Forty years ago this week, Malcolm X visited Britain, just a short while before his untimely death. IRR News looks back. By February 1965, Malcolm had broken with his former idol Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam and, having completed his tour of Africa and visit to Mecca, carried with him a spirit of
Theme: Violence and harassment
Fire cover cuts could affect Black communities
Local firefighters and the Fire Brigades Union are concerned that the West Midlands Fire Service’s plans to reduce fire cover could endanger the lives of vulnerable communities, especially Black and Minority Ethnic families and businesses, in some of the most deprived areas of the region. Andy Dennis, chair of West Midlands Fire Brigades Union, told
The politics of a phoney Britishness
This week the government launched its new community cohesion strategy. But there can be no community cohesion while an entire group of citizens is cast as the enemy within. The demand, since September 11, has been for a recharging of the batteries of national belonging, for the state to once again connect with the nation.
The re-imagining of Britain
Life in the United Kingdom, A Journey to Citizenship, published in December 2004 by the Home Office, claims to assist people seeking British Citizenship, to integrate into Britain, by providing a ‘better knowledge of our way of life’. In reality it serves up to new Britons a cocktail of reinvented history and mythical nationalism. The
Do you have a vision to change the world?
To celebrate the centenary of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT), the organisation has set up a new scheme to find ‘six visionaries’, who can work towards making ‘the world – or part of it – more just and more peaceful’ The ‘Visionaries for a Just and Peaceful World’ will need to have a ‘big
Report finds no contradiction in being British and Muslim
A new report published by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, based on a survey of more than 1,000 British Muslims, has found that there is little or no trade-off between being a good British citizen and having Islamic values. The report, entitled Dual citizenship: British, Islamic or both?, examines British Muslims’ feelings of loyalty and
The fight for community begins in Leicester
The threatened Council take-over of a Leicester community centre illustrates the contradictions in the government’s ‘community cohesion’ agenda. The withdrawal of funds from the hugely successful Highfields Youth and Community Centre (HYCC), in inner-city Leicester, has become the focus for a strong local campaign aimed at challenging the whole approach of the City Council and
Living in fear
Speaking at the European Social Forum seminar on Civil Liberties and the War on Terror*, Liz Fekete, Deputy Director of the Institute of Race Relations, called for the protection of the most vulnerable in society – refugees and asylum seekers. Refugees are the main victims of terror. They have fled the terror of war and
Stealing a nation
A new documentary by John Pilger, to be screened next Wednesday, reveals how in the 1960s Britain secretly and brutally expelled the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean – so that the US could build a military base there. The largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, is now America’s biggest overseas military
Rewinding racism
A youth work project based in Sandwell takes an unfashionable approach to anti-racism: telling young people that ‘race’ isn’t real. The towns around Sandwell, stretching westwards from Birmingham, each have their own legacy of racism. Smethwick was where the Labour Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, was defeated by Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths in 1964 after