Abolition, internationalism and communities of resistance
Fifty years ago, the Institute of Race Relations overturned ‘race relations’ orthodoxies and set parameters for a committed anti-racism. Fifty years on, the IRR, with radical scholar activists, examined ‘New Circuits of Anti-Racism’ at a conference gathering. The July 2023 special issue of Race & Class, guest-edited by the…
Watch and listen: IRR50 New circuits of anti-racism with Surviving Society podcast
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the radical transformation of the IRR. To celebrate our history, past, present and future we created a series of events, projects and activities as part of IRR50. The IRR was proud to present New Circuits of Anti-racism – an IRR50 conference on racism,…
Remapping Europe’s racisms
The April 2023 issue of Race & Class offers a challenge to how Europe is understood and explores the origins and impacts of civilisational racism. A year on from the start of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, IRR director Liz Fekete in the April issue of Race & Class…
Civilisational racism, ethnonationalism and the clash of imperialisms in Ukraine
As rallies take place across Europe to mark the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and calls for a peace process to end the conflict grow, Liz Fekete, a leading expert on European racism, pinpoints the need to examine how new geopolitics, changing imperialisms and the entrenching…
Britannia Enchained
As the economy unravels, we are seeing an increasingly aggressive government squaring up to an expanding list of enemies, heedless of legal and moral restraints and of the impact on country and people, argues Frances Webber. ‘Move fast and break things’ used to be the mantra of tech whizz-kid…
Breaking the ‘colour bar’: the stories of Pearl Prescod and Len Johnson
In the latest issue of Race & Class, Pearl Prescod and Len Johnson are pulled from the historical margins and recentred as radical agents of history that changed the shape of British society. The January 2023 issue of Race & Class contains two key articles tracing the life, work…
The Sivanandan website
The IRR is delighted to release a new online archive of A. Sivanandan’s writings, speeches, essays, aphorisms and reviews, spanning six decades. The archive section of the website features a catalogued bibliography of Siva’s works, from the 1960s through to the 2010s. It contains seminal essays such as RAT…
Transnational repression
The latest issue of Race & Class traces transnational connections: the repression of Black Power in Britain and the Caribbean; the offshoring of refugees from Denmark to Rwanda; and culture wars travelling from the US to the UK. In the cover article in the latest issue, post-doctoral researcher Ben…
Watch: Struggling on, staying strong: Reflections on IRR 50
To mark 50 years since the radical transformation of the Institute of Race Relations, staff and council of management members reflect on the IRR’s longevity and place in British anti-racism. Filmed and produced by Rainbow Collective.
Become a friend of the IRR
For 50 years, the IRR has anchored the fight against racism. On limited resources and with a team of just four full-time staff, the Institute of Race Relations has sustained its reputation as a leading anti-racist thinktank for over half a century. Home to Race & Class, IRR News, the…










