Attempts are being made to rehabilitate Enoch Powell’s reputation. Mark my words, between now and next April (forty years since the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech) we are going to witness a rehabilitation of Enoch Powell. It has already begun. Television companies are busy preparing those in-depth, talking-head documentaries, radio programmes are taking him up
The friends of Amdani Juma
An anti-deportation campaign has been launched in aid of Amdani Juma, a Burundian refugee who has been refused indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Amdani, a torture survivor, came to the UK in March 2003 as a UN – sponsored asylum seeker and was granted humanitarian protection. Many of his family and friends were
Rights not rhetoric
Politicians talk tough on immigration but fail to recognise Britain’s underlying demand for a highly exploitable workforce. Almost 40 years after Enoch Powell delivered his anti-immigrant ‘rivers of blood’ speech, Britain is still unable to move beyond his grim legacy. In recent weeks, we have returned once more to the old paradigm he popularised –
Traveller death marked by drama
Cwmni’r Frân Wen, a professional educational theatre company, has produced a new play about Johnny Delaney, who was murdered in 2003 on the outskirts of Ellesmere Port, when a gang of youths reacted towards his Irish accent and attacked him. The theatre project, a Theatre in Education Project (with follow-up workshop and a cross-curricular work
The baby and the bath water: community cohesion and the funding crisis
Over the last few months a row has been brewing as to how the government’s community cohesion agenda is likely to affect the funding of BME groups. ‘Our Shared Future’, the report of the government-appointed Commission on Integration and Cohesion (chair: Darra Singh) which came out in June 2007, recommended, as Ted Cantle had suggested
Rebels and trouble makers
A controversial exhibition of portraits of people, whose courage, bloody mindedness and instinct for rebellion, have enhanced London’s radical tradition, has opened at City Hall. To accompany artist Jolie Goodman’s four portraits – of Walter Wolfgang, Camilla Batmanghelidjh, Helen John and Brian Haw – are specially-commissioned photos from the East London Photographers Group. Doreen Lawrence,
National campaign against anti-terror laws
Community groups across the UK and human rights organisations have come together to campaign against proposed new anti-terror laws. The Queen’s speech next week is likely to announce a new Counter Terrorism Bill, which will: Extend pre-charge detention in terrorism cases from 28 days to 56 or even 90 days; Seek to create a new
Iconic symbol – too negative!
IRR News has learnt that a university in the Midlands has stopped one of its student societies from using an iconic Black Power symbol on a poster advertising a Black History Month event at the university. The society organising an event for Black History Month hit political censorship when posters designed for the event, which
Stop the Islamophobia of Europe
As the far-Right organisation Stop the Islamisation of Europe holds its first demonstration in London (to coincide with the US’ ‘Islamo-fascism’ Awareness week) the IRR’s European Race Bulletin argues that European countries’ new security laws are removing Muslim communities from the protection of the ordinary rule of law and legitimising the Islamophobia of extreme-Right movements
Remembering Ira Aldridge
Two new publications for young people retrieve the life of Black actor, Ira Aldridge. 2007 marks not just the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade but also the two hundred years since the birth of Ira Aldridge. One of the greatest actors on the British stage, he has been utterly neglected – because