Press Release

Dying for Justice

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

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News

Calendar of racism and resistance (27 February – 12 March 2015)

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?’

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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

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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

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