Institute of Race Relations
THE Institute of Race Relations (IRR) was established as an independent educational charity in 1958 to carry out research, publish and collect resources on race relations throughout the world. In 1972, the IRR’s membership backed the staff in a radical transformation of the organisation from a policy-oriented, establishment, academic institution into an anti-racist ‘thinktank’. The IRR began to concentrate on responding to the needs of Black people and making direct analyses of institutionalised racism in Britain and the rest of Europe. (For more information on the IRR’s first fifty years, watch the below slide show on IRR’s history, a new film by Rainbow Collective and the 1982 documentary ‘Here and Now’) Today, the IRR is at the cutting edge of the research and analysis that inform the struggle for racial justice in Britain, Europe and internationally. It seeks to reflect the experiences of those who suffer racial oppression and draws its perspectives from the most vulnerable in society. Source
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| Language | English |
| Country | United Kingdom |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesCalendar of Racism and Resistance (7 – 21 July 2026)
ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY As anti-migrant, anti-equalities, anti-abortion, misogynistic and anti-LGBTQI rhetoric in electoral campaigning are increasingly interlinked, we reflect this in the coverage below which also includes information on the influence of the Christian Right as well as the religious Right generally.
Dossier of a pogrom in Northern Ireland ( 9 – 16 June 2026)
These entries are documented from our press monitoring of the racist pogrom that unfolded in Northern Ireland following the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie by Hadi Alodid. It only follows the dates between 9 – 16 June 2026 and is not a complete account of events.
Defending universal anti-racist principles – the defining struggle of our times
28 April – 12 May 2026 Who gets to define what racism is and isn’t, and what sorts of anti-racism are publicly acceptable to the gatekeepers of the public space? As hundreds of celebrities sign an open letter defending Southbank Centre Chair Misan Harriman from what is described as a ‘dishonest’ media ‘smear campaign’, the need to defend free speech against racism in all its forms has emerged as the defining struggle of our times.
The mobilisation of refugee labour for carbon credits as maladaptive practice
The April issue of Race & Class leads with a multi-layered and tightly-argued exposé by three academics of the supposedly green, empowering, and pro-women’s safety UNHCR Refugee Environmental Protection (REP) Fund’s project to use refugee labour in the Global South to generate carbon credits to be traded on global markets. On the face of it, investing in clean cookstove and reforestation projects in and around refugee camps, and reducing CO2 (and CO2 equivalents) might seem like a good idea.
50 years on – was Destiny destiny?
14 – 28 April 2026 This year sees the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the pathbreaking play Destiny by David Edgar, describing the rise of neo-fascism in the 1970s. He discusses its context and resonance for today in IRR News. Join a discussion on 3 May at the Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone, London on what the play has to teach us now about the fight against the far Right. Details are here.
50 years on – was Destiny destiny?
Half a century after David Edgar’s pathbreaking anti-fascist play ‘Destiny’, linking empire, racism and industrial struggle, he examines its 1976 context and resonances in nationalist populism today. Fifty years ago this year, the National Front came to public attention, winning 20% of the vote in the Leicester local elections and over 12% in Bradford.
Pioneering research shines a spotlight on ‘police pursuit killings’
University of Manchester sociology lecturer Siobhan O’Neill’s research, published in the January 2026 edition of the IRR’s journal Race & Class, emerges out of community organising around an under-researched aspect of state violence: police pursuits. According to the IOPC, in the last ten years there have been 299 police-related road traffic fatalities in England and Wales.
Policy and prosecutorial responses to the summer 2024 riots risk fuelling a cycle of racist violence - Institute of Race Relations
Policy and prosecutorial responses to the summer 2024 riots delink the violence from racism, paving the way for anti-immigration and Islamophobic protests and far-right vigilantism to form an infinite loop.
Perverse morality, perverse patriotism
11 – 25 November 2025 Collective shock has greeted the ‘toughest’immigration controls in Europe, drawn up by home secretary Shabana Mahmood, which further hardwire hostility towards asylum seekers and (low-paid) migrant workers into state policy. Mahmood’s justification of this horrendous development ignores the lessons of over fifty years’ campaigning around race and immigration issues.