ELECTORAL POLITICS | GOVERNMENT POLICY
21 August: Amnesty International UK accuses Labour of promoting an ‘age-old message of fear and hostility’ as home secretary Yvette Cooper vows to increase removals, target people smugglers and reopen immigration removal centres. (Guardian, 21 August 2024)
22 August: MEND publishes ‘No Race to the Bottom: Avoiding further curbs to freedom of speech under Labour’, which states that accusations of intimidation of MPs are being weaponised, particularly against Palestine supporters, and calls on the government to break with inappropriate advisers appointed by the Conservatives. (MEND, 22 August 2024).
22 August: It is revealed that Reclaim, Laurence Fox’s hard-right party, received all its funding from one donor, Jeremy Hosking, a previous donor to the Vote Leave campaign. (Byline Times, 22 August 2024)
23 August: In a report on the UK, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommends that ministers ‘adopt comprehensive measures to discourage and combat racist hate speech and xenophobic discourse by political and public figures’ and that such cases are ‘effectively investigated and sanctioned’. (Guardian, 23 August 2024)
26 August: In the wake of the deadly stabbings in Solingen, Germany, chancellor Scholz promises swifter deportations and tougher weapons laws. At a memorial for the victims, president Steinmeier says the country can only remain open if it is not ‘overwhelmed’ by irregular migration. (Guardian, 26 August 2024; Deutsche Welle, 1 September 2024)
2 September: In state elections in eastern Germany, the far-right AfD wins in Thuringia (projected 32.8 percent of vote) and comes a close second in Saxony (30.6 percent of vote). It is the first time that a far-right party has won a state election in Germany since WWII. (Deutsche Welle, 2 September 2024; Guardian, 2 September 2024)
2 September: Former German MP Niema Movassat describes as ‘racist garbage’ a now deleted video on X from the Berlin Interior Ministry that warns against the Islamic Salifi movement and depicts the radicalisation of a Muslim woman. (Politico, 2 September 2024)
2 September: In her Renewal 2030 leadership launch speech, Kemi Badenoch accuses her Tory rivals of seeking ‘easy answers’ on immigration and also says that she was far more worried about the five new MPs elected on the back of what she called ‘sectarian Islamist politics’ than she was about the five new Reform MPs. (Guardian, 2 September 2024; www.kemibadenoch.org.uk, 2 September 2024)
ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
20 August: A fundraiser for the Spellow Library Hub in Walton, Liverpool, which was set alight during the far-right riots, is paused after donations exceed the £250,000 sought to carry out the repair work. (BBC, 20 August 2024)
21 August: Romanian police raid the home of Andrew Tate and his brother in relation to a new human trafficking and money laundering investigation, as it is alleged that Tristan Tate sent €4,600 to anti-immigration activists in Dundalk, Ireland, for the purchase of loudspeakers and other equipment. (lmfm.ie, 21 August 2024)
22 August: Polls find that almost three in four Britons are worried about right-wing extremism after the anti-migrant riots and 48 percent believe Farage has not ‘responded well to the disorder’. (Guardian, 22 August 2024)
26 August: A media investigation finds that during the far-right targeting of a Rotherham hotel accommodating asylum seekers, hotel staff were evacuated several hours before asylum seekers, some of whom were age-disputed children or people with disabilities. Two asylum seekers said they had to put out fires themselves. (Guardian, 26 August 2024)
26 August: In a letter coordinated by Conversation Over Borders, 54 refugee support organisations call on the home secretary to introduce urgent protections, including clear evacuation protocols, for asylum seekers living in hostels at risk of further far-right attacks. (Guardian, 26 August 2024)
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27 August: Hope not Hate publishes ‘The far Right and the riots’, exposing links between those convicted and Reform UK, Britain First, Patriotic Alternative, the National Rebirth Party and North West Infidels, but concluding that the disorder was primarily driven by local people. (Hope Not Hate, 27 August 2024)
28 August: An RTL undercover investigation into the Identitarian movement in Austria finds that, among other things, activists campaigning for ‘remigration’ called for the mass murder off Muslims at a party in Vienna, with one woman saying that ‘Germany needs a Srebrenica 2.0’. (Kronen Zeitung, 28 August 2024)
28 August: A far-right organisation marches in Stockholm calling for the ban of Islam in Sweden, chanting ‘We don’t want Muslims in our country’, and is met by an anti-fascist counter-protest. (ShiaWaves, 28 August 2024)
29 August: The Islamophobia Action Group, formed by 80 Muslim organisations in the wake of the far-right riots, calls on the government to adopt the APPG definition of Islamophobia and take urgent action against the normalisation of Islamophobia that fuelled the riots, describing the situation as ‘critical’. (Independent, 28 August 2024)
29 August: Details of talks passed to the media reveal a plan by Tommy Robinson to mobilise Hindus, Jews and Sikhs in an attempt to launch anti-Muslim rallies across the country. (inews, 29 August 2024)
29 August: Prominent Northern Ireland loyalist David Stitt, 53, is granted bail on charges of incitement to religious hatred for allegedly posting a social media ‘call to arms’ on 31 July, following the Southport stabbings, saying ‘the Christian west’ was ‘under siege’ and urging followers to ‘stop the spread of evil Islam’. (Irish News, 29 August 2024)
1 September: Residents of Doncaster express shock after a Patriotic Alternative banner repeating the ‘two tier policing’ far-right conspiracy theory is hung from a footbridge over the A1 road. (Doncaster Free Press, 1 September 2024)
POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
21 August: A study by the Home-Office funded Youth Endowment Fund finds that stop and search is one of the less effective tactics to tackle violence such as knife crime, and may be counter-productive if those affected perceive it as unfair. The report recommends community-led focussed deterrence, more officers on the streets and mentoring and diversion schemes. (Guardian, 21 August 2024)
22 August: Home Office data shows that Cleveland and Devon and Cornwall police do not have a single Black serving officer, while in almost half of the 44 regional police forces in England and Wales, there are fewer than ten Black serving officers. (Mirror, 22 August 2024)
1 September: FOI requests by Liberty Investigates reveal that the National Police Chiefs’ Council assessed the threat of violence from far-right protests as ‘minimal’, instead seeing pro-Palestinian and environmental movements as potentially threatening public order. (Guardian, 1 September 2024)
2 September: In the Netherlands, Controle Alt Delete and victim support groups launch a petition to grant access to National Criminal Investigation Department reports for relatives of those who have died in police custody. In 94 percent of cases, a decision is made not to prosecute police officers involved in deaths. (Controle Alt Delete, 2 September 2024)
2 September: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, unions, MPs and others urge the Met police to drop last-minute restrictions on the eighteenth national march for Palestine scheduled for 7 September, which would push back the start time from noon to 2.30 and force organisers to find a new assembly point. (Morning Star, 2 September 2024)
2 September: HM Prisons Inspectorate issues a formal ‘urgent notification’ to justice secretary Shabana Mahmood about HMP Rochester, a prison which supposedly prepares prisoners for release, condemning it for decrepit conditions, rising violence, self-harm and illicit drug use. (Morning Star, 2 September 2024)
National security and anti-terrorism
25 August: In southern France, police treat an attempted attack on a synagogue in La Grande Motte, near Montpellier, as antisemitic terrorist-related arson and an assassination attempt linked to a terrorist organisation. A suspect who was injured in a shoot-out with police is arrested. (Le Monde, 25 August 2024; Al Jazeera, 25 August 2024)
25 August: Issa Al H, a 26-year-old Syrian man, is arrested over a knife attack in Solingen, Germany, on 23 August that killed three and wounded eight at a diversity festival. Prosecutors say the accused shares Islamic State ideology. (Guardian, 25 August 2024)
30 August: Following speeches in Manchester and Bradford, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, is charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 with ‘expressing an opinion supportive of a proscribed organisation’ and encouraging criminal damage. (Middle East Eye, 30 August 2024)
ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
30 August: With just 15,965 asylum decisions made between March and June this year and 118,882 awaiting an initial decision at the end of June, the PCS union reveals that the previous home secretary, James Cleverly, refused to allow outstanding decisions covered by the Illegal Migration Act to be processed, as asylum caseworkers were diverted to other tasks. (Guardian, 30 August 2024)
Borders and internal controls
26 August: A report by Migrant Rights Network documents how immigration raids operate and who they target, exposes their secretive and hidden nature, and explores raids as a form of coercive state control that instils fear and increasingly transforms areas of daily life into zones of immigration control. (Migrant Rights Network, 27 August 2024)
27 August: Human rights groups in Morocco and Spain call for an inquiry after a video circulates appearing to show a Spanish police patrol boat mounting a small dinghy near Melilla and knocking at least one person out of the vessel. (Guardian, 27 August 2024)
28 August: In a meeting in Berlin with German chancellor Scholz, the prime minister hopes for a new UK-German treaty involving joint work on ‘illegal’ migration, including data sharing, intelligence sharing and joint operations, as a similar agreement is reached with the French president to increase intelligence sharing and to dismantle smuggling routes. (inews, 30 August 2024)
30 August: Following a week-long Home Office operation involving 200 deportations to Brazil and raids on 275 premises, with 135 businesses notified of fines for employing undocumented workers and 85 ‘illegal’ workers detained, over 80 migrant support charities warn of undocumented migrants being driven underground, and call for easier regularisation. (Guardian, 30 August 2024)
🚨🚨 Immigration Raids: An Anatomy of Racist Intimidation 🚨🚨
New groundbreaking and urgent report by the *Migrants Rights Network*, with a foreword by Jon Burnett and me.
Link: https://t.co/nsTXVEUHAN pic.twitter.com/RgtUzLLv5v
— Monish Bhatia (@DrMonishBhatia) August 22, 2024
2 September: Czech police find dead a woman of around 30, nationality unknown, among 30 migrants in a lorry on a highway to Germany. The other migrants are detained. (Reuters, 2 September 2024)
Reception and detention
21 August: The Home Secretary announces plans to re-open Campsfield House (closed in 2019 after hunger strikes, incidents of self-harm and suicides) and Haslar (closed in 2015), to provide an additional 290 beds in the first phase. AVID responds with a public statement opposing the expansion and expressing concern over the harms of detention, with support from over 50 organisations. (Sky News, 21 August 2024; AVID, 28 August 2024)
22 August: At the Serbian/Bosnian border, ten people, including a mother and her 10-month-old daughter, drown in the Drina river while attempting to reach safety, while 18 people from the boat safely reach the Bosnian side of the river. It is unknown how many people remain missing, with bad weather halting search and rescue. (BBC, 2 August 2024)
28 August: Dozens of local residents sleep in the squares of Trieste, north-eastern Italy, to demand proper housing for migrants, who are forced to sleep rough due to lack of provision. (InfoMigrants, 2 September 2024)
29 August: As the government pledges to detain and remove more people, an independent monitoring board report finds a ‘hardening of conditions’ at Gatwick’s immigration removal centre, observing longer lock-up times, increased use of force, handcuffing of all detainees for hospital visits, serious misconduct by staff and some staff being ‘unnecessarily aggressive and intimidating’. (Guardian, 29 August 2024)
3 September: Research by Women for Refugee Women shows that women accommodated in Home Office hotels are routinely subjected to a ‘controlling, threatening and surveilling’ environment, with half of the 63 women surveyed feeling suicidal and facing voyeurism, room intrusions and sexual harassment from male staff. (Guardian, 3 September 2024)
3 September: A JRS report describes the vulnerability of refused asylum seekers to homelessness, destitution and exploitation. (JRS, 3 September 2024)
Deportations
30 August: The German authorities deport 28 people, all said to be convicted offenders, to Afghanistan in the first such deportation since the Taliban took power three years ago. (France24, 30 August 2024)
HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION
3 September: Pontins issues a formal apology to the Gypsy and Traveller communities as the first part of an action plan agreed with the EHRC following its February ruling that the holiday camp operator uncovered unlawful practices designed to bar Irish Travellers from its holiday parks. (Guardian, 3 September 2024)
EDUCATION
Although we do not cover student protests for Palestine, we do track university administrative measures that deny the right to protest and authorise the use of force, or silence pro-Palestinian voices and display anti-Palestinian bias.
19 August: The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies again asks the German federal education minister to retract criticism of academics supporting a student protest for Gaza at the Free University of Berlin, warning that a newspaper attack on them as ‘perpetrators’ has led to online abuse of the academics. (BRISMES, 19 August 2024)
21 August: The Scottish government amends legislation to allow 19 female Afghan medical students to complete their training in Scottish universities without having to pay tuition fees. (THE, 21 August 2024)
21 August: A survey by the charity Kinship shows that children in kinship care are being ‘denied the support they need to do well at school and exams’ and that their needs are ‘being overlooked and ignored’. ONS data shows that these children are more likely to be Black (6.1 percent) or of mixed ethnicity (8.7 percent) than children living with at least one parent (4.7 and 6.9 percent respectively). (TES, 21 August 2024)
22 August: Goldsmiths University College Union (UCU) agrees to call off its indefinite strike, having forced management to agree to no compulsory redundancies; to work on mutually agreed equality and diversity issues; and to keep its degrees in Black British history and literature, though its master’s in queer history has been axed. (THE, 22 August 2024)
25 August: School suspensions hit an all-time high, with ‘pupils in England’s poorest secondary schools … three times as likely to be suspended as those in the wealthiest schools’. In 2022-23, 50 secondary schools suspended a quarter or more of their pupils, up from 24 in 2018-19. (Guardian, 25 August 2024)
The jobs of those remaining have been hard-won by the sheer resolve of members’ fight. The strength of our action-holding the line with the marking & assessment boycott, showing up for strike action and the looming indefinite strike-brought management to the negotiating table. pic.twitter.com/ALDVoj5qNM
— Goldsmiths UCU (@GoldsmithsUCU) August 15, 2024
27 August: A report by the Scottish government shows that the educational attainment of children in care has reduced since 2021/22, while exclusion rates increased. 97 in 1000 looked-after pupils faced exclusion from a Scottish school in 2022/23 compared with 17 for all pupils. (TES, 28 August 2024)
28 August: Teaching unions and the National Governance Association warn that the government has no ‘plans to issue guidance to schools’ on how to deal with tensions among returning students following far-right violence over the summer. (TES, 28 August 2024)
28 August: The Irish education minister responds to a letter from 400 mothers from the Muslim Mothers Collective expressing fears for their children’s safety in and outside school, by promising risk assessments and ‘comprehensive guidance, advice and strategies’ for schools to keep pupils safe in and on the way to and from school, working with PSNI. (Irish News, 28 August 2024)
29 August: A survey of around 10,000 teachers finds that 28 percent had personally provided food to at least one pupil in the summer term because they were worried about their welfare. That figure rises to 36 percent in the most deprived areas of the country, up 5 percent from the previous year. (TES, 29 August 2024)
2 September: With 70 percent of schools receiving less government funding than they did in 2010, parents’ financial contributions increase. Research from the charity Parentkind suggests that ‘1.5 million families are collectively donating just under £21m a month (£249m a year) to support school funding, purely through regular donations’. (Guardian, 2 September 2024)
2 September: According to Department for Education figures, 11,619 children were suspended for racist behaviour in 2023—up 25 percent on the previous year and equivalent to 60 suspensions a day—with 1,413 incidents occurring in primary schools. (Mirror, 2 September 2024)
HOUSING | POVERTY| WELFARE
4 September: The Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 report is published, finding that systematic dishonesty by cladding manufacturers, persistent indifference to fire safety by the local authority, a focus on cutting regulation by the coalition government, and failings of previous governments all contributed to the avoidable deaths of 72 people in the fire of 14 June 2017. (BBC News, 4 September 2024)
EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION
22 August: Planned strike action by migrant cleaners at Harrods over reported restrictions on their annual leave is called off as their union, United Voices of the World, succeeds in resisting restrictions. (Morning Star, 22 August 2024)
26 August: A report from the Royal College of Nursing reveals that overseas nurses are being pushed into poverty because they are on temporary visas and therefore have ‘no recourse to public funds’ for at least five years. (Guardian, 26 August 2024)
29 August: The General Medical Council rejects a complaint against award-winning British-Palestinian surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah. UK Lawyers for Israel unsuccessfully argued that Abu-Sittah’s social media posts impaired his fitness to practice medicine and that his medical licence should be suspended. (Middle East Monitor, 29 August 2024)
2 September: Gig economy drivers are being robbed of £2 billion in wages through the government’s failure to regulate food delivery and private hire apps, according to a report by Workers Info Exchange, published in advance of the renewal of Uber’s licence. (Morning Star, 2 September 2024)
CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT
25 August: Following legal challenges, Home Office officials are to name racially biased AI and algorithmic tools that were used for purposes ranging from detecting sham marriages to rooting out fraud. Departments such as the DWP, who utilise some of the most controversial systems, are yet to reveal their model and are set to face a legal challenge supported by the Public Law Project. (Guardian, 25 August 2024)
26 August: An analysis of media reporting in France, Poland and Germany on the far-right racist riots finds that European far-right publications treated the riots as a ‘citizens’ revolt’ against ‘cultural invasion’, highlighting the suppression of ‘legitimate concerns’ about migration as well as the ‘existential threat’ posed by Muslims. (Get the Trolls Out, 26 August 2024).
2 September: A former analyst for online safety at TikTok reveals that while AI tools and human moderators removed most harmful content, many videos were seen more than 10,000 times before being flagged for further manual reviews. While it is claimed that the platform’s algorithm does not filter based on gender, teenage boys are more likely to be fed violent, pornographic and misogynistic content, even when they attempted to express their lack of interest in the content. (BBC News, 2 September 2024)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
See also ANTI-FASCISM AND FAR RIGHT
20 August: The PSNI investigates an incident in South Belfast, treating an attack on a house as racially-motivated arson with intent to endanger life, stressing that it was fortunate that no one was injured in the attack. (Belfast Media, 20 August 2024)
21 August: The Steam Dining restaurant in Newtownabbey is gutted in a fire in the latest racist arson attack in north Belfast, with the words ‘Muslim out’ daubed on the premises. The adjacent Railway Bar is also extensively damaged in the attack. (Belfast Media, 21 August 2024)
21 August: In a riots-related prosecution, Warren Gilchrest is jailed for three years for violent disorder, on the basis of his own video footage, which shows him shouting ‘kill him’ as a group of men assault a Black man in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, as well as abusing Muslim women. The judge says that it is clear that Gilchrest was motivated by ‘racial and religious hostility and frank misogyny’. (Manchester Evening News, 21 August 2024)
23 August: A report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) identifies a surge of Islamophobia and antisemitism across Europe, with the number of antisemitic incidents reported over the last three months far exceeding that expected over an entire year and a ‘manifold’ increase in incidents against Muslims since 7 October. (InfoMigrants, 23 August 2024)
26 August: After a Palestinian family with a newborn baby were driven out of their east Belfast home by a racist attack on 17 August, a crowdfunding campaign to help them return to Belfast raises over £4,700 in one day. (Irish News, 26 August 2024)
27 August: A 61-year-old man charged with racially motivated assaults on members of an African family is denied bail as Belfast High Court hears how he told them to ‘Get back on your boat’ while headbutting a teenage boy. (Irish News, 27 August 224)
28 August: Two masked men set fire to the Universal Church Of The Kingdom of God in east Belfast in an arson attack in Northern Ireland that police treat as racially motivated. (Belfast Media, 28 August 2024)
29 August: Commenting on PSNI and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency data on racist hate crimes, Amnesty International calls for urgent action, pointing out that racist hate crimes in Northern Ireland are at an all-time high. 1,411 racist incidents and 891 racist crimes were recorded in the year to the end of June 2024, with almost half taking place in Belfast. (AI, 29 August 2024)
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 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.