IRR News’ original investigations into the incidence of suicide by asylum seekers was long-listed twice over for the Paul Foot award for campaigning journalism 2007. The research, undertaken by IRR News editor, Harmit Athwal, published as a series of documents on IRR News (Driven to desperate measures, ‘Roll call of deaths of asylum seekers and
Theme: Health
John Berger: truth-sayer in an age of lies
A. Sivanandan welcomes John Berger, who read from a work in progress From A to X (love letters written to a political prisoner serving a life sentence) at an event on 4 October, entitled Against the Great Defeat of the World, to mark thirty-five years since the conception of IRR’s journal, Race & Class. ‘It
Access to healthcare should be a right, not a fight
The government is currently considering charging failed asylum seekers and undocumented migrants for NHS primary health care. A number of civil society organisations are concerned that such charges could prevent vulnerable people, including pregnant women and children, from accessing vital treatment. A briefing paper explaining the proposed changes and their potential impact can be downloaded
How liberals lost their anti-racism
Recent books by Nick Cohen and Andrew Anthony point to a new hard-nosed liberalism which targets British Muslims. A new sentiment has gripped the mainstream of liberal thinking in Britain over the last few years. It is an attitude that regards Muslims as uniquely problematic and in need of forceful integration into what it views
Part of the problem or part of the solution?
Why, asks a new report, was the Commission for Racial Equality’s policy shift on multiculturalism not subjected to a full race equality impact assessment? A national charity, the Public Interest Research Unit (PIRU), has published a 279-page report entitled Race Back from Equality questioning why the CRE (whose functions will be taken over next week
Iraqi asylum seeker killed two weeks after return
On 6 September, Solyman Rashed, an asylum seeker who had been deported to Iraq from the UK, was killed by a car bomb in Kirkuk, after only having been back in the country for two weeks. Solyman had been held in various immigration detention centres for fifteen months after being arrested in May 2006 when
Against the great defeat of the world
John Berger, internationally recognised as one of the most influential writers of the last fifty years, is appearing in London next week to give a rare and exclusive reading from his new novel: From A to X. The event, hosted by Race & Class, is taking place on Thursday 4 October at the New Theatre,
Extreme Right targets mosques and minarets in Austria
Recent activities of far-Right groups targeting the building of mosques in the UK mirrors events elsewhere in Europe. At the beginning of 2007, the European extreme Right formed a new bloc in the European parliament called Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty (ITS) to protect ‘Christian values’ and ‘Europe’s traditional heritage’. In the build-up to European parliamentary
Lewisham ’77: success or failure?
Thirty years ago, over five thousand protestors took to the streets to prevent a march of five hundred National Front supporters, protected by five thousand police, from getting through Lewisham, south London. The decision by the National Front (NF) to hold a march through Lewisham in August 1977 divided the opposition as to tactics, like
Gatwick No Border Camp
Next week, campaigners will begin three days of action and campaigning at a protest camp near Brook House, a new removal centre for asylum seekers at Gatwick airport. Organisers say: ‘The camp, the first of its kind in the UK, will be an opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences, with numerous workshops, panels and other