In this article Phil Scraton recalls a defining month in the career of Boris Johnson that laid bare his deep-seated prejudices, disregard for factual accuracy and self-serving arrogance. On 7 October 2004 Ken Bigley, a civil engineer, was beheaded in Iraq by Islamic extremists. Just two days later a respectful silence was held in his
An exhibition that bears witness to migrant deaths in the Mediterranean challenges us to confront the UK’s complicity in Europe’s war on asylum. Two image-events bookended Refugee Week 2019. The first was artist-provocateur Christoph Büchel’s ‘installation’ of the migrant shipwreck known as The Boat of Innocents in Venice’s Arsenale. Rechristening it Barca Nostra (Our Boat) was
In a major blow for one of the few BAME women-led organisations left in the UK, Newham council has decommissioned London Black Women’s Project’s refuges for BAME women escaping violence. With one in four women in the UK experiencing domestic violence in the course of a lifetime, the scale of violence against women in the
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM, MIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP ASYLUM AND MIGRANT RIGHTS 19 June: The Supreme Court rules that the Home Office acted illegally in requiring EU citizens from eastern Europe to register after 2009 to have residence rights, making hundreds of
Sink Without Trace presents works by seventeen artists on the subject of migrant deaths at sea. The exhibition includes artists from both refugee, migrant and non-migrant backgrounds; from Denmark, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Israel, Italy, Kurdistan, Slovakia, South Africa, Syria and the UK. 13 June – 13 July 2019, P21 Gallery, 21-27 Chalton Street, London, NW1 1JD Other
On the third anniversary of the death of Jo Cox, the IRR reports on racist violence across Europe, highlighting also cases involving police officers and soldiers. Following the arrest in Germany on 17 June of a far-right extremist in connection with the murder of Walter Lübcke , the Christian Democrat head of city administration in
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM, MIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP REFUGEES AND THE CONFLICT IN LIBYA 7 June: In the context of renewed clashes around Tripoli, the UN human rights office says that 22 people have died of tuberculosis since last September at the
Book launch of After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response, edited by Dan Bulley, Jenny Edkins and Nadine El-Enany (Pluto Press, 2019). 18 June 6pm Room B01, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square London WC1E 7JL Speakers include: Shareefa Energy (award-winning spoken word poet), Daniel Renwick writer (youth worker and videographer), Phil Scraton (Queen’s University Belfast) Book free tickets here
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM, MIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP ASYLUM AND MIGRANT RIGHTS 22 May: Six UN special rapporteurs and independent experts write to the Italian government demanding the withdrawal of the interior ministry directive that, in prioritising security over refugee rights, justifies
A long-term resident of North Kensington recalls the area’s social history as representative of momentous Black British community struggles. Beyond memorialising the lynch-murder of Kelso Cochrane on 17 May 1959, we have to look at the history that surrounds it. New arrivants to fashionable twenty-first-century Notting Hill, along with new generations of long-standing residents, will
