ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY
17 October: A study published in the European Journal of Political Research finds that the political mainstream is partly responsible for the success of far-right parties due to the adoption of their topics and rhetoric, which amplifies their appeal. (EU Observer, 17 October 2025)
17 October: Portugal’s parliament approves a bill, proposed by the far-right Chega party, that would allow for the banning of face veils for ‘gender or religious’ reasons in public. (Guardian, 17 October 2025)
17 October: Nigel Farage is asked to explain why far-right ‘free speech’ and anti-abortion group Alliance Defending Freedom set up a meeting for him in March 2025 with US State Department officials. (Guardian, 17 October 2025)
19 October: Nigel Farage appoints James Orr, an anti-abortion theologian at Cambridge University, who is influential with Donald Trump, his senior adviser at Reform UK. (Guardian, 19 October 2025)
20 October: Home Office shadow minister Katie Lam MP is criticised by the Lib Dems after she tells the Sunday Times that large numbers of legally settled families should be deported, in order to ensure that the UK is mostly ‘culturally coherent’. (Guardian, 20 October 2025)
20 October: Germany’s chancellor Friedrich Merz, facing cross-party criticism for remarks about a ‘problem in the cityscape’ that is being resolved by ‘large-scale deportations’, refuses to apologise, saying anyone with daughters knows what he means. Green party activist Luisa Neubauer says German women will not be used as a pretext for discriminatory, racist and hurtful statements. (Politico, 21 October 2025)
21 October: Thousands protest in Berlin, Germany, against chancellor Merz’s ‘cityscape’ remarks, accusing his party, the CDU, of aligning itself with the far-right AfD. Protests spread in the following days to other German cities including Hamburg and Leipzig. (Guardian, 21 October 2025; DW, 25 October 2025; Nampa, 25 October 2025)
Residents in the city of Munich have voted in favor of bidding to host the Olympics in 2036, 2040 or 2044.
Bavaria’s state premier has called the result “a very strong signal.”https://t.co/czmBEjV26y
— DW Europe (@dw_europe) October 27, 2025
21 October: Three victims of ‘grooming gangs’ resign from the panel of the inquiry on the ground that officials have widened its scope into broader issues of child sexual abuse ‘in ways that downplay the racial and religious motivations’ behind their abuse. (Guardian, 21 October 2025)
21 October: Ireland’s justice minister says there is no correlation between the location of asylum centres and levels of crime in a community, as a resident of the Citywest asylum hub appears in court charged with sexual assault on a 10-year-old girl in west Dublin and independent TD Carol Nolan calls for immediate deportation of ‘violent asylum seekers’. (Irish Independent, 21 October 2025; GRIPT, 21 October 2025)
21 October: Sweden’s migration minister says migrants who spend even one day in jail will be deported. (EU Observer, 21 October 2025)
23 October: Neville Watson, the only Black branch chair (Enfield) of Reform UK, resigns saying that the tone of Britain’s migrant debate is ‘doing more harm than good’, also citing Chistian nationalism, Islamophobia, and sympathy towards Tommy Robinson amongst some members. (Guardian, 23 October 2025)
26 October: The all-Ireland political movement Aontú (Unity) fires its youth leader and five other members after it emerges that they participated in a private racist WhatsApp group. (Newstalk, 26 October 2025; Belfast Telegraph, 28 October 2025
26 October: Unnamed European ‘security experts’ tell The I paper that Russia is ‘flooding’ Europe with migrants ‘as a hybrid warfare capability to destabilise Europe’, as dozens of Chinese-made inflatables are seized at the Bulgarian border. (The I paper, 26 October 2025)
27 October: Nigel Farage defends remarks made by Reform MP Sarah Pochin, who said that seeing adverts full of Black and Asian people ‘drives her mad’, on the grounds that she had a ‘basic point’ but ‘she worded it wrong’. Her remarks were deemed racist by Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Lib Dem and Conservative MPs. (Guardian, 27 October 2025)
27 October: Three members of Reform’s ‘flagship’ Kent County Council, suspended after a leaked video showed the leader shouting and swearing at members, are dismissed for ‘dishonest and deceptive behaviour’. Two more councillors were sacked by email last week for ‘undermining’ the party and bringing it ‘into disrepute’. (BBC, 27 October 2025)
ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
With anti-migrant, anti-Muslim, anti-equalities, anti-abortion, misogynistic and anti-LGBTQI activities increasingly interlinking, we now incorporate information on the Christian Right as well as the religious Right generally.
16 October: Open Democracy reports on a Hull youth project, the Warren, fighting the far-right, racist and misogynist manipulation of young people. (Open Democracy, 16 October 2025)
The former fire station fighting the far-right radicalisation of young men https://t.co/56NXlNPqj9 | read more ⤵️
— openDemocracy (@openDemocracy) October 16, 2025
18 October: Police investigate after an ‘incident’ outside an asylum hotel in Portswood, Southampton, between anti-immigration protesters and members of Stand Up to Racism. (Southampton Daily Echo, 19 October 2025)
21 October: Met restrictions prohibit UKIP from marching to ‘reclaim Whitechapel from the Islamists’ in any area of Tower Hamlets on the grounds the assembly gave a ‘realistic prospect of serious disorder’. UKIP says police have given in to ‘Islamists’ and announce they will march in central London. (BBC News, 21 October 2025)
21 October: In south-west Dublin, Ireland, after reports of a sexual assault on a child, police battle with hundreds of demonstrators outside the Citywest hotel used to house asylum seekers. A police car is torched, horse-drawn carts charge police lines and a police helicopter is targeted with lasers. The justice and migration minister condemns the ‘weaponising of a crime by people who wish to sow dissent’. (Guardian, 21 October 2025; BBC News, 22 October 2025)
22 October: After a man is arrested for an assault on a ten-year-old child, a second night of violence ensues at Citywest hotel, Dublin, Ireland, during which 24 people are arrested and three police officers are injured by stones, bottles and fireworks. Guardian, 22 October 2025; RTE, 23 October 2025; BBC News, 23 October 2025)
23 October: Irish police state that the Citywest violence was ‘far more organised and planned’ than the Dublin rioting in 2023, as a team dedicated to investigating far-right extremism within the Special Detective Unit trawls through social media and messaging apps as well as CCTV footage. (Irish Independent, 23 October 2025)
23 October: A crowdfunding campaign aiming to print and distribute 10,000 posters featuring the message ‘Brummies united against racism and hate crime’ reaches two-thirds of its £18,000 target. Started by residents of Moseley, Birmingham, it has attracted widespread support across the city. (Guardian, 12 October 2025)
25 October: As around 75 UKIP supporters march in central London under the banner ‘Islamist invaders not wanted in Britain’ after being banned from Tower Hamlets, much larger anti-fascist protests are held in Whitechapel and central London. Four counter-protesters are arrested for allegedly breaching conditions related to the route. (Independent, 25 March 2025; Independent, 25 March 2025)
26 October: In Utrecht, the Netherlands, an anti-fascist protest called in opposition to a demonstration announced by Nederland in Opstand is relocated after a court upholds the mayor’s decision to move it away from an anti-immigration protest on safety grounds. Members of the far-right group Voorpost face heavy police supervision. (Netherlands Times, 26 October 2025; Netherlands Times, 26 October 2025)
POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
14 October: A Times analysis of data from January to August finds that Black Londoners are nearly three times more likely to be strip-searched than white suspects. No illegal items were recovered in almost half of all cases involving Black people and officers were 11 per cent more likely to find drugs during searches of White people. (Standard, 14 October 2025)
15 October: A Met police misconduct hearing finds that a police officer known only as W80 has no case to answer in relation to the killing of Jermaine Baker, who was shot dead in north London during a foiled prison break in 2015. (BBC News, 15 October 2025)
16 October: An external consultancy report, commissioned by the Met but not published, concludes that bias, racial stereotyping and inequity are woven through the force’s recruitment, promotion and grievance processes, specifically affecting Black staff. (Guardian, 16 October 2025)
17 October: The Court of Appeal confirms that the legal challenge to the ban on Palestine Action can go ahead, rejecting a Home Office attempt to block the case. (Guardian, 17 October 2025)
20 October: Following controversy surrounding the arrest of Father Ted creator Graham Lineham for social media posts about trans issues, the Met say they will no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents but will continue to record them to assess potential community tensions. (Guardian, 20 October 2025)
23 October: New rules boosting protections for officers in misconduct cases, deemed necessary after the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba, will lead to greater ‘impunity and injustice’, says INQUEST, which also criticises a government review into whether it should become harder for inquests to return verdicts of unlawful killing. (Guardian, 23 October 2025)
Last week the Home Office announced new rules that will make it even harder to hold police officers accountable following use of force & misconduct.
Instead of listening to those bereaved by police violence, the Home Office is parroting the police lobby.
This will lead to more impunity & injustice
— INQUEST (@inquest-org.bsky.social) 29 October 2025 at 09:26
23 October: A report from the Scottish Community and Activist Legal project and NETPOL claims that Police Scotland used ‘extreme violence’ to protect the interests of arms companies, including at the Thales weapons factory in Glasgow, from pro-Palestine activists. (The National, 23 October 2025)
28 October: As the number of people arrested under the Terrorism Act for supporting Palestine Action tops 2,000, protests against the proscription are announced for next month in 18 towns and cities, and defendants in custody awaiting trial announce a hunger strike starting Sunday, 2 November. (Morning Star, 29 October 2025)
ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
15 October: Government delays in granting visas to an estimated 4,200 applicants and their family members under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy leave them in danger, as they are hunted down, tortured and executed by the Taliban, with over 100 Afghan former fighters reportedly killed since 2023. (Independent, 15 October 2025)
16 October: The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child lambasts France’s ‘grave and systematic violations’ of the rights of unaccompanied migrant children, including leaving them homeless or in ‘degrading’ conditions, depriving them of basic care and ‘systematic exclusion’ from protection. (InfoMigrants, 24 October 2025)
17 October: The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee finds that the suspension of refugee family reunion lacked any consultation with affected groups, lacked data and analysis on the impact on migration flows and demands on public services, and was inconsistent about the duration of the suspension. Its report concludes that the changes increase the perception that policy is ‘being made by press release rather than following due process’. (EIN, 17 October 2025)
23 October: Home secretary Shabana Mahmood says the Home Office was ‘set up to fail’ but she is working to rebuild it, as an internal review, written in 2023 and released following a two-year battle with the Times, reveals a culture of dysfunction and defeatism, a ‘lethargic’ and ‘defensive’ asylum system leading to a huge backlog and interviews delayed for up to two years. (BBC News, 23 October 2025)
27 October: Research reveals that at least 49 family members and colleagues of Afghans affected by the MoD data breach have been killed as a result of the breach, and 230 of the 250 respondents have been threatened. (Guardian, 27 October 2025)
Borders and internal controls
14 October: The ECtHR finds that Greece failed to protect lives or to conduct an effective investigation into the shipwreck of a migrant boat off the coast of Agathonisi island in March 2018, in which 16 people died. (ELENA Legal Update, 17 October 2025)
15 October: Days after suspected Libyan militia fired live ammunition at escaping migrants on a fishing boat, leaving one victim in a coma, Libyan officials meet EU and Frontex officials in Brussels and Warsaw for talks on strengthening border management across Libya and intensifying efforts to return undocumented migrants to their home countries. (Alarmphone, 13 October 2025; Libya Observer, 18 October 2025)
16 October: UK officers are reportedly training border guards across the western Balkans to use British-made drones and biometric tracking systems to track down migrants, as the border security commander says Britain will provide drones and night-vision goggles for use by police forces in the region. (Guardian, 16 October 2025)
16 October: Lawyers file at the ICC the names of 122 European officials and leaders, including France’s president Macron, former German chancellor Merkel, former Netherlands prime minister Rutte, Poland’s Tusk, the EU’s Frederica Mogherini and former Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri, as co-perpetrators with Libyan officials of crimes against humanity for policies leading to the interception, detention, torture, killing and drowning of tens of thousands of migrants. (AP, 16 October 2025)
20 October: A new report from Médecins sans Frontières, Fortress in the sand: EU externalisation policies and trans-Saharan migration routes, analyses the human cost of EU agreements with transit countries including Turkey, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Niger and Sudan. (MSF, 20 October 2025)
23 October: France is backing away from a commitment to intervene forcefully from beaches and at sea to stop migrant boats embarking for the UK, according to officials and unions who cite the dangers to life and fears of prosecution. (BBC News, 23 October 2025)
Reception and detention
27 October: In a report on asylum accommodation, the parliamentary Home Affairs Committee lambasts the Home Office for the ‘failed, chaotic and expensive’ asylum accommodation system – with costs of contracts set to triple to £15 billion from 2019 to 2029 – for lack of oversight, continued use of hotels and failing to engage with local authorities and communities. (LocalGov, 27 October 2025)
28 October: Two Ministry of Defence sites – a military training camp in Crowborough, Sussex, and Cameron barracks in Inverness, Scotland – are earmarked for the reception of Channel-crossing migrants, housing a total of 900 people. (The I paper, 28 October 2025)
Deportations
14 October: Fifteen human rights groups from the UK and France, including Utopia 56, Auberge des Migrants, Secours Catholique and Doctors of the World, call for a suspension of the ‘one in, one out’ policy as they legally challenge French readmission measures. Twenty-five deported asylum seekers also issue a statement about their unsafe and difficult living conditions. (Guardian, 14 October 2025)
“The agreement between the UK and France will go down as a dark chapter in history because it has abandoned us completely”
Visitor groups are already seeing immense harm under this scheme – it should be scrapped immediately.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025…— AVIDdetention (@aviddetention.bsky.social) 14 October 2025 at 15:55
21 October: Kosovo indicates it is willing to set up ‘return hubs’ to hold refused asylum seekers from the UK, in return for strategic security agreements and equipment, while Albania’s prime minister says ‘looking for places to dump immigrants’ shows the UK is in a ‘very dark place’. (Guardian, 21 October 2025)
Crimes of solidarity
21 October: As a PICUM report reveals at least 142 prosecutions of solidarity workers in 2024, six members of Mediterranea Saving Humans go on trial in Ragusa, Italy for ‘aggravated facilitation of illegal immigration’ for rescuing 27 migrants stranded for over a month on a Maersk tanker by Malta’s failure to assign a port, and taking them to an Italian port. (InfoMigrants, 23 October 2025)
HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION
15 October: The EHRC withdraws interim guidance on how institutions should respond to the supreme court’s ruling on gender, which campaigners said could effectively exclude many trans people from public spaces, pending parliamentary approval of new statutory guidance. (Guardian, 15 October 2025)
15 October: A retired British couple, a former immigration barrister and a nurse, who are treasurer and chair of the Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine, have their joint bank account with Yorkshire Building Society closed for no reason and with no explanation. (Guardian, 15 October 2025)
HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE
16 October: As of June 2025, a record 172,000 children are growing up in temporary accommodation, which is often cramped, unsafe and lacking basic cooking and laundry facilities, official figures reveal, and over 8,700 homeless people are sleeping rough. Poor conditions in emergency accommodation are linked to the deaths of at least 74 children over the past five years. (Morning Star, 16 October 2025)
18 October: Days before the Renters’ Rights Bill is passed, abolishing ‘no fault evictions’, it is reported that Labour-run councils have issued no-fault eviction notices to almost 200 households across England since the party was elected on a promise to ban the practice. (Guardian, 18 October 2025; UK government, 27 October 2025)
“Labour’s housing hypocrisy: councils serve almost 200 families with no-fault eviction notices
Exclusive: firms run by five of the party’s councils have used legal loophole to serve section 21 notices”https://t.co/i4LPClbxQK
— Social Housing Posts (@uksocialhousing) October 18, 2025
22 October: In what could be a precedent-setting case, a refugee wins a High Court order barring his eviction on the ground that the ‘move-on’ period for newly granted refugees, which the Home Office recently halved from 56 to 28 days, would leave him street-homeless. (Guardian, 26 October 2025)
27 October: The first phase of Awaab’s law comes into force, named in memory of a two- year old boy who died after exposure to mould in his home. The new legal duties require social landlords to fix reported damp, mould and emergency repairs within strict timeframes. (Guardian, 27 October 2025).
HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
27 October: The chief executive of the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers, who has sent the government a statement about young people from BAME backgrounds feeling unsafe and carers being accosted on the streets, organises a meeting of fostering agencies across England to discuss the mounting racism. (Guardian, 27 October 2025)
28 October: Black women with uterine fibroids face delays, poor care and dismissal by health professionals in the UK, a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Black health finds. (Guardian, 28 October 2025)
EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION
21 October: A report by the Good Growth Foundation, featuring a foreword by former home secretary David Blunkett, calls for a ‘work and teach’ visa for skilled migrants to train British workers, improve homegrown skills and improve attitudes to migration. (Guardian, 21 October 2025)
27 October: According to the Royal College of Nursing, racist incidents at work have risen by 55 per cent over three years, as the general secretary calls on the government and politicians ‘to end the use of anti-migrant rhetoric, which only risks emboldening racist behaviour’. (Guardian, 27 October 2025)
CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT
15 October: In Germany, a Hamburg university study into the media reporting of crime suspects’ nationality and ethnicity since 2007 finds that violent crimes committed by foreigners are reported about three times more often than their share in police crime statistics warrants, amounting to a ‘drastic distortion’. (Deutsche Welle, 15 October 2025)
16 October: The prime minister says he wants to reverse the ‘wrong decision’ by West Midlands police and a local safety advisory group to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a Europa League fixture at Villa Park, Birmingham (based on current intelligence and previous incidents including hate crimes during a match with Ajax in Amsterdam), as ‘antisemitism will not be tolerated’, while the Conservative leader calls the decision a ‘national disgrace’. (Guardian, 16 October 2025, Deutsche Welle, 17 October 2025)
17 October: The CEO of Prostate Cancer UK says that the charity faced a racist backlash, with direct debits cancelled, and an ‘awful lot of racist commentary’, after they published research highlighting the fact that Black men are at higher risk of developing prostate cancer than White men. (Third Sector, 17 October 2025)
17 October: Laurence Fox’s libel claim over being called a racist on social media is to go to retrial, the Court of Appeal rules, allowing his appeal against a judge’s dismissal of his claim. (Guardian, 17 October 2025)
17 October: The parliamentary science and technology select committee accuses the government of complacency which puts the public at risk, warning that failure to tackle online misinformation will lead to a repeat of the summer 2024 far-right riots. (Guardian, 17 October 2025)
19 October: It is revealed that the UK government has provided support to a French company setting up a £600m theme park in Oxfordshire, Puy du Fou, whose founder, Philippe de Villiers, set up a far-right party and rails against Islam and immigration in his regular TV programme. (Guardian, 19 October 2025)
20 October: After rioting and violence linked to Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Israel, Independent MP Ayoub Khan calls on the prime minister to apologise for his criticism of West Midlands police and for suggesting that their decision to ban Maccabi fans from the Aston Villa fixture amounted to a capitulation to antisemitism. (Guardian, 20 October 2025)
21 October: The UK government says is ‘deeply saddened’ by Maccabi Tel Aviv’s decision to decline tickets for the Europa League match at Villa Park, adding that ‘it is completely unacceptable that this game has been weaponised to stoke violence and fear by those who seek to divide us. We will never tolerate antisemitism or extremism on our streets’. (Guardian, 21 October 2025)
21 October: Sources close to West Midlands police reveal that the intelligence on ‘extreme’ Maccabi fans with a history of violence and shouting ‘racist taunts’ meant that at least 1,500 to 2,000 riot officers would have had to be deployed, at an estimated cost of at least £6m, for the fixture to go ahead. (Guardian, 21 October 2025)
22 October: The Socialist Party Ireland criticise some media for immediately reporting that the suspect of a Dublin sexual assault on a child was an African asylum seeker and publishing his address as the Citywest hotel, where families and children live. It claims that violent protests were egged on by Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk, and that GB News and far-right Canadian agitator Ezra Levant flew in to attend. (Socialist Party, 22 October 2025)
26 October: Citing free speech, US message board 4chan, which has been linked to real-world far-right violence including the 2019 Christchurch massacre and which has 3 million users in the UK, refuses to pay a £20,000 + £100 per day fine issued by Ofcom for failure to comply with the Online Safety Act, which requires companies to identify and mitigate the risks of users encountering illegal content. (Observer, 26 October 2025)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
14 October: In Ireland, the trial opens of three men accused of beating to death Josip Stroke, a Croatian man; the assailants knew Stroke was a foreign national and one had boasted of targeting an International Protection Accommodation Service centre. (Sunday World, 14 October 2025)
15 October: Police investigate a racially or religiously aggravated case of criminal damage after the Epsom Islamic Centre in Surrey is spray-painted with offensive language. (BBC News, 15 October 2025)
17 October: Ex-Reform Northamptonshire UK councillor Robert Bloom is charged with two counts of racially or religiously aggravated harassment. (BBC News, 17 October 2025)
22 October: The Socialist Party reports that during violent protests outside the Citywest hotel in Dublin, Ireland, where 80 per cent of those accommodated are families, fires were started and rocks, bottles and other missiles were thrown, as protesters shouted ‘Get them out’. Videos have emerged of cars being stopped and drivers’ ethnicity checked. A 60-year-old Afghan man was beaten and suffered a broken foot. (Socialist Party, 22 October 2025)
24 October: A Tommy Robinson supporter is arrested for a racially aggravated offence after allegedly entering a mosque in Peterborough and hurling abuse at worshippers as they made ablution for prayer. Police say it is an isolated incident. (Facebook [Peterborough Telegraph], 24 October 2025; Facebook [TRT World], 24 October 2025).
28 October: A white British Birmingham man is charged with rape, sexual assault, strangulation, racially aggravated actual bodily harm and robbery after an Asian woman in Walsall was the victim of what police believe was a racially aggravated attack three days earlier. (Guardian, 28 October 2025)
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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.