Newham Monitoring Project

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Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) is a grassroots community-based anti-racist organisation in the borough of Newham, East London, England working against racial discrimination / violence, police misconduct and around civil rights issues. It provides advice, support, advocacy and a 24-hour emergency helpline to members of the black community facing racism. It also provides community outreach / educational projects and campaign work around issues arising from its cases and/or pertinent to the black community.

Since its foundation it has always pursued one simple aim - the right to a life free from harassment, safe from attack.

The patron of NMP is the poet and author Benjamin Zephaniah.

1 NMP's roots
2 NMP today
3 External links
4 Related links
5 References

[edit] NMP's roots

NMP was formed in 1980 out of a community campaign for justice following the racist murder of a local teenager, Akhtar Ali Baig in East Ham, East London. NMP's initial role was to monitor racist attacks and the response of statutory authorities such as the police to these attacks. In doing so, NMP was drawn to support community campaigns for progressive social change and justice. In particular, NMP supported the right of self defence by members of the black community in response to racist attacks.

Shortly after NMP's formation, the organisation was monitoring not just racist attacks, but the nature of police harassment and misconduct that was vented upon the black community. NMP began documenting the nature of police racism and how that institutional racism in turn shaped the criminalisation of black people.

In 1983, as a counter to the systemic failures of the police and other statutory authorities to address racial violence, NMP initiated a 24-hour emergency helpline run by NMP trained volunteers.

NMP always extended its fight against police and state racism to include fascism, rather than divorcing anti-fascist struggles from the experiences and self-organisation of the black community.

Although self-organisation is central to NMP's ethos, it works closely with principled white anti-racists that respect the black experience, for NMP has never seen the fight against racism in isolation from wider demands for social justice.

Over the course of twenty five years NMP has been actively involved in many justice campaigns such as those of the Newham 7 and Newham 8, Stephen Lawrence and many involving deaths in police custody such as Ibrahima Sey and Shiji Lapite. It has also worked alongside many other organisations working with the black community such as Newham Asian Womens' Project, Southall Black Sisters and the United Friends and Families Campaign, other organisations within the anti-racist movement such as the Institute of Race Relations and Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF) as well as organisations working on a broader level for justice such as Inquest.

[edit] NMP today

NMP continues as one of only a handful of independent community organisations providing specialist casework support around racial discrimination in the UK. This is despite research ^[1] pointing to the necessity of independent community groups, such as NMP, in providing support not available from racial equality councils, housing departments or police, to the black community to combat racist incidents.^[2]

NMP believes that today racism still remains rooted in the very fabric of British society, as shown by the recent anti-terrorism legislation and stop and search powers, which disproportionately affect black communities.

NMP continues to build community campaigns that arise from its casework. It maintains that the experiences of its individual cases reflect the broader reality of racism, therefore campaigns rooted in this way have a real base within the black community and are able to mobilise support in a way that high profile but largely media-focused campaigns cannot.

In recent years, NMP has supported other active campaigns such as that lead by the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian man shot to death by police in 2005 during an anti-terror operation for which no individual officer has ever been charged.

NMP has also supported the families involved in the near fatal 2 June 2006 Forest Gate raid, ^[3] standing alongside the local community in condemning the actions of the police and calling for a full and fair independent investigation and for officers to be held accountable. NMP worked with a number of other local organisations to organise a demonstration about this issue on 18 June 2006. ^[4]

NMP submitted a report to the Metropolitan Police Authority criticising the Metropolitan Police Service's media and communications handling of this incident.

Recent NMP projects have also involved a series of events for the local community with Newham Bookshop (a local independent progressive bookshop) holding 'in conversation' evenings with authors such as Moazzam Begg, Rageh Omar, Gary Younge, Jocelyn Hurndall who is the mother of Tom Hurndall and Clive Stafford Smith [1] ^[5]. These events highlight issues of global concern which resonate with issues arising from NMP's casework around racism, human rights, policing and justice.