The development of the Institute of Race Relations' (IRR) work, from its transformation in the early 1970s through to the present day, is traced here by one of its central figures. An account is given of how the UK's experience of fighting racism was applied by the IRR to other European contexts and also became the basis for a UK news service using new media. Finally, the establishing of an archive documenting the black struggle in Britain is described.
Published in New Statesman and Society (4 November 1988).
2.
W.R. Böhning, The Migration of Workers in the United Kingdom and the European Community (London, IRR, 1972); Stephen Castles and Godula Kosak, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (London, IRR, 1973).
3.
See Race & Class (Vol. 16, no. 3, January 1975).
4.
This was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and has continued to be supported by the Trust for most of its existence.
5.
This was exemplified in Police Against Black People (London , IRR, 1979) which went on to influence other studies of and inquiries into policing by local authorities. The same methodology was applied in IRR research into the black experience of community care, the exclusion of black pupils from British schools, deaths in custody, racial violence, etc.
6.
These perspectives were articulated in a special double issue of Race & Class on Europe: variations on a theme of racism, published in January 1991.
7.
For example, the magazine Searchlight began to extend its coverage of European fascist and far-Right groups and parties, Statewatch began to concentrate on the powers of the EU and their directives and treaties which governed migration, asylum, policing of extremism, drug trafficking etc., and Migration Newssheet covered all key changes related to immigration.
8.
Liz Fekete , `The emergence of xeno-racism', Race & Class (Vol. 43, no. 2, October 2001). Xeno-racism is a term coined by A. Sivanandan to describe a new phenomenon which is racism in substance but xeno in form `that is meted out to impoverished strangers even if they are white' (first quoted in European Race Bulletin, No. 37, June 2001, from a workshop at the IRR).
9.
Governments set numerical targets for the number of people to be removed in any one period and thus numbers took precedence over individual need. Indeed, it helped to dehumanise yet further asylum seekers who, with the detention system in place, became more and more akin to objects in a warehouse awaiting transportation.
10.
Liz Fekete, The Deportation Machine: Europe, asylum and human rights ( London, IRR, 2005). This report was used by a range of organisations working on human rights, children's issues, asylum campaigns, medical justice, torture, etc., in a number of European countries.
11.
Liz Fekete, They are Children Too (London, IRR, 2007). It should be noted that this report included examples of community and other campaigns being launched in defence of asylum seekers and sans papiers being terrorised by state agencies.
12.
Liz Fekete , Racism: the hidden cost of September 11 (London, IRR, 2002).
13.
Three years later, Trevor Phillips, the head of the UK's government race body, said that multiculturalism had gone too far, warning that we were `sleepwalking into segregation'.
14.
See European Race Bulletin, No. 52, 2005, `The integration debate' with articles on `speech crime' and deportation, and `Immigration, integration and the politics of fear'; European Race Bulletin, No. 53, 2005, `Fighting fascism, preserving democracy'; European Race Bulletin, No. 57, 2006, `Islamophobia, xenophobia and the climate of hate'; European Race Bulletin, No. 62, 2008, `Cultural cleansing?' with a feature on initiatives `against mosques, minarets, Islamic schools and the Qur'an', `Local and national measures and initiatives on religious clothing' and `Islamophobia and xenophobia'.
15.
Liz Fekete , `Enlightened fundamentalism? Immigration, feminism and the Right', Race & Class (Vol. 48, no. 2, October 2006).
16.
This research on barriers to Muslim integration in Europe, commissioned by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, was published as Integration, Islamophobia and Civil Rights in Europe (London, IRR, 2008).
17.
Liz Fekete's book A Suitable Enemy: Islamophobia and xeno-racism in Europe, drawing on many of the themes covered by the ERA, will be published by Pluto Press in January 2009.
18.
`In effect, there are two racisms in Britain today, stratified along class lines: the racism that affects middle-class blacks and the racism that affects the working-class and work-less blacks - the racism that discriminates and the racism that kills', in `Millwall and after', Race & Class (Vol. 35, no. 3, 1994).
19.
Police Against Black People (London, IRR, 1979); Deadly Silence: black deaths in custody (London, IRR, 1991); Outcast England: how schools exclude black children (London, IRR, 1994), etc.
20.
HomeBeats: Struggles for Racial Justice ( London, IRR, 1997).
Melanie McFadyean , `£ … per incident', LondonReview of Books (16 November 2006).
23.
See A. Sivanandan, From Resistance to Rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain (London, IRR, 1986); Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, Southall: the birth of a black community (London, IRR , 1981); Campaign Against Racism and Fascism/Newham Monitoring Project, Newham: the forging of a black community (London, IRR, 1991).
