Dear IRR News subscriber, ‘Who we are is what we do’, writes Jenny Bourne, in a reflection on what the memorial event for A. Sivanandan meant for her. The event on 23 June brought together an array of people to celebrate a particular political practice, but most importantly, it showed the urgent need to now
Who we are is what we do
Jenny Bourne, IRR veteran, writes on what the memorial event for A. Sivanandan held on 23 June at Conway Hall, meant for her. Early in 1972, the whole staff of the Institute of Race Relations invaded a specially-convened meeting of its Council of Management in a Jermyn Street boardroom to tell these usually ‘absentee landlords’
Calendar of racism and resistance (22 June – 5 July 2018)
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum and migration 21 June: The Home Office publishes a sixty-page ‘Statement of Intent’ for an EU citizens’ settlement scheme post-Brexit. Download the document here; read a critique here. 24 June: A parliamentary written answer reveals that MPs
The past in the present
Past oppressions are written into our statues, our architecture and our walls. This special issue of Race & Class brings a new perspective to reparatory history. ‘We are, at this moment, witnessing an eruption of active memory’, say Anita Rupprecht and Cathy Bergin. Resistances mobilised around Confederacy statues have provoked mass protests and fierce debate.
The rights of migrant dead and their families: a declaration of intent
Catriona Jarvis and Syd Bolton, co-convenors of the Last Rights project, celebrate real progress in the struggle for dignified treatment for migrants who lose their lives, with the signing in Lesbos of the Mytilini Declaration in May. 11 May 2018 can be put in the diary as a landmark date for future reference. On that
IRR News (8 – 21 June 2018)
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week the Guardian published The List of 34,361 known deaths at the EU’s borders since 1993, which includes three teenage Eritrean asylum seekers, who came from the migrant camp in Calais to the UK, who have committed suicide here in the past seven months. Istanbul-based artist Banu Cennetoğlu, who posts
Calendar of racism and resistance (8 – 21 June 2018)
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Asylum and migration 3 June: Scottish refugee charities raise concerns about the number of asylum seekers forced into ‘state-sponsored homelessness’ after being released from Dungavel detention centre with nowhere to go. (Herald, 3 June 2018) 5 June: Serco
Report published into Lukasz Debowski’s death at Morton Hall
On 11 January 2017, 27-year-old Lukasz Debowski was found hanged in his room at Morton Hall, an immigration detention centre in Lincoln. 2017 was the deadliest year in immigration detention, with the largest number of deaths. Lukasz Debowski was the first of six people to die that year, and the fifth person to die at
Connecting the past and the present in Liverpool
Danny Reilly reviews an important new book detailing the migrant history of Liverpool. Based on the work of the Great War to Race Riots Archive presented to Liverpool-based organisation Writing on the Wall, this book/project centres around the ‘race riots’ in Liverpool in 1919, but tells a much wider and inter-connected story. As its bibliography
IRR News (17 May – 7 June 2018)
Dear IRR News subscriber, This week, IRR News celebrates the opening of the exhibition at the British Library, Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land, on which our chair, Colin Prescod was lead external adviser. Windrush traces the relationship between Britain and the Caribbean since the ‘discovery’ of the Americas, travelling through the slave trade, colonialism,