further harm, re-trafficking and renewed exploitation. (Guardian, 24 November 2025)
24 November: A pre-inquest hearing into the death at Brook House, near Gatwick airport, of French national Théophile Kaliviotis in October 2024 finds that the 26-year-old, whose health was not monitored despite his suffering from epilepsy, was held in immigration detention despite charges against him being dropped. (BBC News, 24 November 2025)
EDUCATION
15 November: A proposed 6 percent tuition levy for foreign students is condemned by the president and vice-chancellor of Manchester University as wrong, harmful to the education sector and not in the UK’s best interests. (Guardian, 15 November 2025)
16 November: The Department of Education says that its final guidance on restrictive interventions in schools will create a new legal duty for schools to record use of non-disciplinary isolation (seclusion). New guidance also requires schools to record every ‘significant’ use of reasonable force against pupils and report them to parents as soon as practicable. (Schools Week, 16 November 2025)
ICYMI: Exclusive: Schools will face a legal duty to record their use of non-disciplinary isolation and report it to parents under plans being developed by the governmenthttps://t.co/Ib6U6dVUO2
— Schools Week (@SchoolsWeek) November 17, 2025
16 November: A paper published in the British Educational Research Journal finds that one in 12 pupils report being placed in isolation (internal exclusion) per week, with the average time spent in isolation being 8.5 hours a week. (Schools Week, 16 November 2025)
18 November: Universities in Lithuania protest unannounced visits by border police entering lecture rooms and dormitories, checking students’ documents and filming checks, which academics say disrupt teaching and undermine universities’ autonomy. (Lrt/it, via Statewatch, 18 November 2025)
HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE
16 November: An inquiry is sought after revelations that HMRC stopped child benefits to 23,500 families wrongly recorded as having left the UK permanently, on the basis of flawed Home Office data which recorded only outbound flights. (Guardian, 16 November 2025)
23 November: Grenfell United and TV architect George Clarke call for a boycott of three firms severely criticised by the Grenfell inquiry (Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex) for ‘systematic dishonesty’ in misrepresenting or concealing safety test results for their products, foam insulation and cladding which caused the 2017 fire in which 72 people died. (Guardian, 23 November 2025)
EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION
14 November: Over 300 charities say they will refuse to cooperate with any scheme for ‘mandatory volunteering’ as part of ‘earned settlement’ for refugees, saying in a letter to the home secretary that it is ‘both immoral and impractical’. (Guardian, 14 November 2025)
16 November: A Guardian investigation into the dire working conditions experienced by delivery drivers in London, Liverpool and Manchester, mostly migrants working legally, finds that to earn a living, some must work 10-12 hours a day, contending with low pay, exhaustion, accidents, injuries and harassment; they have no contact with a boss, interacting only with an app. (Guardian, 16 November 2025)
16 November: Companies whose sponsor licences for employing overseas staff have been revoked for unlawful visa fees and other exploitative practices against migrant workers still appeared on the Home Office list of approved sponsors, it is revealed, as more allegations of abuses in the catering sector emerge. (Observer, 16 November 2025)
16 November: Over 330 cleaners, porters and caterers at St George’s, Epson and St Helier hospital group celebrate after a vote to strike against inferior pay and conditions despite being brought in-house leads to a new contract providing full NHS pay and benefits. (Guardian, 16 November 2025)
16 November: 300 Manchester NHS nursing assistants, whose pay is £63 per year short of the threshold for renewal of their visas, seek solidarity and public support as they call on the Manchester University Foundation Trust to sponsor their visas, to give them job security and to pressure the government to remove the earnings threshold. See their call to action here. (Patients not Passports, 16 November 2025)
20 November: Royal College of Nursing research finds that plans to extend the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain are causing serious distress among migrant nurses, as the research indicates that more than 46,000 nurses may permanently leave the UK. Professor Nicola Ranger, general secretary and chief executive of the RCN, calls for the plans to be dropped and application fees to be cut. (Guardian, 20 November 2020)
21 November: The General Medical Council reveals a 26 percent increase in international doctors leaving the UK because of increasing anti-migrant rhetoric and hostility, which follows the Royal College of Nursing reporting a surge in racism experienced by nurses. (Guardian, 21 November 2025)
CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT
12 November: An analysis of Hansard suggests that a campaign is underway to paint Muslim MPs, principally the four Muslim MPs who sit as independents, as ‘anti-British’, with prominent journalists and politicians using the word ‘sectarian’ to stigmatise them as separatist, illegitimate and dangerous. (Middle East Eye, 12 November 2025)
12 November: Mike Graham is sacked from TalkTV after the channel says he repeatedly failed to assist an investigation into a racist Facebook post he claimed was the result of a hack. The 65-year-old deleted the post and apologised, but bosses said he reneged on multiple opportunities to cooperate with an independent forensic inquiry. The channel’s owner, News UK, confirms he will not return. (Guardian, 12 November 2025)
12 November: Anwar el Ghazi wins a court case against Mainz 05, with the German club required to pay him €1.7 million in unpaid wages after dismissing him in 2023 over pro-Palestinian comments on Instagram. (BBC News, 12 November 2025; De Telegraaf, 12 November 2025)
12 November: Over 70 athletes join groups calling on UEFA to ban Israel over alleged rights abuses against Palestinians, arguing in a letter that Israeli clubs’ participation in international football legitimises occupation and violates international law, citing the deaths of nearly 70,000 in Gaza and apartheid conditions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and urging UEFA to follow precedent in suspending states breaching international law. (Al Jazeera, 12 November 2025)
13 November: British journalist Sami Hamdi is reunited with his family on his release from ICE detention and return to the UK three weeks after his arrest on a speaking tour of the US. (Middle East Eye, 14 November 2025)
British journalist and political commentator Sami Hamdi arrived in London on Thursday, three weeks after being detained by Ice agents while on a speaking tour in the US
More here ⤵️https://t.co/0aRaijLHJS
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) November 14, 2025
14 November: Advertisements approved by the home secretary as part of a joint UK and French government communications campaign display shocking images of dinghies being ripped apart with people struggling to stay afloat in icy waters, and include stark messages warning migrants against crossing the Channel. (Telegraph, 14 November 2025)
16 November: An investigation into Sri Lankan influencer, Geeth Sooriyapura, who has a million followers, reveals social media promotion of Islamophobic and ant-immigrant comment. One post falsely claimed that the mayor of London’s council house building programmes would only be available to Muslims, so they could be near ‘Mosques and Halal food’ shops, and led to calls for the mayor to be deported or hanged.(Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 16 November 2025)
17 November: The Black Archives of Mid America say the sudden removal of two panels commemorating the achievements of Black American soldiers buried at Margraten war cemetery, Limburg, Netherlands, is consistent with the Trump administration policy of degrading the achievements of Black Americans and abolishing diversity programmes. (Dutch News, 17 November 2025)
18 November: Media regulator Ofcom receives complaints against GB News for breaching the broadcasting code after host Martin Daubney presents unscientific research that counted the number of defendants with ‘foreign-sounding names’, drawing a link between ‘non-British’ names and those charged with sex offences. (Guardian, 18 November 2025)
20 November: The Charity Commission issues an official warning to the Mizrachi (UK) Israel Support Trust over a fundraising appeal. The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians accused the charity of facilitating fundraising for several members of the Israel Defence Forces and promoting hate speech through its events. (Third Sector, 24 November 2025)
24 November: West Midlands police tell MPs that the risk of antisemitic attacks against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans was not the main reason for banning them from a Europa League match at Aston Villa, which was potential violence from Maccabi supporters themselves, citing previous incidents in Amsterdam involving clashes with Muslim communities and Dutch authorities. (Guardian, 24 November 2025)
25 November: Dutch historian Rutger Bregman accuses the BBC of censoring his Reith Lecture by removing a line calling Donald Trump ‘the most openly corrupt president in American history’. Bregman says the edit, made on legal advice and against his wishes, leaves him ‘genuinely dismayed’ and highlights what he sees as self-censorship driven by fear of Trump’s threatened lawsuit. (Guardian, 25 November 2025)
25 November: Parents and children are dismayed as Cauldeen primary school, in Inverness, Scotland, cancels its Christmas show after receiving racist and abusive online messages because the musical included a scene about Syrian refugees. The school also cancels its Christmas fair, following demonstrations against proposals to house 300 asylum seeking men at Cameron Barracks, in the town. (BBC News, 25 November 2025)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
14 November: Migrant and refugee sector senior staff tell Third Sector that high profile right-wingers are walking around migrant and refugee NGO offices, peering into windows and taking pictures. Staff report having cars chased when visiting asylum hotel accommodation and receiving threatening emails. (Third Sector, 14 November 2025)
This calendar is researched by IRR staff and compiled by Sophie Chauhan, with the assistance of Graeme Atkinson, Sam Berkson, Margaret McAdam and Louis Ordish. Thanks also to ECRE, the Never Again Association, Research Against Global Authoritarianism and Stopwatch, whose regular updates on asylum, migration, far Right, racial violence, employment and policing issues are an invaluable source of information. Find these stories and all others since 2014 on our searchable database, the Register of Racism and Resistance.