On 18 April, a celebration event of the work of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) and its Director Emeritus, Sivanandan, turned into a serious discussion on how to unite and strengthen struggles at a time of globalisation and austerity. Divided into three sessions – past, present, future – the packed afternoon covered a conspectus
On Monday 20 April, a man died at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre (IRC) in Bedford, the third person to die there since it opened in November 2001.[1] The Guardian reported that the man died from a heart attack while being held in the family unit at Yarl’s Wood. Named as Pinakin Patel, the 33-year-old
My conversation with Colin was recorded in 2011. But I have been given the chance to update some of those ideas for this event on 18 April 2015. Neoliberalism is not working. All that stuff, about wealth trickling down, no society only individuals, the market as the regulator of everything, is shown to be false
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Extreme-Right politics 29 March: In the second round of French local elections, the Front National wins 22 per cent of the vote, securing 62 council seats. (In 2011, it won just one.) However it failed to take control
Campaigners have welcomed signs of movement around immigration detention – but celebration may be premature. In March 2015, the All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) on Refugees and Migration produced a strong report whose main recommendation, that immigration detention be severely curtailed and strictly time-limited, echoed the demands made for decades by detainee groups, campaigners and international
A new film of A. Sivanandan, in conversation with Colin Prescod, entitled Catching History on the Wing will have its premiere at an event on 18 April and copies are now available for sale. A. Sivanandan is best known as a key thinker, writer and activist on racism and imperialism, the founder editor of Race
On 2 March, a second inquest recorded a critical misadventure and narrative verdict into the death of Habib ‘Paps’ Ullah on 3 July 2008, after being stopped and forcefully searched by police in High Wycombe. The verdict marks seven years of campaigning by his family, who have consistently marked the anniversary of his death, every
On Monday 23 March 2015, the Institute of Race Relations published Dying for Justice which gives the background on 509 people (an average of twenty-two per year) from BAME, refugee and migrant communities who have died between 1991-2014 in suspicious circumstances in which the police, prison authorities or immigration detention officers have been implicated. It concludes
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum and migration 3 March: Serco suspends two staff members from Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre after the showing of a Channel 4 film, made undercover, on the treatment of detainees which revealed what the shadow home secretary called
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
