Striking evidence has been uncovered about Special Branch’s attempts to infiltrate UK Black Power groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Black Power is in the news this week, with the announcement that the conviction of former Fasimba members Winston Trew and Sterling Christie (two of the ‘Oval Four’) has been referred to the
After a fight lasting forty-seven years, the case of the ‘Oval Four’ has now been referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. On a March evening in 1972, four young black men were stopped at Oval tube station by white men and accused of ‘nicking handbags’. The youths, who maintain
Dear IRR News subscriber, Once again, we see politicians using arguments about the freedom to offend to justify the unjustifiable – speech that inflames community tensions and emboldens the far Right who will be marching in Dewsbury on 12 October. In a thought-provoking piece, IRR director Liz Fekete unpicks some of the Conservatives’ reckless vocabulary. She argues that while
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM, MIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP Asylum and migrant rights 17 September: The inquest opens into the death of Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus, a 19-year-old asylum seeker from Milton Keynes who took his life on 18 February 2019, the fourth from
Why are specialist services for black and minoritised women and girls escaping violence so important? And why have the voices of those organisations been erased from the discussion around Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) cases in Rotherham and other northern cities? Sophia Siddiqui travelled to Rotherham to find out. ‘For Rotherham’ was scrawled on the ammunition
A ‘French Black Lives Matter’ campaign against police brutality and racialised violence is calling out for justice. On 19 July 2016, his 24th birthday, Adama Traoré died in police custody in the Persan police station, Paris. His arrest in questionable circumstances, the silence following his death from the French state, and the fact that no
If we are not vigilant, the government’s attempts to deny the links between speech that inflames and actual acts of physical violence could be extended to deny or excuse incitement to racial hatred. On BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Boris Johnson defended his use of ‘martial metaphors’ in the first parliamentary debate since parliament was reconvened
To complement the re-issuing of Sivanandan’s path-breaking collection of essays, Communities of Resistance, Race & Class leads with a thought-provoking piece calling for a new politics of ‘radical kinship’ to forge the dynamic internationalist politics now needed to combat growing racism and fascism. Across the globe, women, BAME and LGBTQI communities face hatred and violence
Dear IRR News subscriber, Speaking at a conference in Israel, the UK’s chief counter-terrorism officer defends the Prevent counter-radicalisation strategy, saying it should be judged as a ‘public health model’ approach – an approach which is increasingly being rolled out in more areas across the UK. As local authorities, schools, universities, hospitals, charities and families are
Drawing on a recently published report, Leaving the War on Terror: a progressive alternative to counter-terrorism policy, Arun Kundnani outlines why counter-terrorism policies do not work, and what an alternative could look like. The starting point for this report goes back two years to a speech Jeremy Corbyn gave at Chatham House, in which he
