A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Extreme-Right politics 29 March: In the second round of French local elections, the Front National wins 22 per cent of the vote, securing 62 council seats. (In 2011, it won just one.) However it failed to take control
Theme: Housing
Immigration detention: signs of spring, or false dawn?
Campaigners have welcomed signs of movement around immigration detention – but celebration may be premature. In March 2015, the All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) on Refugees and Migration produced a strong report whose main recommendation, that immigration detention be severely curtailed and strictly time-limited, echoed the demands made for decades by detainee groups, campaigners and international
Looking for Claudia Jones
The TUC Race Relations Committee in association with Blackstock films presents a screening of ‘Looking for Claudia Jones’ followed by a panel discussion. Friday 17 April 2015, 7-9pm TUC Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS Panel members: Nia Reynolds (director) Donald Hinds James Fairweather Diane Langford Corrine Skinner Carter The film documents the influence of
Checkpoint healthcare protest
A street-theatre protest against the surcharges to migrants for use of GP services and emergency treatment. Wednesday 15 April 2015, 4-6pm Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel Road, London E1 1BB Related links Facebook event page Docs Not Cops 999 Call for the NHS
Catch history on the wing, buy your advance copy now!
A new film of A. Sivanandan, in conversation with Colin Prescod, entitled Catching History on the Wing will have its premiere at an event on 18 April and copies are now available for sale. A. Sivanandan is best known as a key thinker, writer and activist on racism and imperialism, the founder editor of Race
‘Where was our independence?’ The persistent questions about the IPCC’s Mark Duggan investigation
Last week the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report into the death of Mark Duggan exonerated the officers involved – and was immediately condemned by the family as a ‘whitewash’. IRR News analyses previously unreleased internal documents that shed new light on the IPCC’s investigation in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Documents released under
Festival of Ideas 2015
A weekend of workshops and talks by Open Generation, a project by Migrants’ Rights Network, dedicated to how young people feel about migration. Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 April 2015 Autograph ABP, Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA Related links Location map Facebook event listing Open Generation
We Love Immigration
A comedy night organised by Migrants Rights’ Network celebrating the impact immigration has had on the British comedy industry. Monday 30 March 2015, 7.30pm Bloomsbury Theatre, 15 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0AH Line-up includes: Abandoman Nish Kumar Romesh Ranganathan David Mills Bec Hill Grainne Maguire Felicity Ward Paul Sinha Ava Vidal Andrew O Neil Shazia
Deaths of Europe’s ‘unwanted and unnoticed’ migrants exposed
The IRR publishes a disturbing new report, Unwanted, unnoticed: an audit of 160 asylum and immigration-related deaths in Europe, revealing the extent of Europe’s departure from its vaunted humanitarian ideals. The deaths over the last five years, in the detention and reception centres, the streets and the squats of Europe, are a product of the rightlessness
Dying for Justice
On Monday 23 March 2015, the Institute of Race Relations published Dying for Justice which gives the background on 509 people (an average of twenty-two per year) from BAME, refugee and migrant communities who have died between 1991-2014 in suspicious circumstances in which the police, prison authorities or immigration detention officers have been implicated. It concludes