This week, we publish a briefing paper on the future of human rights in Britain, written by the IRR’s vice-chair, Frances Webber. With nativism, racism and fascism on the rise throughout Europe, informing government policies towards migrants and other unpopular minorities as well as popular right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-Roma movements, the European system of
Deaths in immigration detention on the increase?
This year, two men have died following their detention in immigration removal centres near Heathrow, and another two people have died in hospital shortly after release from detention in 2012 and 2011. Two deaths of asylum seekers in the first three months of this year is a worrying development. In February 2013, 84-year-old Alois Dvorzac,
Spotlight on far-right violence
An overview of racially motivated attacks perpetrated by members of the far-right and convictions over the last few months. Just a few months ago, two women in Plymouth were sentenced in February for their part in an EDL mob-attack which took place in 2011. The two were part of a group who attended an EDL
Racist attack victim prosecuted
Last month, charges against Zulf Shah for actual bodily harm were thrown out of court for lack of evidence. Zulf was charged following a racist attack by a man and a woman, in which he was punched and kicked unconscious, and then repeatedly kicked as he lay on the ground. Before the assault, the man
IRR News 19-24 April 2013
Dear IRR News subscriber, In a week in which we remember the deaths of both Stephen Lawrence (1993) and Blair Peach (1979), a review of the national press reveals that the issues of police racism and the danger of the far Right need still to be high on our agenda. We also draw your attention
IRR News 12-18 April 2013
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week, as the twentieth anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence approaches, on 22 April, the IRR examines racial violence since his death. Jenny Bourne also reviews a new book which is ‘getting unwarranted coverage in the media’, and in case you missed it last week, her assessment of
Racial violence since the death of Stephen Lawrence
As the twentieth anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence approaches, the IRR examines racial violence since his death in 1993. In the twenty years since the death of Stephen Lawrence, we can report that 106 people have lost their lives in (known or suspected) racist attacks – five per year on average, that black
Goodhart, bad analysis
A recent tome by Prospect founder David Goodhart on The British Dream is getting unwarranted coverage in the media. Have you stopped to think who the present commentators are about British race matters? BME leaders? No. Academics who have proven research credentials? No again. Or, as in the olden days, ‘home affairs’ specialists on credited
Fighting Europe’s racisms
A collection of essays on varieties of European racism contains valuable insights and useful lessons. A minister cuts a cake. The cake is in the shape of a black woman, and the cut exposes her pink genitals, as a performance artist screams. The event, an ill-conceived critique of female genital mutilation, backfires, as the white,
‘May we bring harmony’? Thatcher’s legacy on ‘race’
Cameron’s nativist policies begin with Thatcher. Thatcher’s attitude to foreigners can be summed up in two phrases: ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture’ (January 1978) and the war cry ‘Sink the Belgrano’ (May 1983) over the Malvinas. She was, without doubt, a xenophobe,