Dear IRR News subscriber

This week, John Grayson argues that the rhetoric on migrants shows how politicians and the media have created, and embedded, racism in British politics. Filmmaker Ken Fero, director of Who Polices The Police?, discusses the making of the film that examines the complicity of state institutions in deaths in custody and the struggle of one family for justice. And Chandra Frank, a Dutch anti-racist, looks at how slavery is treated in the Netherlands.

We are very saddened by the deaths of two committed anti-racist activists. Pat Guerin, founder of the Anti-Racism Campaign in Ireland, tirelessly fought against anti-immigrant policies and institutional racism. Graham Usher, a journalist and writer committed to the search for social justice, was one of the most stalwart of contributors to our quarterly journal, Race & Class.

Across the UK there has been a spate of racist attacks. Two women have been ordered to pay compensation to the owners of a takeaway in South Shields after throwing bricks and shouting racist abuse. A man has been jailed for twelve months after racially abusing the owner of a petrol station in Leicester and threatening to burn it down. And a 27-year-old Nigerian security guard has refused to leave his home in Belfast after it was vandalised and covered in racist graffiti, stating that ‘I am not going to be chased out by anybody’.

IRR News Team