Dear IRR News subscriber,

Violent police arrests and discriminatory police practices across the country continue to alarm, as our calendar of racism and resistance documents – a subject also touched upon, albeit historically and in the context of class, in Phil Scraton’s scathing piece for IRR News on Boris Johnson’s repetition of Hillsborough lies. Last week, in east London, three police officers were filmed striking a man of Moroccan origin, and in a separate case in Romford, a police officer faces criminal investigation after being recorded striking a handcuffed black teenager with a baton in April. As the Guardian reveals that stop and search has almost doubled in eight of England’s largest forces in the last two years, and the home secretary announces a new legal duty for public health bodies to help prevent knife crime by sharing data and intelligence, our fear is that multi-agency approaches, when aligned with saturation law-and-order policing, will exacerbate the problem.

‘Knife crime has not appeared out of thin air, it is the manifested violence of the violated’, writes IRR researcher Jessica Perera, ‘Dispossessing a great swathe of young people of their right to a proper mainstream education runs in tandem with the politics of our time that is producing a highly disenfranchised surplus population.’ In her review of recent think-tank and government interest in school exclusions, which she argues completely misses the point, Jessica reveals how the ‘alternative provision system’ for young people has been turned into a business opportunity that fails poor black, Asian and minority ethnic boys, fuels serious youth violence, and ultimately leads to higher rates of incarceration.

The devastating impact of neoliberal policies on education is further explored in an article by Mark Payne on the exclusion of Slovak Roma children from schools in Sheffield, in the July issue of Race & Class. Damaging educational policies must be viewed within an increasingly neoliberal and globalised world, but is the Green New Deal a panacea for capitalism? In our lead article in the July issue, Jerry Harris questions if Green capitalism can offer a real solution to the ecological crisis and the human crises of poverty, austerity, immigration and racism. Read a press release and order a copy here.

IRR News is taking a break over the summer. We will be back with news and comments at the end of August.

IRR News team