The IRR welcomes Amnesty International and The Monitoring Group’s recent reports on the racially discriminatory nature of the Metropolitan Police Service’s Gangs Matrix intelligence database. The fact that the Information Commissioner’s Office has launched an investigation into whether the Metropolitan Police Service Trident Gangs Matrix breaches the Data Protection Act is welcome, but the dangers
Issue: Briefing Papers & Reports - UK
Screwed by the system
Lord Herman Ouseley writes for IRR News on the findings of a recent Amnesty International report on the Gangs Matrix. By October 2017, there were 3,806 individuals on the Gangs Matrix, 87 per cent of whom were Black, Asian and of a minority ethnic background, 78 per cent of whom were black. Amnesty International spent
Calendar of racism and resistance (20 April – 3 May 2018)
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum and migration 14 April: The trial of the Stansted 15, who face terror-related charges for grounding a deportation charter flight, is adjourned until 1 October 2018. View details of a crowdfunder for the defendants here. 18 April:
Remember David Oluwale and Stephen Lawrence
Tomorrow, on 4 May, it will be forty-nine years since the body of David Oluwale was pulled from the River Aire, Leeds in 1969. And nearly two weeks ago, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 was marked. Both deaths were watershed moments and synonymous with racism in different ways.
New book on the No Colour Bar exhibition
A new book on the 2016 No Colour Bar exhibition is now available. No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960-1990, documents how the exhibition came to fruition and all those involved. The book reproduces images of the art featured at the exhibition by seminal black artists alongside archive material — leaflets, journal and
Paris: still on the streets
The abject failure of French President Macron to carry out his promise to get refugees ‘off the streets, out of the woods’ by the end of 2017 is highlighted in the latest report by Refugee Rights Europe (RRE). Still on the Streets: Documenting the situation for refugees and displaced people in Paris, France, presents statistical
Calendar of racism and resistance (6 – 19 April 2018)
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum and migration 5 April: Elder Rahimi solicitors publish: Systemic Delays in the Processing of the Claims for Asylum Made in the UK by Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC), download it here. 5 April: Asylum charities in Liverpool
Prevent in the NHS: safeguarding or surveillance?
A new and important report by Warwick University investigates counterterrorism in the NHS, revealing how lines are blurred between safeguarding and surveillance, security risk and social care and mental health and radicalisation. Recently, a domestic worker died as she was too afraid to see a doctor out of fear that her immigration status would be
The ‘Windrush generation’ retreat and the hostile environment
The ‘Windrush generation’ of long-resident, elderly Commonwealth citizens has won a moral victory, with an apology from home secretary Amber Rudd and her predecessor, Theresa May, the architect of the ‘hostile environment’ policies which saw many of them dismissed from long-held jobs, denied housing and medical treatment, and threatened with deportation, for want of proof
Fighting the hostile environment: interview with Bethan Lant of Praxis
The shameful treatment of elderly Commonwealth citizens treated as illegal immigrants was brought to public attention by the Guardian’s report in March on the refusal of NHS cancer treatment to 63-year-old Londoner Albert Thompson. On 28 March, Frances Webber and Jessica Perera of IRR News went to visit Bethan Lant of Praxis, the organisation helping him,