Following the acquittal on 16 December of the G4S guards charged with the manslaughter of Jimmy Mubenga, IRR vice-chair Frances Webber focuses on the judge’s decision to rule inadmissible evidence pointing to endemic racism within G4S. After the acquittal of the guards charged with Jimmy Mubenga’s manslaughter, the judge told the jurors not to be
Dear IRR News subscriber, Two weeks is a long time in politics. But as Liz Fekete shows in her overview of the culture wars engulfing Europe, the furore caused by MP Emily Thornberry’s tweet of a flag-decked house in Rochester will not be the last time that the question of a flag generates a media storm.
Muslims, those of African and African-Caribbean descent and white women speaking out against racism are being targeted in a new culture war now distorting and degrading Europe’s electoral politics. Is it possible to demand a common reflex, a unified emotional response from all the citizens of a country to the symbols or cultural traditions that
Britons following the news of protests against police killings of black people in the US should not feel too smug about the situation in the UK. Not for the first time, our outrage at American racism goes hand in hand with complacency about Britain’s own history of institutional racism and its manifestations in police violence.
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Policing & criminal justice 27 November: Judge Richard Hollingworth resigns as district judge after making racist comments about Asians while hearing a harassment case. He does not resign as immigration judge until a few days later. (Guardian, 7
The emphasis in British Future’s recent report on How to talk about immigration appears to take us back to outmoded and discredited arguments about measuring tolerance and attitudes. Way back in 1970, the unreformed policy-oriented Institute of Race Relations heralded the arrival of a new folk hero. ‘The psychology of race relations’, its researcher proclaimed,
The failure to prosecute police involved in the deaths of Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson has reignited protests against policing in the UK. Last night, campaigners held a demonstration in London in solidarity with protesters in the US following the failure to charge the officers involved in the death of
Dear IRR News subscriber, This weekend, campaigners in Oxford mark twenty-one years since the opening of Campsfield House immigration removal centre by calling for it to be shut down. But the Home Office, apparently, has other plans. Proposals in the pipeline could lead to the doubling of the size of the centre – in-line with
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum seekers and refugees 14 November: It is revealed that an unnamed language analyst working for Swedish firm Sprakab, is a convicted drug smuggler whose expert reports have been used to refuse asylum to hundreds in the UK.
A Prison and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) report on Brian Dalrymple’s six weeks in immigration detention paints a grim picture of how the vulnerable are treated. Although Dalrymple was a white man, we report on his case to show that, in immigration detention, immigration status ensures a grim equality of treatment. The report, Investigation into the death of a
