A wide-ranging review of all areas of legal aid is currently taking place.[1] As part of this review, the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) has announced proposals to change how publicly-funded immigration and asylum legal advice is provided.[2] The Legal Services Commission (LSC) is running a consultation on these proposals, which ends on 12 October.
News Service
Europe’s extremists make electoral gains
Electoral gains for extreme-Right parties in Sweden and Germany are cause for concern for anti-racists in the UK . Increasingly, government policy on issues such as asylum, immigration and the rights of ethnic minorities is being shaped at a European level. With xenophobic and Islamophobic electoral parties now a permanent feature in European politics, no
Conference finds common cause
Over 250 individuals representing more than eighty organisations (listed below) attended the Institute of Race Relations’ one-day conference, Racism, Liberty and the ‘War on Terror’ on Saturday 16 September. Its aim was to unite activists from a broad range of campaigns in an understanding of how racism, imperialism and globalisation interact today. As keynote speaker
Driven to desperate measures
No section of our society is more vulnerable than asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. Forced by circumstances beyond their control to seek a life outside their home countries, prevented by our laws from entering legally and from working, denied a fair hearing by the asylum system, excluded from health and safety protection at work, kept
Racism, Liberty and the War on Terror
Below we reproduce the keynote address to the conference on Racism, Liberty and the War on Terror (held on 16 September at Conway Hall) by A. Sivanandan, director of the Institute of Race Relations. This conference is the end-product of a series of lunchtime seminars held at the IRR, to discuss the impact of anti-terrorist
Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers recount enforced removal
Two of the thirty-two Iraqi Kurds who were deported to northern Iraq on a military plane this week have given eye-witness accounts of their enforced removal. The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR) has spoken to two of the deportees, who have said they are ‘angry, tired and stressed’ after being handed over to militia
Students dance their way to cultural appreciation
Two UK schools have embraced Bollywood in an attempt to open up cultural conversation amongst students and to encourage the exploration of cultural difference. Methodology The Reel Bollywood initiative, run by British Asian Chix Chandaria, aimed to discover whether exposing students to an unfamiliar culture and involving them in that culture would result in a
Cant on cohesion
Communities minister Ruth Kelly today launches a Commission on Integration and Cohesion whilst calling for an ‘honest debate’ on multiculturalism. But the government’s whole approach to the issue relies on a mis-use of concepts and history. Ever since Margaret Thatcher’s comment in 1978, that the British people were worried that ‘this country might be rather
Bournemouth campaigner protests against arrest and strip search
A Black man, who has been campaigning against Dorset police since being sprayed with CS gas in his own car, and whose story was reported by IRR News in March, says he has been victimised again by police. Femi Ijebuode spent last night camped out in the lobby of Bournemouth police station in protest against
Tribunal of sacked refugee researcher reconvenes
Rhetta Moran, a researcher into refugee issues at the University of Salford, is about to face her twenty-fourth day of an industrial tribunal against dismissal. Dr Moran has, since Spring 2004, been battling to defend herself and her research against her employer, the University of Salford in Greater Manchester. Her colleagues, students and supporters believe