Lightning of Your Eyes, an exciting anthology of new and selected poems by committed writer and educationalist Chris Searle, has just been published. Chris Searle’s poetry is about words. It is words, he believes, that challenge the status quo, words which educate across geographical boundaries and words which can ultimately act as catalysts for change.
Theme: Managed migration
IRR gifts its library to Warwick University
A. Sivanandan, in a speech at the launch of the Institute of Race Relations’ library at Warwick University on 27 April 2006, explains how the collection (1956-2005) reflected the movements of the times – decolonisation, Black Power and globalisation. I am honoured that Warwick University should name the Institute’s library after me. And I thank
Unions working against racism?
A new pamphlet, co-produced by the Working Lives Research Institute and the TUC, is directed at reinvigorating the anti-racist struggle in the workplace. With Black workers set to make up an increasingly large proportion of the low-paid labour market, the pamphlet argues that Black trade unionists need to hold leading positions, that Black self-organisation needs
John La Rose 1927-2006
A stalwart of Black struggle in Britain, John La Rose, has died. As a writer, publisher and political organiser, his contribution to the development of Black cultural expression in the UK cannot be rivalled. It is with great sadness that the staff of the Institute of Race Relations heard the news of John’s death on
Schools still failing Black children
After thirty-five years, campaigners have seen fit to re-issue one of the first exposés of racism in the British education system. For racism and exclusion, if in new guises, still blight the lives of young Black people in Britain. ‘How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System’ was first
Fighting for disabled students
The family of a wheel-chair bound overseas student is, after its own successful struggle, fighting the government’s institutionalised discrimination against disabled ‘foreign’ students. On 9 September 2005, an intelligent severely disabled 19-year old wheel-chair bound overseas student, Nirav Shah, and his parents won a year-long battle to overturn two key decisions by UK immigration officials.
Demonstrations against deportation of children
Demonstrations in protest against the deportation of students and children will be staged this Saturday in Manchester and London. The Stop Deporting Children and Students day of action aims to raise awareness of the plight of many young asylum seekers, who arrive in the UK seeking a safer life and a decent education but are
Race libraries on the move
The main library collection of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has moved from London to the University of Warwick, freeing the IRR to develop a unique Black history collection. According to A. Sivanandan, the IRR’s director and its chief librarian since 1964, the library ‘had reached the end of its natural life with us’.
Celebrating the Black radical tradition
To mark Black History Month, the Institute of Race Relations publishes Cedric Robinson and the philosophy of Black resistance – a special issue of Race & Class dedicated to one of the world’s outstanding thinkers on the history of Black struggle. Professor Robinson, one of the most challenging Black academics in the US, has also
Black History Month events 2005
A selection of Black History Month events taking place across the UK in 2005. Friday 30 September, Africa Friday Late, an evening themed around the contemporary culture of Africa. The highlight will be a ‘Fashion in Motion’ where the work of leading fashion designers from Africa will be shown. There will also be an African