The last month has seen significant cases come to court, important inquests and new legal challenges and decisions. Habib Ullah: misconduct hearing On 15 June, five Thames Valley Police (TVP) police officers were cleared of misconduct by a disciplinary hearing following the death of Habib ‘Paps’ Ullah after a stop and search in July 2008. The
Following the death of Sheku Bayoh last month, police used the decades-old tactic of attacking a victim’s character in a suspicious custody death. On 3 May 2015, Sheku Bayoh, a gas engineer from Sierra Leone, died on the street in Kirkcaldy, Fife. He had been restrained by up to nine police officers responding to an
How do we build on communities of dissent, asks veteran Black activist A. Sivanandan in a short film released this week by Sage Publications alongside a collection of his key writings in Race & Class. A. Sivanandan, IRR Director Emeritus, is one of the UK’s key thinkers on racism, imperialism, black identity and political struggle. His grounded theory
The third of a post-election three-part series on civil liberties in the UK examines the government’s new proposals to tackle extremism. From 1 July, a broad range of public bodies – from nursery schools to optometrists – will be legally obliged to participate in the government’s Prevent policy to identify would-be extremists. Under the fast-tracked
The latest Race & Class radio is now available. The latest Race & Class radio broadcast features contributors to the April 2015 issue, Robbie McVeigh and Maryam Griffin. Robbie McVeigh discusses the criminal justice system’s response to racist violence in Northern Ireland by way of ‘empty models’ of ‘hate crime’ and ‘good relations’. People of colour
Below we reproduce an interview with Jean Casella from the US-based Solitary Watch by Luk Vervaet, first published on his blog. Although solitary confinement is not used as frequently as in the US, the UK has four close supervision centres.[1] A recent Prisons & Probation Ombudsman report highlighted the high number of suicides of those prisoners held in
Dear IRR News subscriber, It is nearly a month since the Conservative election victory, and already the dangers for universal justice are becoming apparent. In the last IRR News bulletin – where we introduced the first of a three-part series on the threats to civil liberties in the UK – Frances Webber examined the reality
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Policing and criminal justice 22 May: The European Court of Human Rights condemns France for a lack of remedy for degrading detention conditions in its overseas territory of New Caledonia. (Statewatch News Online, 22 May 2015) 24 May: The family
The second of a post-election three-part series on civil liberties in the UK observes how the Queen’s Speech immigration proposals contain more of the same old deterrence policies, creating more desperation, in the face of the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. According to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in just the
Hundreds of people gathered outside the Daily Mail’s London headquarters on Saturday 30 May to protest against its coverage of the Victorino Chua case, and in solidarity with Filipino healthcare workers. On 18 May, Victorino Chua, a nurse at Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport, was found guilty of deliberately poisoning twenty-one patients, two of whom died. The
