Somalis have lived in the UK since the 19th century, and over the last 20 years, tens of thousands have fled to the UK as refugees. Yet the community remains relatively ignored by mainstream services, unrepresented in any national debates and many of its members are marginalised. A recent report written by Hermione Harris, The
Rewinding racism
A youth work project based in Sandwell takes an unfashionable approach to anti-racism: telling young people that ‘race’ isn’t real. The towns around Sandwell, stretching westwards from Birmingham, each have their own legacy of racism. Smethwick was where the Labour Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, was defeated by Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths in 1964 after
Failing the vulnerable: the death of ten asylum seekers and other foreign nationals in UK detention
The self-inflicted death of a Ukrainian asylum seeker at Harmondsworth removal centre on 19 July would have gone unnoticed if it had not been for the subsequent eruption of large-scale violence forcing the closure of the centre and the dispersal of detainees to other detention centres and prisons. One of those dispersed, a 23-year-old Vietnamese
Alliance to fight anti-Gypsy racism
Two weeks after the CPS announced that it would not prosecute a Sussex bonfire society for burning a caravan bearing effigies of a Gypsy family and the number plate ‘P1KEY’, activists have decided to form their own Gypsy Bonfire Society to inform people about anti-Gypsy racism. Twelve members of the Firle Bonfire Society were arrested
Paul Foot – the death of an anti-racist pioneer
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,