Last Friday, 22 February 2008, campaigners celebrated outside the London offices of Kalyx,[1] the firm that runs the Harmondsworth detention centre, after four men were acquitted of charges in connection with a disturbance at the centre in November 2006. The jury at Southwark Crown Court, after deliberating for days, found the four men not guilty
Theme: Violence and harassment
Sheila McKechnie Foundation annual awards
A charity set up to commemorate the life of Dame Sheila McKechnie, a dedicated campaigner who empowered homeless people to recognise and assert their rights, is looking to assist under-resourced and novice campaigners. The Foundation’s annual awards programme gives people advice and support in improving influence on local and national government. Previous beneficiaries include members
Unreasonable suspicion
With the publication last week of The review of policing by Ronnie Flanagan, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, the government is proposing another extension of stop and search powers beyond the requirement of ‘reasonable suspicion’. The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has announced that, from April, the powers allowing officers to conduct searches will be extended
Dangers of secret inquests
In the Counter Terrorism Bill 2008, the government published proposals to allow an inquest to be held in secret ‘in the interests of national security’. The new proposals allow the Home Secretary to issue a certificate requiring an inquest to be held without a jury. In such cases the inquest would be held in front
Limbo status is made official
The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, currently going through the Commons, creates a new immigration status for undeportable ‘foreign nationals’. The Home Office’s failure to trace the whereabouts of a small number of non-British criminal offenders post-sentence back, in July 2006, led to a rule change in the same month, introducing a presumption in favour
The beatification of Enoch Powell
Attempts are being made to rehabilitate Enoch Powell’s reputation. Mark my words, between now and next April (forty years since the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech) we are going to witness a rehabilitation of Enoch Powell. It has already begun. Television companies are busy preparing those in-depth, talking-head documentaries, radio programmes are taking him up
Rights not rhetoric
Politicians talk tough on immigration but fail to recognise Britain’s underlying demand for a highly exploitable workforce. Almost 40 years after Enoch Powell delivered his anti-immigrant ‘rivers of blood’ speech, Britain is still unable to move beyond his grim legacy. In recent weeks, we have returned once more to the old paradigm he popularised –
The baby and the bath water: community cohesion and the funding crisis
Over the last few months a row has been brewing as to how the government’s community cohesion agenda is likely to affect the funding of BME groups. ‘Our Shared Future’, the report of the government-appointed Commission on Integration and Cohesion (chair: Darra Singh) which came out in June 2007, recommended, as Ted Cantle had suggested
Stop the Islamophobia of Europe
As the far-Right organisation Stop the Islamisation of Europe holds its first demonstration in London (to coincide with the US’ ‘Islamo-fascism’ Awareness week) the IRR’s European Race Bulletin argues that European countries’ new security laws are removing Muslim communities from the protection of the ordinary rule of law and legitimising the Islamophobia of extreme-Right movements
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