ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY
8 January: Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch is urged to sack her shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick after his X post that ‘immigrants with alien cultures have medieval attitudes to women’. (Independent, 8 January 2025)
14 January: Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch says that grooming gangs are made up of ‘peasants’ from ‘sub-communities’ and that a new national inquiry should look at the background of some of the perpetrators as well as the cultural reasons why some in authority did not act. (Guardian, 14 January 2025)
14 January: In Karlsruhe, Germany, an investigation into incitement to racial hatred is launched after the far-right AfD distributes inflammatory election flyers with ‘deportation tickets’ (mock economy plane tickets ‘from Germany’ to a ‘safe country of origin’) through letterboxes, including to ‘immigrant households’. (Anadolu Agency, 14 January 2025)
15 January: As the ‘grooming gangs’ issue rages, over 70 rights groups, academic and other experts call on politicians in an open letter to stop the weaponising of child sexual exploitation for political purposes, and to shift the focus to concrete steps to protect survivors. (After Exploitation on X, 15 January 2025)
We reject divisive narratives which ignore the most urgent challenges facing survivors of child sexual abuse.
LCN has joined 60+ experts calling on the government to guarantee the legal entitlements of survivors both on paper and in practice.https://t.co/3dpGPEUKg7 pic.twitter.com/yTJpT5dqS7
— Law Centres Network (@LawCentres) January 17, 2025
16 January: The home secretary announces an urgent review of past cases of child sexual exploitation involving ‘grooming gangs’, examining the ethnicity and demographics of abusers and victims, as well as ‘the cultural and societal drivers for this type of offending, including amongst different ethnic groups’. A series of local inquiries, to be piloted in five towns including Oldham is also announced. (Guardian, 16 January 2025).
16 January: A group of 18 civil society organisations including the IRR, responding to a public consultation, urge the government not to proceed with its proposal to consolidate and centralise local government pension schemes, which would prevent local authorities from boycotting or divesting from companies violating human rights. (PSC, 20 January 2025)
17 January: Senior police officers warn that ‘right-wing driven’ reactions to grooming gangs, which represent a minuscule fraction of all chlld sexual exploitation cases, will harm victims and make it harder to catch those targeting children today. (Guardian, 17 January 2025)
19 January: A West Midlands independent mayoral candidate pays substantial damages to teacher Cheryl Bennett after mistakenly accusing her of using racist language while canvassing for the Labour party, on the basis of video footage doctored by unknown sources that was then shared on social media, leading to such abuse that she was told not to return to work. (Guardian, 19 January 2025)
20 January: After delivering a strong message at Italy’s first ‘National Day of Respect’, president Sergio Mattarella visits the De Amicis-Da Vinci school in Palermo to show solidarity with two pupils, originally from Ghana and Mauritius, who had faced racial abuse during a schoolchildren’s event at a local bookshop. (ANSA, 20 January 2025)
20 January: After Axel Rudakubana pleads guilty to the murder of three girls and attempted murder of 10 others at Southport, the prime minister orders a public inquiry into the failure of state agencies, including the Prevent programme, and Reform leader Nigel Farage accuses the government of ‘the most astonishing cover-up’. The PM also says the terrorism laws will be changed to encompass extreme individualised violence unrelated to any coherent ideology. (Guardian, 20 January 2025, Guardian, 21 January 2025)
ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
8 January: The UK freezes the assets of international neo-Nazi group Blood and Honour, using counter-terrorism sanctions against a far-right entity for the first time. The group, which originates from England’s skinhead music scene, is accused of promoting terrorism, recruiting members and funding terror activities. (Barron’s, 8 January 2025)
8 January: Thousands gather in Paris to celebrate the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right National Front (now renamed Rassemblement National), with similar events occurring in cities like Lyon and Marseille. Senior officials condemn the celebrations, with interior minister Bruno Retailleau stating ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies dancing on a corpse’. (EuroNews, 8 January 2025)
11 January: In Riesa, Saxony, thousands of protesters disrupt the AfD’s convention, delaying the far-right party’s preparations for next month’s German elections. Co-leader Alice Weidel, nominated as candidate for chancellor, faces slim chances as mainstream parties refuse to work with the AfD despite its polling in second place. (Guardian, 11 January 2025)
21 January: A BBC exposé of Patriotic Alternative shows members discussing arming themselves for ‘race war’ against migrants, who some said ‘should all be killed’ along with other comments amounting to incitement to race hatred. (BBC Wales, 21 January 2025)
POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
10 January: Insp. Charles Ehikioya, head of the Met’s Black Police Association, is dismissed without notice for gross misconduct after sending ‘clearly racist’ messages about Asian people and Muslims in a group chat to a former officer. (LBC, 10 January 2025)
11 January: At least 15,000 people demonstrate in Lisbon, Portugal to protest an immigration policing operation in Martim Moniz, which saw immigrants lined up against walls. An action organised by the far-right CHEGA party in support of the police draws small numbers. (Portugal Resident, 11 January 2025)
12 January: In Berlin, Germany, police arrest members of the pro-Palestine bloc at the annual march to the graves of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, citing placards or items of clothing promoting ‘unconstitutional’ messages. (Morning Star, 12 January 2025)
13 January: The interior ministry of Lower Saxony, Germany, opens an investigation into police accused of assaulting and injuring Left party MP Nam Duy Nguyen, who was acting as a parliamentary observer at a protest against the AfD party congress in Riesa. (Munich Eye, 13 January 2025)
13 January: At least 660 prominent Jewish personalities join cross-party MPs and others criticising the Met for using public order powers to ban demonstrators from gathering outside the BBC to oppose ‘pro-Israel bias’, saying the Met’s fear of ‘serious disruption’ to a nearby synagogue is unfounded. (Guardian, 9 January 2025; Middle East Monitor, 10 January 2025)
16 January: The family of József Zsákai, a 40-year-old Romani man who lost consciousness and died on 22 December after being pursued by police officers in Hungary, call for an independent inquiry after an internal police inquiry clears officers of any wrongdoing and records his death as caused by heart failure. (ERRC, 16 January 2025)
16 January: The Court of Appeal overrules the conviction of one of the ‘Manchester 10’ (R v Ademola Adedeji). The prosecution’s reliance on ‘money phone’ and drill music video as evidence of gang affiliation fostered harmful racial biases and criminalised cultural expression, the judgement states, also noting the disproportionate impact of joint enterprise laws on Black and ethnic minority defendants. (Doughty Street Chambers, 16 January 2025)
17 January: White supremacist Callum Parslow, who stabbed an Eritrean asylum seeker at the Pear Tree Inn near Worcester, causing ‘devastating injuries’, is convicted of attempted murder and jailed for life. This ‘undoubtedly terrorist attack’ was motivated by a ‘far-right neo-Nazi mindset’, states the judge. (BBC News, 17 January 2025)
18 January: 77 pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including the demonstration’s chief steward, are arrested in central London, with police claiming that they attempted to defy restrictions and march on the BBC. The Muslim Association of Britain and Stop the War deny this and accuse police of using dangerous tactics. (Guardian, 18 January 2025; Middle East Eye, 19 January 2025)
“We never stop until every brick in the wall of oppression comes tumbling down and the Palestinian people are finally, finally free”
PSC Director @BenJamalpsc at the protest for Palestine at Whitehall last Saturday. pic.twitter.com/lPcRjwwAFd
— Palestine Solidarity Campaign (@PSCupdates) January 22, 2025
19 January: In Nicosia, Cyprus, anti-racism demonstrators, protesting racism against migrants and the police killing of a Pakistani national, accuse police of using heavy-handed tactics to disperse the crowd of 300 people as the march was concluding. (Phile News, 19 January 2025)
ASYLUM| MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
8 January: From today, anyone visiting or transiting through the UK from outside the European Union without legal residence rights or a visa is required to obtain digital permission to travel via the electronic travel authorisation system. (ITV, 8 January 2025)
8 January: The minister of state for border security and asylum, Angela Eagle, says she is unable to indicate when the processing of asylum decisions for asylum seekers from Syria will resume. (EIN, 8 January 2025)
9 January: Home Office figures show visa applications for study and work dropped by 42% to just over half a million in the period April to December 2024, from 950,000 in the same period in 2023, with applications for health and social care visas down 79% to 63,800. Strict immigration rules introduced in April, preventing care workers and most students from bringing family members, are believed to be the likely cause for the drop. (Standard, 13 January 2025)
14 January: Two weeks into the new system of digital proof of lawful residence, UK-based residents returning from abroad face problems, as staff at airports abroad are unable to access the system, and new refugees facing delays accessing their eVisas are unable to access accommodation, benefits or health care. (Independent, 14 January 2025
16 January: Syrian refugee organisations in Germany call on the government to allow Syrian refugees to return home on exploratory visits without losing their residence rights, as Ukrainians have been allowed to do. (Guardian, 16 January 2025)
18 January: MPs and refugee support groups condemn the stranding of family members in war zones including Palestine, Afghanistan and Sudan because of the Home Office refusal to waive requirements for biometrics in virtually all cases despite the closure of visa application offices in these countries. (Guardian, 18 January 2025)
Borders and internal controls
7 January: The European Human Rights Court finds Greece guilty of ‘systemic’ pushbacks in a ruling awarding Turkish asylum seeker Ayse Erdogan €20,000 in damages for her brutal pushback to Turkey in 2019, which resulted in her persecution and imprisonment for alleged links to the Gülen movement. (Open Democracy, 13 January 2025)
10 January: Migrant support activists in Bulgaria accuse border police of deliberately blocking their rescue efforts for three Egyptian teenagers who subsequently died of hypothermia at the end of December. (InfoMigrants, 10 January 2025)
Three Egyptian teenagers lost their lives to hypothermia near Bulgaria’s eastern border in December.
Activists allege deliberate neglect by Bulgarian border police, sparking renewed scrutiny over the EU’s border policies.https://t.co/Xoyqp7ZodH
— InfoMigrants (@InfoMigrants) January 10, 2025
11 January: A Syrian man is crushed to death in an overcrowded leaky dinghy off the coast of France in the first known Channel fatality of 2025. (The i paper, 11 January 2025)
Reception and detention
7 January: A report by Durham Infancy & Sleep Centre and Amma Birth Companions finds that asylum-seeking women and their babies in Glasgow are placed in substandard accommodation in unsafe locations, where they face multiple risks. (EIN, 7 January 2025)
18 January: Days before the High Court action brought by 16 detainees from the Manston immigration centre into the chaos and failures at the centre in 2022, the Home Office agrees to upgrade the inquiry to a statutory public inquiry to be held in public with funded legal representation for claimants. (Guardian, 18 January 2025)
21 January: Asylum support groups call on the Home Office to provide better safeguarding policies and protection against racist attacks on asylum hostels, which have escalated to include 20 assaults in one small area of Essex, a knife attack and bacon slices put on top of Muslim residents’ food in a communal fridge. (Guardian, 21 January 2025)
People seeking asylum undertake dangerous journeys hoping to find safety, but instead have to deal with other forms of violence including systemic racism.
Is being a compassionate and respectful human that hard⁉️https://t.co/MGTrMP1d79 pic.twitter.com/8Y8AWFa3DK
— ECRE (@ecre) January 21, 2025
Deportations
14 January: Iraqi protesters chant outside the gates of Downing Street against a migration returns agreement between Iraq and the UK, as Keir Starmer and the prime minister of Iraq Shia Al-Sudani agree a £12.3 billion trade package that includes agreed principles to a ‘bespoke returns agreement.’ (Independent, 14 January 2025)
17 January: The EU’s new migration commissioner, Austrian Magnus Brunner, tells the Greek prime minister that deportation is a key priority of the EU, after a recent case where the ECTHR found Greece guilty of ‘systemic’ pushbacks and illegal deportations. (Ekathimerini, 17 January 2025)
18 January: The Observer reveals, from FOI requests, the Conservative government spent £134 million on IT and data systems for the Rwanda scheme that will never be used, hidden in ‘other fixed costs’ and making up the second largest chunk of spending on the scheme. (Observer, 18 January 2025)
Citizenship
20 January: A new briefing on statelessness by JRS and partners exposes the rightless limbo many people find themselves in, and makes urgent recommendations for improving the procedures for and rights of stateless people. (Jesuit Refugee Service, 20 January 2025)
EDUCATION
15 January: The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, whose coming into force was paused shortly after the 2024 general election, is relaunched by the government, subject to the removal of a provision which would allow anyone, including Holocaust deniers, to sue universities for breaching free speech guarantees. (Guardian, 15 January 2025)
HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE
12 January: A TUC survey finds that one in six workers have skipped meals because of the cost of living, with one in ten doing so daily or on most days. (Guardian, 12 January 2025)
BREAKING 🚨 | 1 in 4 full and part time workers are struggling or cannot afford their monthly costs.
And 1 in 6 have skipped a meal to make ends meet.
This is why the government’s Make Work Pay agenda is so important after 14 years of Tory stagnation.
The Employment Rights…
— Trades Union Congress (@The_TUC) January 13, 2025
16 January: The High Court finds that the government consultation on reforms to the disability work assessment was unlawful as it failed to explain that the changes would make 424,000 disabled people worse off, some by over £400 a month, adding that the true rationale of the proposed reforms was not helping people into work but saving money. (Public Law Project, 16 January 2025)
EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION
11 January: Indian nurses at University Hospital Galway, Ireland, claim they have been harassed, humiliated and given insufficient training or support, and that management’s response to their complaints has made things worse. (Irish Independent, 11 January 2025)
CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT
While we cannot cover all incidents of racist abuse on sportspersons or their responses, we provide a summary of the most important incidents. For more information follow Kick it Out.
9 January: The Charity Commission issues an official warning for breach of charitable purposes to the Chabad Lubavitch Centres North East London and Essex Limited over a fundraising campaign in support of a soldier of the Israeli Defence Forces. (Gov.uk, 9 January 2025)
10 January: As Elon Musk livestreams a discussion with the leader of the German far Right, We Move Europe calls on the EU Commission to enforce the Digital Services Act, which holds social media platforms accountable for combating disinformation and safeguarding fair democratic discourse. (We Move Europe, 10 January 2025)
13 January: Experts warn that the rise in online racism fuelled by fake images is just the beginning following X’s recent release of its AI software, Grok. The new tool’s text-to-image feature, Aurora, has been used to create photorealistic racist imagery. Signify, an organisation tracking online hate, anticipates the issue will worsen in the coming year, with AI making it easier to spread disinformation and hate on the platform. (Guardian, 13 January 2025)
14 January: A Sheffield Wednesday fan escapes a banning order despite being convicted for racially abusing a 15-year-old rival supporter, with the judge dismissing the incident as ‘banter’ between opposing fans. Chief Constable Mark Roberts and Kick It Out condemn the ruling, calling it ‘appalling’ and highlighting the failure to address the impact of racial abuse. (Times, 14 January 2025)
15 January: The French Human Rights League (LDH), alongside 86 unions and organisations, urges the public to leave X on 20 January to protest the platform’s promotion of hate speech and conspiracy theories. The group accuses X owner Elon Musk of manipulating public debate and calls for digital spaces that respect human rights, urging users to join alternatives like Mastodon or Bluesky. (EuroNews, 15 January 2025)
15 January: Tamworth striker Chris Wreh refuses to play in a midweek match after accusing the club of not providing enough support following racist abuse he received on social media after its FA Cup loss to Tottenham Hotspur. (Times, 15 January 2025)
16 January: Kick It Out CEO Samuel Okafor calls on the FIFA president to clarify what actions are being taken regarding a July 2024 video showing Argentina players singing a derogatory song about French players of African descent following Argentina’s Copa América win. Despite FIFA’s initial statement that the incident was under investigation, no further updates have been provided. (Guardian, 16 January 2025)
17 January: Following a joint investigation by the Times and United Against Nuclear Iran, the Charity Commission opens an investigation into ‘possible links’ between Labaik Ya Zahra and extremist and terror organisations in Iran. (Civil Society, 16 January 2025)
17 January: The European Commission demands internal documents from X about its algorithms as part of a probe into potential violations of the EU’s Digital Services Act. The investigation focuses on allegations that X’s ‘recommender system’ amplifies far-right content and politicians while suppressing other viewpoints. (Guardian, 17 January 2025)
18 January: Hungarian MEP András László and Elon Musk criticise the EU’s interference in elections, particularly regarding Hungary’s sovereignty protection law. In response, 38 MEPs, led by Nathalie Loiseau, call on the European Commission to investigate Musk’s alleged interference in European politics, specifically concerning the German elections and his potential violation of the Digital Services Act. (EuroNews, 12 January 2025; EuroNews, 17 January 2025; EuroNews, 18 January 2025)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
20 January: The Runnymede Trust publishes ‘Facing antisemitism: the struggle for safety and solidarity’, which argues that discussions around antisemitism have become highly politicised in ways that have been detrimental to Jewish communities’ safety and wellbeing. (Runnymede Trust, 20 January 2025)
Antisemitism is hardwired into UK society, but current methods of tackling it are not working.
Our new report, written by colleagues at @bisa-bkk.bsky.social, shows how we can move beyond framing antisemitism in ways that pit communities against one another.
— Runnymede Trust (@runnymedetrust.bsky.social) 20 January 2025 at 08:01
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.