Another High Court judge rebukes the UK Border Agency for its detention of mentally ill foreign offenders. On 17 April, Mr Justice Singh QC ruled that the detention by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) of a Nigerian offender was unlawful[1] after a psychiatrist said the man urgently needed proper assessment in a mental hospital, four
News Service
Learning the lessons of dispersal
In the light of evidence that London boroughs like Newham are seeking cheap housing hundreds of miles away for their residents on housing benefit, the IRR points to the dangers of such a ‘dispersal’ policy. The cap on housing benefit imposed by the coalition government could lead more inner and outer London boroughs to take
IRR News 13 April – 19 April 2012
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week the late Manning Marable (who was on the Editorial Committee of the IRR’s journal Race & Class) won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography, Malcolm X – a life of reinvention. In his honour we have freed up a number of his articles on the politics of the black
Justice for sale: chaos in the courts
At the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), ‘privatisation’ seems to equate nicely with ‘efficient public services’. From private-run jails to forensic services, the justice system is up for grabs, without mention of the government’s current plans for secret courts or the Legal Aid bill working its way through parliament right now. Last summer, legal interpreting services
Europe in lockdown
Migreurop, a coalition of organisations from thirteen European, African and Middle Eastern countries, has produced an extremely useful and powerful report which describes in detail ways in which the policy of preventing the entry of undocumented migrants is implemented. The first part of At the margins of Europe: the externalisation of migration controls, looks at
Marable’s Malcolm X biography wins Pulitzer prize
To celebrate the fact that the late Manning Marable has been awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for history for his ground-breaking book, Malcolm X – a life of reinvention, Race & Class makes available for free the seminal articles that Professor Marable wrote on the politics of the black working class in the US. Manning
IRR News 6 April 2012 – 12 April 2012
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week, Frances Webber comments on the European Court ruling on the extradition of Babar Ahmad and others and reviews a report on ‘apathetic children’ in Sweden which sheds light on a condition so far unrecognised here. You can also download (for free) A. Sivanandan’s seminal article, ‘From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean
Babar Ahmad: capitulation by the European Court?
Is the European Court selling Ahmad out, and the kettled demonstrators before him, for the sake of making peace with a British government determined to get the court off its back? The Strasbourg court’s judgment in Ahmad and others,[1] ruling that the punitive regime in which four of them are likely to spend many years
Inhuman responses to distressed children
A report on ‘apathetic children’ in Sweden is important for UK asylum campaigners for the light it sheds on a condition so far unrecognised here. This useful report from Sweden throws light on the authorities’ treatment of children in asylum-seeking families who have developed severe depressive devitalisation (‘apathetic children’). The children become extremely distressed and
Download A. Sivanandan’s ‘From resistance to rebellion’
The Institute of Race Relations is releasing a free download of A. Sivanandan’s landmark essay, ‘From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain’, first published in Race & Class in 1981. Detailing the resistance of black communities to the discrimination of the British state, Sivanandan reminds us throughout that acts of resistance are