The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) is a

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...

based in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. It was formed in 1958 in order to publish research on

race relations Race relations is a sociological concept that emerged in Chicago in connection with the work of sociologist Robert E. Park and the Chicago race riot of 1919. Race relations designates a paradigm or field in sociology and a legal concept in the ...

worldwide, and in 1972 was transformed into an "anti-racist think tank". Proposed by ''

Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' editor

Harry Hodson Henry Vincent Hodson (12 May 1906 – 26 March 1999) was an English economist and editor. Career Hodson was born in Edmonton, London. He was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Balliol College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow of All Souls College ...

, the institute began as the Race Relations Unit of the

Royal Institute of International Affairs Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, Iowa, a cit ...

in 1952. Former

Governor of the United Provinces This is a list of governors of the United Provinces and the precursor offices associated with that title from the provisional establishment of the Governor of Agra in 1833 until the province was renamed as Uttar Pradesh when India became offi ...

Lord Hailey William Malcolm Hailey, 1st Baron Hailey, (15 February 1872 – 1 June 1969) known as Sir Malcolm Hailey between 1921 and 1936, was a British peer and administrator in British India. Education Hailey was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and ...

served as first chairman, while Philip Mason, formerly of the Indian Civil Service, served as its first director. The unit later became the Institute of Race Relations under the chairmanship of Sir

Alexander Carr-Saunders Sir Alexander Morris Carr-Saunders, (14 January 1886 – 6 October 1966) was an English biologist, sociologist, academic, and academic administrator. He was Director of the London School of Economics from 1937 to 1957. Early life Carr-Saunder ...

. Mason remained as director. The IRR's objectives as an educational charity are to promote, encourage and support the study and understanding of, and exchange information about, relations between different races and peoples and the conditions in which they live and work; to consider and advise on proposals and endeavours to improve race relations and these conditions; and to promote knowledge on questions related to race relations.

Early history

The founding of the IRR can be traced back to a 1950

Chatham House Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an independent policy institute headquartered in London. Its stated mission is to provide commentary on world events and offer solutions to global challenges. It is ...

speech by ''Sunday Times'' editor

, "Race Relations in the Commonwealth", in which he described Communism and race relations as the two transcendent problems. During its early life, the IRR was influenced in its work and funding by national strategic concerns about the future of Britain's ex-colonies. Conferences were jointly organised with the Institute for Strategic Studies, and the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

funded comparative policy-oriented research on the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia. Members of the Africa Private Enterprise Group (which included

Rio Tinto Rio Tinto, meaning "red river", may refer to: Businesses * Rio Tinto (corporation), an Anglo-Australian multinational mining and resources corporation ** Rio Tinto Alcan, based in Canada ** Rio Tinto Borax in America *** Rio Tinto Borax Mine, a ...

Barclays Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy drink, t ...

et al.) helped to fund IRR research into tropical Africa.Sivanandan, A.
"Race and resistance: the IRR Story"
''Race & Class'', Vol. 50, no. 2, 2008.Mullard, Chris, ''Race, Power and Resistance'', Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. In 1958, in response to "race riots" in

Nottingham Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east ...

and

Notting Hill Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road M ...

, IRR produced the first study of domestic race relations, ''Colour in Britain'' by James Wickendon. In 1963, the

Nuffield Foundation The Nuffield Foundation is a charitable trust established in 1943 by William Morris, Lord Nuffield, the founder of Morris Motors Ltd. It aims to improve social well-being by funding research and innovation projects in education and social pol ...

funded a five-year survey of British race relations, which commissioned 41 pieces of research, and published its findings as ''Colour and Citizenship'' by Jim Rose.Rose, E. J. B., et al, ''Colour and Citizenship'', Oxford University Press/IRR, 1969. Philip Mason, who had served as IRR director from 1952, retired in 1970 and was replaced by Professor

Hugh Tinker Hugh Russell Tinker (20 July 1921 – 15 April 2000) was a British historian. He taught politics at Lancaster University for many years. Biography Tinker was born on 20 July 1921 in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, to Clement Hugh Tinker and Gertru ...

. The IRR, centrally located in

Jermyn Street Jermyn Street is a one-way street in the St James's area of the City of Westminster in London, England. It is to the south of, parallel, and adjacent to Piccadilly. Jermyn Street is known as a street for gentlemen's-clothing retailers. Hist ...

in London’s West End, had more than 30 staff, a full book publishing programme, a library and information service and domestic and international research units.

Transformation

By the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, a period in which governments had begun to introduce restrictive immigration laws and politician

Enoch Powell John Enoch Powell, (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974) and was Minister of Health (1 ...

had made a series of emotive speeches on the subject of racial conflict, the staff and a section of the membership of the IRR began to question the type of research being undertaken at IRR, whether the organisation was in fact as impartial as it claimed to be and if working so closely with politicians and the government could benefit the victims of racism. This brought the staff and ultimately the membership into confrontation with the IRR’s Council. Robin Jenkins, an IRR researcher, criticised the methodology behind ''Colour and Citizenship'', which he described as spying on black people.Jenkins, R., ''The Production of Knowledge at the Institute of Race Relations'' (London, Independent Labour Party, 1971). The Council, which was composed of chief executives from many leading multinational corporations, politicians from the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

and

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...

, newspaper editors and leading academics,See the IRR's website . tried to have him sacked and to close down the monthly magazine ''

Race Today ''Race Today'' was a monthly (later bimonthly) British political magazine. Launched in 1969 by the Institute of Race Relations, it was from 1973 published by the ''Race Today'' Collective, which included figures such as Darcus Howe, Farrukh Dh ...

'', which was accused of bias. But at an extraordinary general meeting of members in April 1972 the Council was outvoted and resigned en masse. After the change of direction of IRR, neither the corporate sector nor the large foundations were willing to support IRR's work, and the organisation faced a funding crisis. It moved from the West End to a disused warehouse on

Pentonville Road Pentonville Road is a road in Central London that runs west to east from Kings Cross to City Road at The Angel, Islington. The road is part of the London Inner Ring Road and part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone. The road ...

, London, N1, where a tiny staff augmented by volunteers continued to run all its services. New sources of funding were found in the

World Council of Churches The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most juri ...

' Programme to Combat Racism, the

Methodist Church Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related Christian denomination, denominations of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John W ...

, the

Transnational Institute The Transnational Institute (TNI), is an international non-profit research and advocacy think tank that was founded in 1974, Amsterdam, Netherlands. According to their website, the organization promotes a "... just, democratic and sustainable wor ...

and local authorities, including the

Greater London Council The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...

. As a result of a fund-raising drive, the IRR was able in 1984 to purchase an office building in Leeke Street,

London Borough of Camden The London Borough of Camden () is a London borough in Inner London. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the area of the former boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and St ...

, which has been its home ever since.See the annual reports of the Institute of Relations and also Jenny Bourne
"IRR: the story continues"
''Race & Class'', Vol. 50, no. 2, October 2008.

Work programmes of the IRR

''Race & Class''

Race & Class ''Race & Class'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal on contemporary racism and imperialism. It is published quarterly by Sage Publications on behalf of the Institute of Race Relations and is interdisciplinary, publishing material across the h ...

'' – a journal on racism, empire and globalisation – continues to be published quarterly by the IRR through Sage Publications."Race & Class"
Sage Journals. Those who have served on its Editorial Board include

Eqbal Ahmad Eqbal Ahmad (1933 – 11 May 1999) was a Pakistani political scientist, writer and academic known for his anti-war activism, his support for resistance movements globally and academic contributions to the study of Near East. Born in Bihar, ...

John Berger John Peter Berger (; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism ''Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to the ...

Victoria Brittain Victoria Brittain (born 1942) is a British journalist and author who lived and worked for many years in Africa, the US, and Asia, including 20 years at ''The Guardian'', where she eventually became associate foreign editor. In the 1980s, she wor ...

Malcolm Caldwell James Alexander Malcolm Caldwell (27 September 1931 – 23 December 1978) was a Scottish academic and a prolific Marxist writer. He was a consistent critic of American foreign policy, a campaigner for Asian communist and socialist movements a ...

Jan Carew Jan Rynveld Carew (24 September 1920 – 6 December 2012) was a Guyana-born novelist, playwright, poet and educator, who lived at various times in The Netherlands, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Ghana, Jamaica, Canada and the United States. ...

Basil Davidson Basil Risbridger Davidson (9 November 1914 – 9 July 2010) was a British journalist and historian who wrote more than 30 books on African history and politics. According to two modern writers, "Davidson, a campaigning journalist whose fir ...

Thomas Lionel Hodgkin Thomas Lionel Hodgkin (3 April 1910 – 25 March 1982) was an English Marxist historian of Africa "who did more than anyone to establish the serious study of African history" in the UK. He was married to the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dorothy H ...

Orlando Letelier Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar (13 April 1932 – 21 September 1976) was a Chilean economist, politician and diplomat during the presidency of Salvador Allende. A refugee from the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, Letelier ...

Manning Marable William Manning Marable (May 13, 1950 – April 1, 2011) was an American professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University.Grimes, William"Manning Marable, Historian and Social Critic, Dies at 60" ''The Ne ...

Colin Prescod Colin Prescod (born 1944) is a British sociologist and cultural activist, originally from Trinidad, who in a career spanning five decades has worked as an academic, documentary filmmaker, theatre maker, and BBC Television commissioning editor, as ...

Cedric Robinson Cedric James Robinson (November 5, 1940 – June 5, 2016) was an American professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He headed the Department of Blac ...

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''White ...

and

Chris Searle Chris Searle (born 1 January 1944) is a British educator, poet, anti-racist activist and socialist. He has written widely on cricket, language, jazz, race and social justice, and has taught in Canada, England, Tobago, Mozambique and Grenada. He ...

."Race & Class — The Journal's Principles"
, Institute of Race Relations.

Pamphlets and reports

The IRR since its transformation carries out small-scale ''ad hoc'' pieces of research on pressing aspects of racism, the results of which have been published as pamphlets and reports. In 1979 the IRR produced ''Police Against Black People'', evidence to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure which detailed the police's inability to see black people as part of the community whose consent was needed for policing. This was updated as ''Policing Against Black People'' in 1987. Themes of institutional racism were dealt with in the pamphlets ''Race, Class and the State'' (1976) and ''From Immigration Control to Induced Repatriation'' (1978). Other reports have looked at racism and the press, black deaths in custody, school exclusions, the deaths of migrants, and asylum seekers. More recently, ''Spooked! How not to prevent

violent extremism Violent extremism is a form of extremism that condones and enacts violence with ideological or deliberate intent, such as religious or political violence. Violent extremist views can manifest in connection with a range of issues, including politics ...

'' (2009) examined the government’s counter-terrorism programme; and ''Integration, Islamophobia and Civil Rights in Europe'' was published in 2008.For a full list of IRR publications
see the IRR's online catalogue.

Black history

The IRR since the 1980s has been particularly concerned with promoting the study of black and anti-racist history – especially to inform the education of young people. To this end it has produced a series of ''Race & Class'' pamphlets on the experiences of black communities in the UK: ''From resistance to rebellion'' (1982), ''Southall: the birth of a black community'' (1981) and ''Newham: the forging of a black community'' (1991). Other pamphlets explore the intersection of race and labor, feminism, and other social issues.Bourne, Jenny. "Towards an Anti-Racists Feminism." ''Race & Class Pamphlet no. 9.'' Institute of Race Relations, 1984. Illustrated pamphlets, ''Roots of Racism'', ''Patterns of Racism'' and ''How Racism Came to Britain'', are still widely used in education, as are the multimedia CD-Rom ''Homebeats: struggles for racial justice'' (1997) and the DVD ''Struggles for Black Community'' (four film documentaries on the history of Ladbroke Grove, Southall, Cardiff and Leicester originally made by Race & Class Ltd sister company of IRRfor Channel 4 TV in 1982). A Black History Collection of pamphlets, journals and ephemera relating to black settlement and struggles from the 1950s to the 1980s is available for consultation by appointment at IRR.

European Race Audit

Since the 1990s a major part of the IRR's work has been the analysis of racism in Europe. In 1992, the IRR set up the European Race Audit, to trace emerging patterns of racism in Europe, including the growth of far-right parties and anti-immigration movements, government policies on immigration and race, policing and racial violence. The European Race Bulletin was produced as a print magazine until the end of 2009, when it was replaced by online briefing papers and downloadable reports. These have highlighted human rights abuses at the borders of Europe, the emergence of xeno-racism, the increase in deportations, the rise of Islamophobia and the challenge to multiculturalism. From 2008 to 2010, the IRR carried out a project on Alternative Voices on Integration in a number of European countries.

IRR News

At the core of IRR's work is IRR News, a daily-updated free news service giving information about the impact of racism and experience of refugees in the UK. The news service which is a key source of national information carries news stories, features, reviews and events listings by IRR staff, volunteers and contributors, and has links to external sources (media and official reports). As at 2011: Director: A. Sivanandan; Executive director:

Liz Fekete Liz Fekete is director of the Institute of Race Relations, where she has worked since 1982. She researches racism, Islamophobia and far-right extremism in Europe. She also speaks to the media on these topics. Fekete was a member of the Campaign Aga ...

; Chair: Colin Prescod; Vice-chair: Frances Webber. Other members of IRR's Council of management: Naima Bouteldja, Lee Bridges, Victoria Brittain, Tony Bunyan, David Edgar, Paul Grant,

Gholam Khiabany Gholam Khiabany is an Iranian-British media scholar and Reader in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is known for his works on media in the Middle East and the relationship between media and religion. Career Khiaban ...

Herman Ouseley Herman George Ouseley, Baron Ouseley Kt (born 24 March 1945) is a British parliamentarian, who has run public authorities, including local councils and is an adviser and reviewer of public services organisations. Lord Ouseley has expertise in ...

, Naina Patel, Fizza Qureshi, Danny Reilly, Cilius Victor.

References

External links

Institute of Race Relations
{{Authority control Race relations in the United Kingdom Political and economic think tanks based in the United Kingdom Think tanks established in 1958 Organisations affiliated with Chatham House 1958 establishments in the United Kingdom