News

Documenting casualisation

The TUC is seeking to interview black workers affected by the casualisation of the job market. Austerity measures affect the black community disproportionately and, just this week, figures were released which show that the number of young people from ethnic minority backgrounds, aged 16-24, that have been unemployed longer than a year has risen by

Read More…


News

JRCT: promoting peace, justice and equality

Below we reproduce a letter to the editor published in The Times, on 11 March 2015, in support of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Dear Sir, Charities like the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) frequently work in complex and difficult environments to promote peace, justice and equality. They succeed because of their expertise and integrity in navigating these

Read More…


News

The price of PR?

Recent Freedom of Information requests have revealed that the Home Office has paid over quarter of a million pounds to the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph in 2014, for sponsored articles, advertorials and digital advertising.  Last year, a number of advertorials were published in the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph which were sponsored by

Read More…


Review

Fighting for the soul of the voluntary sector

Everyone should read a recent report by the National Coalition of Independent Action (NCIA) on the ways in which neoliberal policies are destroying the purpose and politics of voluntary groups. From time to time IRR News has commented on the ways in which privatisation, subcontracting and marketisation are infiltrating voluntary groups in the race and

Read More…


News

Archaic Operation Shield?

Below we reproduce a letter to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, by the Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association Campaign (JENGbA) on his new Operation Shield proposals which have been likened to the doctrine of joint enterprise. Dear Mr Johnson, Joint Enterprise: Not Guilty by Association (JENGbA) is a grassroots campaign currently supporting over 500 prisoners

Read More…


Comment

The Great British Values Disaster – education, security and vitriolic hate

Educationalists Bill Bolloten and Robin Richardson discuss the impacts of the ‘fundamental British values’ (FBV) agenda.  The time is late January 2015. The place is a university campus somewhere in England. ‘Kill Islam,’ says a piece of graffiti scrawled in big red letters on one of the university’s buildings, ‘before it kills you’. ‘How do I feel?’

Read More…


News

Calendar of racism and resistance (16 – 29 January 2015)

A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum and migration 15 January: The Independent recounts the story behind the death of Pawel Koseda, a homeless Polish migrant, who was found dead impaled on the railings of a church in Kensington in October 2014. (Independent, 15

Read More…


Comment

Farewell Magna Carta: the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

The Bill currently going through Parliament, with virtually no opposition, impinges on basic freedoms and seems calculated to entrench the treatment of British Muslims as non-citizens. The Bill is being rushed through parliament with no pre-legislative scrutiny or public consultation on most of its provisions – a speed justified by the increased terror threat posed

Read More…


Comment

Anti-racist witchcraft

The question of loyalty to British traditions was already under attack thirty years ago in relation to the work of the Institute of Race Relations. As Britain reels from the fallout from the the Paris killings, the question of British values – who belongs to the nation and how that should be expressed – have been placed centre-stage.[1] Those

Read More…


News

Calendar of racism and resistance (12 – 23 December 2014)

A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Extreme-right politics 12 December: Four English Defence League (EDL) supporters are jailed for a total of over six years after violence during an EDL demonstration in Birmingham city centre in July 2013, described by the judge as ‘plainly

Read More…