While the Left mourns the death of Paul Foot – undoubtedly an excellent journalist and stalwart of working-class struggle – we should not let these attributes eclipse his unique contribution to the anti-racist fight. Many people are probably unaware that it was he who pinpointed the centrality and impact of racism in two key spheres
Plymouth: former BNP member banned from takeaway
Following his drunken, racist behaviour in May, former BNP member, Gavin Hewett, has been given a night-time ban from every takeaway in Plymouth for five years. On Sunday 23 May, Hewett went into Ali Baba’s takeaway, threw his BNP membership card across the counter and told the proprietor to ‘go back to your own country’.
Film calls for action on asylum evictions in Glasgow
Welcome, a 20-minute film by the Camcorder Guerillas collective, tells the story of three asylum seekers who have faced eviction in Glasgow. ‘My life is frozen’, says Jabulani Moyo, a teacher and member of the opposition movement in Zimbabwe. His claim for asylum was rejected because the adjudicator did not believe that he was really
Campaign frees Banire from detention
Banire Sy Savane, a 21-year-old asylum seeker from Sierra Leone, whose case IRR News highlighted last week, has been released from Dover Immigration Removal Centre. Banire won a last-minute reprieve from his planned deportation, after a campaign by the Swansea Bay Asylum Seekers Support Group. The group collected dozens of letters of support and drew
Anti-migrant roar ends in whimper
Earlier this year, the Daily Express dedicated numerous front pages to the threat of ‘1.6 million Gipsies’ who were ‘ready to flood in’ to Britain on 1 May, when the European Union was expanded. Today, an article on page eight of the paper admits that only 10,000 have come. It was billed as the ‘Great
Are Chinese lives cheaper?
This was one of the questions asked at a meeting held in London on 7 July 2004, to discuss the Morecambe Bay tragedy in which 21 Chinese cockle-pickers drowned after being caught in bad weather and high tides. The meeting, which had been organised by Min Quan, the Chinese Monitoring Project, heard from Lin Guo,
Challenging detention without trial
On 6 July 2004, at the High Court in central London, the appeals began of ten men, all foreign nationals, who are challenging their continued detention without trial under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001. The men, many of whom are refugees or asylum seekers, and all of whom are Muslim, have been held
Analysis: the war on terror leads to racial profiling
As IRR News first warned last year, the threat of terrorism is being used as a pretext to discriminate in police stops and searches, particularly against British Asians, a trend confirmed by new figures published last week. Even before September 11, the fight against terrorism was being used to justify a host of new powers
Where is my family?
A Sudanese asylum seeker, 39-year-old Tariq Abdulrahman Mohammed, who is currently detained in Bijlmerbajes deportation prison in Amsterdam, is desperate to find his wife and children, whom he last saw when he was in the UK – before he was deported back to the Netherlands. Tariq and his family had lived in the Netherlands for
Pressure grows on Gypsy site after BNP elected
Gypsies at the Payne’s Lane site are being threatened with prison by Epping Forest District Council if they do not leave. Three BNP councillors were recently elected promising to evict Gypsies. Harry and Linda Smith are the only remaining Gypsies at the Payne’s Lane site on the edge of the Lea Valley Park. Harry has