Race, Policy and Riots

Speaker: Suresh Grover
The Monitoring Group


APOLOGIES - postponed until further notice!

Room A201 Broadcasting Place
Leeds Metropolitan University

Suresh Grover is the Director of The Monitoring Group, the leading national and independent ant-racist casework, advocacy and developmental organization in the United Kingdom. Suresh has been active in the civil rights field for over thirty years. The Guardian Newspaper has described him as one of the hundred most influential people in Social Policy in the UK. He is one of the leading exponents of family led empowerment and justice campaigns in the UK. He has coordinated many national campaigns including those around the killings of Blair Peach, Stephen Lawrence, Zahid Mubarek and Victoria Climbie. The latter three led to Public Judicial Inquiries and consequent changes in legislation, social policies and practices. Suresh was also involved in the struggles around the Bradford 12, the Bhopal Gas Disaster and the Gujarat Genocide. Since the 7/7 London Bombings he has worked with victim families of the carnage as well as communities and individuals affected by indiscriminate state-led policies in London, Midlands and the North.

Suresh’s talk for Taking Soundings in Leeds will analyse nature of violent racism and policing in British society over the last three decades. It will examine the responses of the State and Civil Society by reflecting on some of the major events in the UK, including those involving violent public disturbances, race murders, deaths in custody, and criminalisation of communities. It will chart the journey of radical, antiracist or civil rights activists for a more inclusive and equal society.

1st Readers’ Forum

Just before 6pm, Wednesday 10 March, The Boardroom (ground floor), Broadcasting Place, Woodhouse Lane. Leeds Met

Reading - Sally Watson, ‘Shifting Sands’, New Left Review, Feb 2010: http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2817