Dear IRR News subscriber, This week we report on ‘Roma Voices’, a parliamentary meeting on 28 October, where Roma community groups spoke of their experience of flight from the Czech Republic and settlement in the UK. We review a new report which provides hard data on the size of the new settled Roma migrant communities
Powell family’s police complaint upheld
Ten years from his death, the family of Mikey Powell have won a victory in their fight to expose the truth about the role of West Midlands police in Mikey’s death. Last week, the family confirmed that the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) had upheld their complaint that the report made to the West Midland
Roma voices: heard at last?
A report of a parliamentary meeting on the Roma experience of flight from the Czech Republic and settlement in the UK. Czech National Day – 28 October – was marked in 2013, as for many years past, by neo-Nazi parties openly marching and terrorising Roma districts of rundown former industrial cities of the Czech Republic,
No going back for the Roma
A review of the Migrant Roma in the UK research report. The title, Migrant Roma in the UK: population size and experiences of local authorities and partners, may make this report by three University of Salford academics sound dry, but this is both a necessary report and a prescient political intervention. In 2011, the EU
IRR News 25 – 31 October 2013
Dear IRR News subscriber, With significant media attention focusing on the murder of Thavisha Lakindu Peiris in Sheffield earlier this week, we show how his death highlights the dangers facing BME workers in the night-time economy, and how this attack is the latest to have proved fatal. We also describe how Gypsies in Thurrock are
Sheffield murder highlights risks faced by night-time economy workers
The recent stabbing of Thavisha Lakindu Peiris exposes the dangers facing BME workers in the night-time economy, and is the latest such attack to have proved fatal. Significant media attention has focused on Thavisha Lakindu Peiris’s death, in Sheffield on Sunday 27 October. As widely reported, at about 9.50pm the 25-year-old man delivered one last
Gypsies in Thurrock face eviction and suffer abuse and harassment
Gypsies living in Thurrock, Essex are fighting against eviction and harassment by local residents. The Gypsies, members of the West, Birch and Newland families, have been living on a site in Grays, Essex, for the past eight months. They say that their lives have been made increasingly difficult by harassment from local residents, compounded by
Keeping watch on Robeson
A gripping book on Paul Robeson not only shows up the greatness of the man but underscores the dangers of state surveillance – a lesson to heed today. When I lived in Brixton, South London in the early 1970s, I used to drink in an Acre Lane pub named after an imperial admiral, the favourite
Fifteenth annual UFFC remembrance procession
The United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) marched on Downing Street last weekend, as it has done for the last fifteen years, to mark the deaths of loved ones in the custody of the state. The annual remembrance procession was led by the families of those including Ricky Bishop, Mark Duggan, Demetre Fraser, Joy Gardner,
IRR News 18-24 October 2013
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week we report on a fire that erupted at Campsfield House immigration removal centre near Oxford on 18 October. Reports have emerged that the fire was started by a detainee who had self-harmed and then set fire to his room. We would also like to draw your attention to a