Following a critical Supreme Court judgment on the Home Office’s use of controversial language analysis tests to determine the nationality of asylum seekers, Aisha Maniar asks: why does the government insist on using these tests? Language is a crucial element of the identity of each and every one of us, and a marker of social
News Service
Edge Fund calling for new applications
The Edge Fund, a group working for justice and equality, is calling for new applications to its fund. The Edge Fund is inviting new applications from individuals and grassroots groups, in order to support projects which are relevant to communities campaigning on discrimination and injustice. Grants will be given to groups and individuals working for
IRR News 25-31 July 2014
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week we evaluate the different approaches of two official reports into state interventions after media witch hunts. In ‘Hatred, hysteria and a Trojan Horse‘, Robin Richardson is critical of a report by ex-counter terror chief Peter Clarke into the ‘Trojan Horse takeover’, in schools in Birmingham, for its failure to
Hatred, hysteria and a Trojan Horse
A leading educationalist argues that the report by Peter Clarke into the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair, embraced by the new education secretary, is in fact a grave disservice. On Tuesday 22 July 2014 the new Secretary of State for Education in the UK, Nicky Morgan, made a statement in the House of Commons about the Trojan
Call for apology and inquiry into police spying
This week the mother of Ricky Reel launched a petition following revelations that her family was spied upon, along with a number of others, as they campaigned for justice in the ‘90s. Mrs Reel is the mother of Ricky who was 20-years-old when he was found dead in the River Thames after being racially abused
The ‘Guantánamisation’ of Belgium
A new book on Belgium, Guantanamo chez nous?, is an important contribution to the analysis of racism and the war on terror in Europe. It would be hard to find anyone in the UK who has not heard of Abu Qatada. But how many people know that he was recently acquitted of terrorist charges in Jordan?
A global witch hunt! Media narratives, racial profiling and the Roma
A recently-published report by Ireland’s Ombudsman for Children puts the media’s power to influence state action under the spotlight. Last year, while the world’s media was shocked by an apparent case of child abduction by a Roma family in Greece, Ireland’s police took two blonde-haired children from their dark-haired Roma parents, following tip-offs from the
IRR News 18-24 July 2014
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week, we publish an excerpt from an article in the current issue of Race & Class. ‘The Business of child detention’ raises important questions for charities and voluntary organisations about the consequences of operating inside the detention estate. We also have news on the death of a Bangladeshi woman in
Taking on the fraudulent anti-globalisation rhetoric of the Front National
A timely pamphlet aimed primarily at French trades unionists provides an opportunity to reflect on the FN’s growing appeal to working-class voters. ‘If we don’t stop the waves of immigration, in ten years whites will become a minority in France.’ ‘If we had real freedom of expression we would be able to say anything, including
Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan and the evidential approach to justice
A racialised justice system providing second-class protection to Muslims can be challenged. So rare is it to encounter a human, non-racist attitude to Muslims accused of support for terrorism, that a judge’s reasonable and evidence-based approach to the sentencing of Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan took everyone by surprise. On 17 July, Connecticut chief judge