A wide-ranging review of all areas of legal aid is currently taking place.[1] As part of this review, the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) has announced proposals to change how publicly-funded immigration and asylum legal advice is provided.[2] The Legal Services Commission (LSC) is running a consultation on these proposals, which ends on 12 October.
Theme: Violence and harassment
Racism, Liberty and the War on Terror
Below we reproduce the keynote address to the conference on Racism, Liberty and the War on Terror (held on 16 September at Conway Hall) by A. Sivanandan, director of the Institute of Race Relations. This conference is the end-product of a series of lunchtime seminars held at the IRR, to discuss the impact of anti-terrorist
Cant on cohesion
Communities minister Ruth Kelly today launches a Commission on Integration and Cohesion whilst calling for an ‘honest debate’ on multiculturalism. But the government’s whole approach to the issue relies on a mis-use of concepts and history. Ever since Margaret Thatcher’s comment in 1978, that the British people were worried that ‘this country might be rather
Seeds of discontent
One year after the 7/7 terrorist attacks, Tahir Abbas looks at how the marginalisation of Muslims continues to contribute to their radicalisation. One year has now passed since the tragic events of 7 July 2005 in London. For the first time in European history, ‘home-grown’ suicide bombers were implicated in a number of terrorist attacks
First death under new community fast-track system
Last Wednesday, on 5 July 2006, a 35-year-old Ethiopian asylum seeker, Abiy Fessfha Abebe, was found hanged in accommodation in Liverpool, after recently being told his asylum claim had been refused. His death is the 25th such death of an asylum seeker in the last five years. Other asylum seekers who were housed at the
The ‘Mediterranean Solution’: rescinding the rights of boat people
In May, a ‘ghost ship’ with eleven petrified corpses washed up in Barbados. The Africans onboard the sea-battered yacht had set sail four months previously from the Cape Verde islands – and had been heading for Europe. As the EU draws on Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’ to further militarise its sea borders, and enters into new
What next for Europe’s boat people?
As EU leaders and their North African counterparts host a series of immigration summits, the European Race Bulletin seeks to establish what is really going on behind the scenes. In The Mediterranean Solution, Liz Fekete argues that under cover of combating human trafficking, EU countries are rescinding the rights of boat people travelling from Africa
Concern about Algerians
Two men, deported to Algeria from the UK over the weekend, have failed to contact their families on their return. Concern about the men is now mounting after security services in Algeria confirmed that they had arrived, were being held in custody, but gave no other details. The two men, known just as ‘I’ and
Britain’s shame: from multiculturalism to nativism
As every step that Blair takes to ‘cohere’ the nation is at the expense of ethnic minorities, and Muslims in particular, IRR News talked to A. Sivanandan about how he saw the integration debate. IRR News: The concept of integration is becoming a vexed one across Europe and even in the UK Blair and his
The emergence of a European security-industrial complex
The EU is set to spend billions of euros on ‘security research’. With little accountability, European multinational corporations will be researching new techniques of surveillance, identification and profiling, to be directed mainly at migrants and terrorist suspects. A new report by Statetwatch and the Transnational Institute makes depressing reading for those concerned with issues of