4 – 18 February 2025

It is sadly ironic that, as we record the experiences of Professor Insa Koch and her young children of the hyper-securitisation of a society which she feels indicates a growing fascism in Germany, and as this week’s calendar reveals, the leader of the Tories, at an international hard-right gathering, echoes tropes about ‘some cultures being better than others’ and immigrants ‘undermining society’s values’, and the US vice-president excoriates Europe for its ‘enemy within’, we have to note the recent passing of three anti-racist, anti-imperialist stalwarts, all born in the 1930s as fascism took hold in Europe.

Lou Kushnick, who died on 12 February, was born in Brooklyn in 1938 and came to the UK in the late 1960s. He was an active member of IRR and helped in its transformation, serving from 1972 as a Trustee of the IRR and later Chair and Vice-chair of the Board, also editing the IRR’s Race Relations Abstracts for many years. But he will be most keenly remembered for setting up the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Resource Centre and Education Trust in Manchester, a vital community and educational resource. Read more about Lou here.

Marika Sherwood, who died on 16 February, was born in Hungary in 1937, from which her Jewish family had to flee. From her arrival in the UK in the 1960s, she dedicated herself to addressing the lack of teaching on Black History – researching and writing innumerable articles and books, particularly around Pan-Africanism, and helping to set up the influential Black and Asian Studies Association. Read more about Marika here.

Gerlin Bean, who died in Jamaica on 2 February, was born in Hanover Parish in 1939 and her committed practical and political organising in the UK, Zimbabwe and Jamaica as mother to so many movements was extraordinary. She came to the UK in the 1960s to train as a nurse, went on to youth work, founded with others the Abeng Centre, was a member of the United Coloured People’s Association, the Black Unity and Freedom Party and the Black Liberation Front in all of which she fought for the specific position of black women to be acknowledged – she being one of the only black women at the First Women’s Liberation Conference in 1970. She went on to help found the Brixton Black Women’s Group and OWAAD, the Organisation of women of Asian and African Descent. In 1983 she moved to (a freed) Zimbabwe where she worked in community development, returning to Jamaica in later life to take on disability and inclusion issues. Read more about Gerlin here and here.