Dear IRR News subscriber,
It’s started again! All too predictably, the success of UKIP, in the Clacton by-election and the close call for Labour in its Greater Manchester stronghold of Heywood & Middleton, has led to a renewed Dutch auction as to which of the mainstream parties can take the toughest line on immigration. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s suggestion, that people with HIV should be banned from migrating to the UK, drags debate down to new depths, as noted by the Chair of the British HIV Association who warned that Farage’s ‘deplorable bigotry’ threatened to ‘reignite the sort of discrimination and stigma attached to HIV’ that should be consigned to history.
It is appropriate, then, that this week, IRR News returns to the theme ‘Taking A Stand for Human Dignity‘ with a series of articles exploring the reality of migrant lives at the margins. The wife of an elderly man being cared for by one of the UK’s army of underpaid migrants speaks out against the vicious circle of economic and social hardships her carer suffers. Meanwhile, the structured violence endured by immigration detainees at Campsfield House is revealed in a new documentary by Standoff Films. And the treatment of a homeless French man who died after being detained in Harmondsworth shows up the callousness of the immigration system.
From Amsterdam, Kim Atkinson reports on the struggles of the ‘We are Here‘ campaign which has sprung up to make their social reality of the undocumented visible.
And as British MPs vote overwhelmingly to recognise a Palestinian state, we publish a timely reflection on the continuities in the application of the Israeli Prevention of Infiltration Law from its inception in 1954 to its current application against asylum seekers from Africa. The Calendar of racism and resistance provides an accessible guide to the most significant events of the last fortnight.
Finally, the latest issue of Race & Class is now available, containing a special section entitled ‘Memory and hope’ on the possibilities for peace and autonomy in Kashmir.
IRR News Team