European governments’ targeting of migrant solidarity activists for prosecution must stop, says IRR
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes today a compelling new report on ‘crimes of solidarity’, drawing attention to a dramatic increase in prosecutions, restrictions and penalties, against a variety of civil society actors. The online publication of When Witnesses Won’t be Silenced: citizens’ solidarity and criminalisation comes just days…
Resisting the new colonialisms
The April 2019 issue of Race & Class shows how the reinvention of colonialism through the domination of digital technology and transnational flows of securitisation is being met by unique forms of resistance. ‘Today, a new form of corporate colonisation is taking place’, argues Michael Kwet, ‘Instead of the conquest…
Challenging far-right racism means standing up for women’s rights, says IRR
Today, on International Women’s Day, the IRR warns that anti-immigrant Islamophobic currents in Europe are growing on the back of the racialisation of sex crimes. Writing in the UK context, Kay Stephens, as part of an anti-racist feminist collective in London, argues that in order to resist the toxic narrative…
The London Clearances a background paper on race, housing and policing
New IRR publication provides a fresh take on housing, policing and racism in London. The moral panic over supposedly dangerous black, urban subcultures in London, emerges at a crucial time, argues the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) in a challenging background paper published today. The impact of financialisation on local…
Barbara Harlow – insistently against the stream
This week, the IRR publishes a memorial issue of Race & Class celebrating the lifework of the late Barbara Harlow, Solidarity here and everywhere. Barbara Harlow, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin described as ‘a critic of both the world and the…
IRR statement on Stansted 15 verdict
IRR vice-chair Frances Webber comments on the stansted 15 verdict, a trial where laws designed to deal with terrorist threats at airports have been brought against human rights defenders. The crime of endangering airport security, under the Aviation and Security Act, was designed to deal with terrorist threats at airports…
The Windrush scandal exposes the dangers of scaremongering about ‘illegal immigrants’
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes today a background paper showing how the injustices meted out to the Windrush generation are not anomalies but the logical result of an immigration system that, over many years, has weaponised the idea of ‘the illegal immigrant’. How can people who considered themselves…
Stealing C. L. R James
The October 2018 issue of Race & Class brings together pieces on racialising domestic violence, #Grime4Corybyn, the rebranding of C.L.R. James for a neoliberal era and memorial tributes to A. Sivanandan. Jessica Perera, who is currently assisting research at the Institute of Race Relations, explores how Grime artists in the…
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…
Police database spreads institutional racism
The IRR welcomes Amnesty International and The Monitoring Group’s recent reports on the racially discriminatory nature of the Metropolitan Police Service’s Gangs Matrix intelligence database. The fact that the Information Commissioner’s Office has launched an investigation into whether the Metropolitan Police Service Trident Gangs Matrix breaches the Data Protection Act…