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| This “pickaninny" ain’t smiling. |
Throughout the last few years, and indeed, during this general election, we’ve all heard Prime Minister Boris Johnson regularly accused of prompting hostile, racist and religious sentiments, animus, hatred and division.
This is usually evidenced by references to various offensive comments, and you can take your pick; there are many to choose from.
I don’t have the time to cover all of Boris’s rap sheet on racism, misogyny, homophobia, and disablism. His is a cornucopia, a literal potpourri of prejudices and peccadilloes, that would require many volumes of reporting, equal in size to Homer’s Iliad or Tolstoy’s War and Peace, so I make no apologies for my tight focus on Black, African and Caribbean people.
While Boris reveals gleefully causing offence to women, gay, disabled people and Muslim communities, all in equal measure, these issues have at least been thoroughly ventilated and condemned elsewhere.
In reality, criticisms of his profound anti-black racism are usually reduced to name-calling, whilst the structural and institutional racism increased massively under his watch as London Mayor barely gets a mention.
So, I have chosen to focus on the racial inequality faced by London’s African and Caribbean communities, the least resourced and most politically marginalised community, certainly in the capital, if not the entire country.
I believe that much of Boris’s classical racism is camouflaged by his undoubted charm and witty repartee. This kind of racism becomes so much more insidious and damaging as a result.
Don’t let that plastic, million-dollar smile confuse you. Be under no illusion; Boris is a brutal, right-wing, classical racist.
Suave, funny and mild entertaining, Johnson is the ultimate politician. A man who could sell you an all-inclusive trip to the very gates of hell itself and make you enjoy every step of the journey.
He is the ultimate smiling assassin, the most courteous and charming racist you’ll ever meet.
I’ve seen him around Black people, and the way he and his sycophantic Tory black fan club move always reminds me the old school racism, where Massa is benign, and the slaves are always happy, Watch this racist 1960’s advert, the man from Delmonte and in many ways Boris is that man.
When it comes to demonstrating Boris’s racism, it’s absolutely critical for anti-racists and progressives to include the totality of his horrendous track record, which saw everyday racism in the capital, massively amplified and societal and structural racial inequality increased.
Let’s not reduce the seriousness, breadth and depth of this man’s racism to name-calling and race-baiting. These are serious issues but, from a black perspective, represent the least of his offences.
Boris’s record on race whilst Mayor of London.
OK, let’s get into it...in 2002, Boris, writing in the Telegraph and referring to a trip by the then PM Tony Blair to Africa, wrote;
“What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England. It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies,” he wrote, referring to African people as having “watermelon smiles.”
That same year, Boris as editor of the right-wing rag, the Spectator, penned an article titled:
“Africa is a mess, but we can’t blame colonialism”. Boris states that Africa is a “blot” and wrote that the entire continent and its peoples would be much better off if the dark continent was re-colonised all over again.
“The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge anymore…the best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.”
Now in full flow and enjoying the ensuing controversy at the time, Boris described Papua New Guineans as prone to “cannibalism” and “chief-killing” in his column in a Telegraph article published in 2006.
In 2008, Boris, again as Spectator editor, personally signed off a toxic article, a literal ode to white supremacist thinking, by publishing pseudo-scientific garbage.
This reprehensible article rehashed that old but nevertheless perennial racist trope that seeks to ‘prove’ black people have lower IQs,
“Orientals…have larger brains and higher IQ scores”, adding that “Blacks are at the other pole.”
The wretched article reaffirms the age-old, racist trope that intelligence is racially defined and that black people are genetically as thick as planks.
The PM, whilst serving as the former Foreign Secretary under PM Theresa May, was reported to the Equalities Commission last year after comparing Muslim women who wear burqas to “pillar boxes and bank robbers.”
Boris wrote
“It is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes,” adding that any female student who appeared at school or in a lecture “looking like a bank robber” should be asked to remove it.
Again, whilst editor of the Spectator, one of Boris’s fanboy journalists at the time, and remarkably now the current Tory election candidate for South Cambridgeshire, Anthony Brown, wrote;
“It is not through letting in terrorists that the government’s policy of mass migration – especially from the third world – will claim the most lives. It is through letting in too many germs,” talking about the spread of HIV, he added,
Again, whilst editor of the Spectator, one of Boris’s fanboy journalists at the time, and remarkably now the current Tory election candidate for South Cambridgeshire, Anthony Brown, wrote;
“It is not through letting in terrorists that the government’s policy of mass migration – especially from the third world – will claim the most lives. It is through letting in too many germs,” talking about the spread of HIV, he added,
“...curbing the influx of HIV immigrants” would be a better public health approach to tackling HIV than telling people to wear condoms.
Brown is a former lobbyist for the British Bankers’ Association and a journalist for the Times and Observer. He became Johnson’s Head of Policy at City Hall and became a top aide to Boris as PM. Today he is the Tory candidate for South Cambridgeshire and enjoys the PM’s full and unqualified support.
Boris’s support for this candidate speaks volumes. He only cares about winning and will make a deal with Balzezebub himself if he thinks, for one moment, it would help him win.
Whilst I agree with the justified criticism of Johnson regarding name-calling, these are, after all, almost without exception, wholly offensive and gratuitous insults designed to fan the flames of widespread racism, religious bigotry and petty English xenophobia. But, however repugnant they are, they don’t tell the whole story of Johnson’s time as London Mayor, and neither do they reveal the depth of his barely concealed arrogance, contempt and hostility toward black people, Muslims and other groups, however sweetly delivered.
Sighting racist or religious name-calling is necessary, but not a sufficient, response to Johnson’s racism.
The current political and media focus on these comments, as opposed to the genuine structural and institutional racism inflicted on black and Muslim communities that can be identified through the most preliminary and basic research, leaves serious activists in the black community perplexed.
The obsessive focus on these issues is symbolic of nature and the preferred white priorities of our liberal media and anti-racist movements in the UK.
I’ve been disappointed with the left and the Labour movement’s almost exclusive focus on these comments, mainly when much more damaging evidence is available.
This is lazy anti-racism born of a liberal white perspective.
This focus reflects the misinformed, sometimes confused and oft times liberal political analysis about the nature of British racism.
Such an emphasis has a tendency to obscure the real and substantive nature of the Black experience of racism in the UK, preferring to focus on crude racism, whilst ignoring the very much potent and damaging structural racism, a perspective at its very core that is essentially counterproductive, reactionary and regressive.
So, rather than looking at Johnson’s catastrophic policy record as London Mayor, we are offered these racial and religious epithets as evidence of his prejudice rather than the substantive, contextual structural racism and routine discrimination reflected in his policy and spending priorities.
We must and can do better.
2008.
As Mayor Johnson declared his commitment to using his influence with the city of London to secure sponsorship of boxing gyms and youth academies across the capital. That did not happen; the City did not respond to the Mayor’s invitation. At the publication of his youth strategy n November 2008, which sought to tackle youth violence, he stated;
“Tackling serious youth crime and the tragic murders of young people has been my most immediate priority since becoming Mayor.”
He added, “My action plan will provide the London-wide leadership and coordination that has been absent in tackling youth crime.”
Bizarrely all of the projects that were subsequently funded were located in that well-known ‘gang hotspot’ of Shoreditch.
And, as the accounts for the Mayor’s Fund (2009 -2016) show, over 80% of the budget in its first year of operation was spent on management consultants and administration.
And nothing much changed in subsequent years.
This much-vaunted flagship charity simply disappeared from public view. Boris couldn’t deliver on his promises to Londoners and failed to convince the City and rich chums to invest in his scheme. In the end, the Fund was shut down, having failed to deliver on any of his gold-leafed promises to London,
Brown is a former lobbyist for the British Bankers’ Association and a journalist for the Times and Observer. He became Johnson’s Head of Policy at City Hall and became a top aide to Boris as PM. Today he is the Tory candidate for South Cambridgeshire and enjoys the PM’s full and unqualified support.
Boris’s support for this candidate speaks volumes. He only cares about winning and will make a deal with Balzezebub himself if he thinks, for one moment, it would help him win.
Whilst I agree with the justified criticism of Johnson regarding name-calling, these are, after all, almost without exception, wholly offensive and gratuitous insults designed to fan the flames of widespread racism, religious bigotry and petty English xenophobia. But, however repugnant they are, they don’t tell the whole story of Johnson’s time as London Mayor, and neither do they reveal the depth of his barely concealed arrogance, contempt and hostility toward black people, Muslims and other groups, however sweetly delivered.
Sighting racist or religious name-calling is necessary, but not a sufficient, response to Johnson’s racism.
The current political and media focus on these comments, as opposed to the genuine structural and institutional racism inflicted on black and Muslim communities that can be identified through the most preliminary and basic research, leaves serious activists in the black community perplexed.
The obsessive focus on these issues is symbolic of nature and the preferred white priorities of our liberal media and anti-racist movements in the UK.
I’ve been disappointed with the left and the Labour movement’s almost exclusive focus on these comments, mainly when much more damaging evidence is available.
This is lazy anti-racism born of a liberal white perspective.
This focus reflects the misinformed, sometimes confused and oft times liberal political analysis about the nature of British racism.
Such an emphasis has a tendency to obscure the real and substantive nature of the Black experience of racism in the UK, preferring to focus on crude racism, whilst ignoring the very much potent and damaging structural racism, a perspective at its very core that is essentially counterproductive, reactionary and regressive.
So, rather than looking at Johnson’s catastrophic policy record as London Mayor, we are offered these racial and religious epithets as evidence of his prejudice rather than the substantive, contextual structural racism and routine discrimination reflected in his policy and spending priorities.
We must and can do better.
2008.
As Mayor Johnson declared his commitment to using his influence with the city of London to secure sponsorship of boxing gyms and youth academies across the capital. That did not happen; the City did not respond to the Mayor’s invitation. At the publication of his youth strategy n November 2008, which sought to tackle youth violence, he stated;
“Tackling serious youth crime and the tragic murders of young people has been my most immediate priority since becoming Mayor.”
He added, “My action plan will provide the London-wide leadership and coordination that has been absent in tackling youth crime.”
Bizarrely all of the projects that were subsequently funded were located in that well-known ‘gang hotspot’ of Shoreditch.
And, as the accounts for the Mayor’s Fund (2009 -2016) show, over 80% of the budget in its first year of operation was spent on management consultants and administration.
And nothing much changed in subsequent years.
This much-vaunted flagship charity simply disappeared from public view. Boris couldn’t deliver on his promises to Londoners and failed to convince the City and rich chums to invest in his scheme. In the end, the Fund was shut down, having failed to deliver on any of his gold-leafed promises to London,
As always with Boris, in the beginning, the initial policy vision was delivered with passion, vim and vigour. But, first, he outlined his commitment to getting his wealthy chums in the city to contribute millions to his Mayoral Fund.
The fund stated that it:
The fund stated that it:
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| Tell us what to do, Massa? |
“…aims to improve the life chances and aspirations of disadvantaged children, young people and their families in London.”
The fund was an unmitigated disaster, much like his Garden Bridge or his unwavering support for the disgraced Kids Company, which collapsed after receiving £47m in funding over 7 years.
Can you see any national British Black organisation receiving that kind of funding?
Of course not; we are simply deemed too idiotic, incompetent or untrustworthy to be in receipt of such large amounts of cash.
The establishment approach to working in Black communities is, at its core, an all too real reflection of the profoundly patronising and condescending colonial missionary approach of old.
This results in a strong funding preference towards middle-class white, mainly Christian charitable organisations sent to help us solve our problems. It assumes that black people are both incapable and pathological. For example, name me one African and Caribbean organisation/charity in London or anywhere in the UK that has received anywhere close to the same level of funding as Kids Company, Barnado’s or Red Thread charities, all of whom have been commissioned to save our incompetent black souls?
Too many, like the youth charity Red Thread, for example, don’t have a single black person on their Board of Trustees and have no genuine relationships with London’s black organisations or communities. The perfect qualifications for working in our communities.
After all, anyone can work in our communities, and the current climate sees black communities marginalised to being the beneficiaries of white charities; with a little tokenistic black cladding, a smattering of junior black staff is frankly more than enough to qualify you for a million-pound grant, to save us poor blackies.
Jan 2011
As Mayor of London, Boris refused to either formally acknowledge or attend the 30th anniversary of the 1981 tragedy of the New Cross fire, the largest racist mass murder in British history, despite being invited to do so and causing grievous offence to many communities. Once again, displaying a casual disregard for the huge community trauma and loss felt by British Black communities due to this horrendous racist massacre.
In 2011, Boris was repeatedly warned after the death in police custody of international reggae artist Smiley Culture. But, unfortunately, he chose to ignore the reality of deteriorating relations between black communities and the Met Police. Six months later, this would erupt onto our streets, with devastating consequences for the entire country.
Let that sink in and resonate. August 2011 was not inevitable; quite the reverse. In fact, 2011 was entirely avoidable.
In a city where almost half the population is BAME, any politician who tries to run the City like racism doesn’t exist will force us all to pay a heavy price.
Black communities, already under enormous pressure due to austerity, were not going to simply allow a return to the days of the SUS law.
The lesson here is that ignoring racism in London doesn’t come cheap.
June 2011
Remember Boris’s 1000 black men for 1000 black boys mentoring programme?
This was a Mayoral contract put out by City Hall. A winning Black-led bid to deliver this project was agreed as being the best bid after being assessed by the independent Greater London Authority procurement process.
Despite winning this important contract, the Black bid was eventually rejected in favour of two white organisations, one of which, the London Action Trust (LAT) Boris Johnson, was, at the time, the patron of being awarded this contract.
This conflict of interest was simply ignored by the GLA. Instead, it was a GLA officer who blew the whistle...
Once Boris was fully aware that an independent black bid was successful, he ensured his office, and senior staff intervened directly in the GLA commissioning process.
They rejected the GLA officer’s recommendation to award the black group the mentoring contract.
Boris’s cronies then even refused, upon officer recommendation, to look at the second-ranked black bid, preferring the third and fourth-ranked white contract contenders.
They then brought them together to form an ad-hoc consortium, awarded the contract.
The Mayor’s office explained their interference as a result of further ‘due diligence’ issues as regards the black group bidders, even though one of them was financially backed by a multi-million-pound charity.
As it turns out, this proved to be deeply ironic, as one of the winning contractors, LAT, was on the verge of bankruptcy. LAT literally collapsed into insolvency just after being awarded the contract by Boris. So then despite all the grandiose promises made by Boris, the whole programme was quietly run down amid London’s heightening concerns about knife crime.
Deaths In Police Custody...
Too many, like the youth charity Red Thread, for example, don’t have a single black person on their Board of Trustees and have no genuine relationships with London’s black organisations or communities. The perfect qualifications for working in our communities.
After all, anyone can work in our communities, and the current climate sees black communities marginalised to being the beneficiaries of white charities; with a little tokenistic black cladding, a smattering of junior black staff is frankly more than enough to qualify you for a million-pound grant, to save us poor blackies.
Jan 2011
As Mayor of London, Boris refused to either formally acknowledge or attend the 30th anniversary of the 1981 tragedy of the New Cross fire, the largest racist mass murder in British history, despite being invited to do so and causing grievous offence to many communities. Once again, displaying a casual disregard for the huge community trauma and loss felt by British Black communities due to this horrendous racist massacre.
In 2011, Boris was repeatedly warned after the death in police custody of international reggae artist Smiley Culture. But, unfortunately, he chose to ignore the reality of deteriorating relations between black communities and the Met Police. Six months later, this would erupt onto our streets, with devastating consequences for the entire country.
Let that sink in and resonate. August 2011 was not inevitable; quite the reverse. In fact, 2011 was entirely avoidable.
In a city where almost half the population is BAME, any politician who tries to run the City like racism doesn’t exist will force us all to pay a heavy price.
Black communities, already under enormous pressure due to austerity, were not going to simply allow a return to the days of the SUS law.
The lesson here is that ignoring racism in London doesn’t come cheap.
June 2011
Remember Boris’s 1000 black men for 1000 black boys mentoring programme?
This was a Mayoral contract put out by City Hall. A winning Black-led bid to deliver this project was agreed as being the best bid after being assessed by the independent Greater London Authority procurement process.
Despite winning this important contract, the Black bid was eventually rejected in favour of two white organisations, one of which, the London Action Trust (LAT) Boris Johnson, was, at the time, the patron of being awarded this contract.
This conflict of interest was simply ignored by the GLA. Instead, it was a GLA officer who blew the whistle...
Once Boris was fully aware that an independent black bid was successful, he ensured his office, and senior staff intervened directly in the GLA commissioning process.
They rejected the GLA officer’s recommendation to award the black group the mentoring contract.
Boris’s cronies then even refused, upon officer recommendation, to look at the second-ranked black bid, preferring the third and fourth-ranked white contract contenders.
They then brought them together to form an ad-hoc consortium, awarded the contract.
The Mayor’s office explained their interference as a result of further ‘due diligence’ issues as regards the black group bidders, even though one of them was financially backed by a multi-million-pound charity.
As it turns out, this proved to be deeply ironic, as one of the winning contractors, LAT, was on the verge of bankruptcy. LAT literally collapsed into insolvency just after being awarded the contract by Boris. So then despite all the grandiose promises made by Boris, the whole programme was quietly run down amid London’s heightening concerns about knife crime.
Deaths In Police Custody...
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| Deaths in Police Custody Over 30 years. |
The incidence of suspicious deaths of Black men in Met police custody; the preposterous inquest verdict into the shooting of Mark Duggan, the green lighting of increased racial profiling and stop and search rates; the fact the Met reported more violent arrests of black people than any other ethnic group in London; all these issues arose as a direct consequence of an increase in institutional racism in policing facilitated by Boris.
Boris personally proposed and sanctioned this dismantling of race equality policies and procedures and personally signed off on introducing the thoroughly discredited law of Joint Enterprise during his time in office.
Under his Mayorality, the experience of Met Black police officers suffering disproportionate disciplinary actions and being denied promotions saw a vast and unprecedented increase in the number of officers leaving the Met.
Public complaints about the racism of police officers trebled between the Johnson Mayoral years, 2008 and 2012
Put simply, Tory’s ideological hatred of anti-racism, the resulting arrogance and complacency of managing multicultural London, and swinging austerity all combined to amplify racism and eradicated almost all the gains made as a result of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.
The tragic and costly results meant that the invaluable lessons learned from the Lawrence inquiry were aggressively dismantled or simply left to wither on the policy vine by Johnson,
Critically important policies, blood-soaked and born of bitter experience for London, were now being denigrated and described as “political correctness gone mad”.
These basic and fundamental mistakes by Boris would cost the country dear.
As a result, black Londoners’ trust and confidence have haemorrhaged in the Met Police, and we saw an exodus of black senior officers leave the Met, a loss from which London has never really recovered.
Under Boris Black’s promotion in the Met was reversed.
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The current figures above show fewer black officers today than a decade ago, |
The Met had more black senior officers in 2005 than 2016, at the end of Boris’s reign as Mayor.
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| The stop and search figures remain disproportionate up until today. |
It’s the simple, unvarnished truth that Boris’s ramping up of stop and search. The abandonment of the Lawrence Inquiry recommendations gave the green light to the aggressive return of institutional police racism and, at minimum, contributed and, in my view, caused the 2011 riots that saw the tragic loss of life and cost the country millions.
Black concerns about the overall effectiveness of police stop and search have always been high, and we have always been very clear about
the extent to which the Mets indiscriminate
use of power alienates entire communities.
And things haven’t improved much since then.
However, the massive upsurge in the use of stop and search has other unseen and profound consequences. Levels of black community trust and confidence in the Met, already precipitously low, descended into the gutter under Boris.
And things are getting worse...
And things haven’t improved much since then.
However, the massive upsurge in the use of stop and search has other unseen and profound consequences. Levels of black community trust and confidence in the Met, already precipitously low, descended into the gutter under Boris.
And things are getting worse...
It was as if the Mayor had poured kerosene on an already burning fire.
This alienation is profound, and here’s why; the rate at which the number of black people arrested in stop and search encounters and who were subsequently found not to have done anything wrong – in police parlance requiring “no further action”, literally exploded.
The numbers were and remain staggering and undermine police claims about the intelligence-led use of the power, leading to improved arrest rates.
Far from it, arrest rates are falling as stop and search increases. The use of this power is very much governed by the law of ever-diminishing returns.
The data shows that in 2014-15, a total of 82,183 citizens in London were arrested and then released without charge.
Of that number, 12,564 were Asian, and 22,275 were black.
This alienation is profound, and here’s why; the rate at which the number of black people arrested in stop and search encounters and who were subsequently found not to have done anything wrong – in police parlance requiring “no further action”, literally exploded.
The numbers were and remain staggering and undermine police claims about the intelligence-led use of the power, leading to improved arrest rates.
Far from it, arrest rates are falling as stop and search increases. The use of this power is very much governed by the law of ever-diminishing returns.
The data shows that in 2014-15, a total of 82,183 citizens in London were arrested and then released without charge.
Of that number, 12,564 were Asian, and 22,275 were black.
Add in the “mixed” category of 4,925 and the other non-white ethnic groups, such as the Chinese, and you get a BAME total of 43,022.
White Londoner’s numbers were 37,047, or 45% of the total.
Under Boris, we witnessed the return to the pre-Macpherson levels of mass criminalisation of black communities by a predominantly white male police force.
The result was that we saw the aggressive and oppressive culture of institutional racism return with a vengeance.
Here’s what Boris said about the use of the term institutional racism in 2010:
“Now, however, as a consequence of rhetorical inflation, the term is used too glibly as a blanket indictment and, as such, has become a barrier to reform.
Paradoxically, institutional racism has become a millstone around the neck of the MPS, obscuring our understanding of the nature of any continuing endemic racism in that or any other large organisation.”
Complaints of police racism increased massively under Boris - though fewer police officers were found guilty.
In 2013 the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s investigation into eight Met officers caught sending each other profoundly offensive and racist texts uncovered the fact that the Met, under Boris Johnson’s leadership, had failed to properly investigate public complaints of police officer racism.
It found that 511 racism complaints were made against officers from April 2011 to May 2012. The IPCC found that Met’s race ‘investigations’ comprised simply asking the officers to respond by email, accepting their routine denial, and finding against the complainant.
They also found the Met issued a “standard, generic apology” regardless of what the investigation found of “very little value”.
The IPCC concluded;
White Londoner’s numbers were 37,047, or 45% of the total.
Under Boris, we witnessed the return to the pre-Macpherson levels of mass criminalisation of black communities by a predominantly white male police force.
The result was that we saw the aggressive and oppressive culture of institutional racism return with a vengeance.
Here’s what Boris said about the use of the term institutional racism in 2010:
Paradoxically, institutional racism has become a millstone around the neck of the MPS, obscuring our understanding of the nature of any continuing endemic racism in that or any other large organisation.”
Complaints of police racism increased massively under Boris - though fewer police officers were found guilty.
In 2013 the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s investigation into eight Met officers caught sending each other profoundly offensive and racist texts uncovered the fact that the Met, under Boris Johnson’s leadership, had failed to properly investigate public complaints of police officer racism.
It found that 511 racism complaints were made against officers from April 2011 to May 2012. The IPCC found that Met’s race ‘investigations’ comprised simply asking the officers to respond by email, accepting their routine denial, and finding against the complainant.
They also found the Met issued a “standard, generic apology” regardless of what the investigation found of “very little value”.
The IPCC concluded;
“Too often, complaints are dismissed without proper investigation or resolution, complainants are not properly engaged with, and lessons are not learned.”
This report was just the latest dent in Boris’s claims to have strained every sinew to eradicate and clean up police racism. His actions shattered an already fragile level of black community confidence in policing.
A Com res poll published in 2013 and reported by the BBC found that 38% of Black Londoners believed the Met was still institutionally racist, some 14 years after the Lawrence report and one year into Boris’s second term as Mayor of London.
July 2011
Mayor ensures a £1.3m contract is awarded to a charity (London Action Trust) he was Patron of and failed to declare his interest. In addition, Boris unfairly discriminated against a consortium of black businesses that legitimately won a GLA contract tender to tackle youth violence but were subsequently and unfairly ruled out due to direct Mayoral interference in the supposedly independent GLA procurement and contracting process.
On July 20th 2011, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson launched The Mayor’s Mentoring Scheme. Speaking outside the Epicentre in Leyton, the Mayor told Londoners:
“Through no fault of their own, there are some young boys in our city in desperate need of a strong, male role model. I want my scheme to reach out to those who may fall prey to the lure of gangs and violence and place them with positive, hard-working males who can help guide them,”
Adding;
“... the influence of a positive role model can be immeasurable, and I’d like to thank all the outstanding volunteers who have come forward and encouraged even more people to get on board.”
The London Black Boys Mentoring Scheme bid was the winning bid, agreed and supported by GLA Officers. The programme was intended to meet the needs of London’s black communities and, more specifically, young black men at risk of criminality or violence.
In the end, Boris’ preferred and personally selected contractor, LAT, collapsed and London’s black communities were left once again brutally betrayed by this egregious and garrulous Mayor.
The London Black Boys Mentoring Scheme bid was the winning bid, agreed and supported by GLA Officers. The programme was intended to meet the needs of London’s black communities and, more specifically, young black men at risk of criminality or violence.
In the end, Boris’ preferred and personally selected contractor, LAT, collapsed and London’s black communities were left once again brutally betrayed by this egregious and garrulous Mayor.
August 2011
Boris refuses to recognise or acknowledge the United Nations, International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade celebrated on August 23rd.
Boris slashed London’s Black History Month budget of £136,000 to £ 10,000, and eventually, he transferred the remaining funding to London’s American Independence Day celebrations.
No surprise there, at a Young People’s Question Time held on September 17th 2009, Munira Mirza, then Mayoral Advisor on Arts and Culture said:
“Sometimes, it can get a bit boring, doing slavery every year”.
Boris was also responsible for withdrawing funding for a wide range of important black economic initiatives and noteworthy cultural events that acknowledged and promised multiculturalism and the positive contributions of black communities to the life of the capital. Almost all were scrapped,
This included the prestigious and well-supported London’s Black History Season, Africa Day, Transatlantic Slavery Memorial Day, and the immensely popular anti-racist Rise Music festivals.
Criminal actions, when one considers the subsequent and ongoing rise in racist and religious attacks that we see in London.
This resulted in the marginalisation of London’s black communities from the city’s cultural life centre. The incredibly well-attended and important London Schools and the Black Child Conference focused on tackling racism in education and have been organised annually by Diane Abbott MP since 2002. was scrapped in 2011 under Boris.
2012
Under Boris, London’s Black youth unemployment was at the highest level in a generation, and adult rates rose fast due to austerity and public sector redundancies.
We also saw massive black voluntary sector project closures due to City Hall and local authority cuts, with consequent increases in rates of child poverty, deprivation and crime in the capital.
Under Boris Johnson, Black youth had the highest unemployment rate of any ethnic group in Europe.
In 2012 black youth unemployment at 55% rose higher than Palestinian youth unemployment in the West Bank Gaza, which stood at 46% in 2012
The effect on our communities was and can be seen to be devasting, as rates of ill health, disease, mental instability and poverty have risen to catastrophic levels. London’s Black school exclusions rose massively between 2008 and 2016 and still today, drive, just as it did back then, the school-to-prison pipeline.
2012
Under Boris, London’s Black youth unemployment was at the highest level in a generation, and adult rates rose fast due to austerity and public sector redundancies.
We also saw massive black voluntary sector project closures due to City Hall and local authority cuts, with consequent increases in rates of child poverty, deprivation and crime in the capital.
Under Boris Johnson, Black youth had the highest unemployment rate of any ethnic group in Europe.
In 2012 black youth unemployment at 55% rose higher than Palestinian youth unemployment in the West Bank Gaza, which stood at 46% in 2012
The effect on our communities was and can be seen to be devasting, as rates of ill health, disease, mental instability and poverty have risen to catastrophic levels. London’s Black school exclusions rose massively between 2008 and 2016 and still today, drive, just as it did back then, the school-to-prison pipeline.
Next, and after the utter folly of the corruption of Operation Trident and the illegal use of Joint Enterprise, came Boris’s and the Metropolitan Police’s next big idea, the Matrix predictive policing model, that listed actual and suspected gang members.
This database was found to have seriously breached data protection laws, which caused significant “damage and distress” to black communities. The next slice of institutional racism established under Boris was the predictive policing model,
The Matrix, as exposed by Stafford Scott in January 2019, is a terrifying tool of police oppression and a pure form of institutional racism that aggressively targets innocent black people for special police and local authority attention.
Black youth who have committed no crimes are being sanctioned, curfewed, kicked out of their parental homes, having had their parent’s tenancy threatened, and lost their jobs due to being placed on the Matrix.
Once again, Boris’s racist policies inflicted real pain on London’s black communities. This was the formal conclusion of an investigation by the UK’s data protection watchdog.
This database was found to have seriously breached data protection laws, which caused significant “damage and distress” to black communities. The next slice of institutional racism established under Boris was the predictive policing model,
The Matrix, as exposed by Stafford Scott in January 2019, is a terrifying tool of police oppression and a pure form of institutional racism that aggressively targets innocent black people for special police and local authority attention.
Black youth who have committed no crimes are being sanctioned, curfewed, kicked out of their parental homes, having had their parent’s tenancy threatened, and lost their jobs due to being placed on the Matrix.
Once again, Boris’s racist policies inflicted real pain on London’s black communities. This was the formal conclusion of an investigation by the UK’s data protection watchdog.
Boris had turned what was, at that time, the Mets flagship community-led/police campaign to reduce gun violence and armed criminality from working with communities to a proactive unit that actively targeted and racially harassed black youth.
As one of Operation Trident’s Independent Advisory Group and its founding chair, I can tell you that back then, Operation Trident was seen as the community partnership jewel in the Mets community policing crown. IAG
Trident had the highest public confidence rating among London’s black communities of any Met police unit, ever, period.
The difference is that Trident was a community-led controlled campaign with a £350.000 annual event and promotion budget. Community control ensured policing was proportional, professional and trusted and therefore enjoyed community consent.
Boris and the then Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, morphed Trident, a flagship community-led initiative, into an aggressive anti-black gang unit that went on to racially profile and target black communities and ultimately went on to shoot Mark Duggan in 2011.
Mayor Boris and his then Policing and Crime Commissioner, Mr Stephen Greenhalgh, not only turned a blind eye to racial profiling within the Met but positively demanded more.
The next big Mayoral idea was the doomed Operation Shield. This extraordinary high-profile community engagement strategy died a death from the get-go. From Brixton to Tottenham, wherever Boris took the public consultation, he was challenged and condemned for his lack of delivery, open racism, and failure to hold the Met to a proper account.
Ramping up Police use of stop and search.
From the year the Mayor got elected in 2008 to 2011. he increased stop and search by a massive additional 200,000 stops per year.
He personally ordered, facilitated the abolishment of local police accountability groups in London, established by the late Lord Scarman after the 1981 uprisings, and provided a vital role in facilitating policing by consent at a local level.
In addition, Boris’s abolition of the Metropolitan Police Authority led to the complete dismantling of meaningful and effective local police accountability in London.
Lord Scarman identified the “information vacuum” between police and communities as being critical to events in Brixton and 1981. He responded by establishing local police accountability groups to ensure police accountability and providing a space where community concerns could be heard. But, unfortunately, Boris simply abolished them all.
From 2008 - 2012, the first term Boris’s first term in office, how many Black. Asian Chinese and Mixed and people of colour have been stopped and searched by British Police?
The answer is below... and it is staggering...
As one of Operation Trident’s Independent Advisory Group and its founding chair, I can tell you that back then, Operation Trident was seen as the community partnership jewel in the Mets community policing crown. IAG
Trident had the highest public confidence rating among London’s black communities of any Met police unit, ever, period.
The difference is that Trident was a community-led controlled campaign with a £350.000 annual event and promotion budget. Community control ensured policing was proportional, professional and trusted and therefore enjoyed community consent.
Boris and the then Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, morphed Trident, a flagship community-led initiative, into an aggressive anti-black gang unit that went on to racially profile and target black communities and ultimately went on to shoot Mark Duggan in 2011.
Mayor Boris and his then Policing and Crime Commissioner, Mr Stephen Greenhalgh, not only turned a blind eye to racial profiling within the Met but positively demanded more.
The next big Mayoral idea was the doomed Operation Shield. This extraordinary high-profile community engagement strategy died a death from the get-go. From Brixton to Tottenham, wherever Boris took the public consultation, he was challenged and condemned for his lack of delivery, open racism, and failure to hold the Met to a proper account.
Ramping up Police use of stop and search.
From the year the Mayor got elected in 2008 to 2011. he increased stop and search by a massive additional 200,000 stops per year.
He personally ordered, facilitated the abolishment of local police accountability groups in London, established by the late Lord Scarman after the 1981 uprisings, and provided a vital role in facilitating policing by consent at a local level.
In addition, Boris’s abolition of the Metropolitan Police Authority led to the complete dismantling of meaningful and effective local police accountability in London.
Lord Scarman identified the “information vacuum” between police and communities as being critical to events in Brixton and 1981. He responded by establishing local police accountability groups to ensure police accountability and providing a space where community concerns could be heard. But, unfortunately, Boris simply abolished them all.
From 2008 - 2012, the first term Boris’s first term in office, how many Black. Asian Chinese and Mixed and people of colour have been stopped and searched by British Police?
The answer is below... and it is staggering...
- Black 813, 941
- Asian 459, 019
- Mixed 160, 819
- Chinese 72, 949
In 2008-2012, 1,505.779 million BAME stops and searches took place when you included the mixed black category.
This is a national figure, but the Met contributed 90% of the increase each year. That’s a staggering increase and provides a clear explanation of rising police-community tensions that ultimately led to the inevitable explosions in 2011. This is one of the main reasons the capital community-police tensions rose so high.
Just a reminder of the scale of that increase. A the time of the publication of the Stephen Lawrence report in 1999, the full stop and search rate for London was 100,000 people per year.
The clear signal sent to the Met by Boris from the get-go was that institutional racism was off the agenda, and as a result, the issue of race equality at the Met was placed firmly on the policy back burner.,
This is a national figure, but the Met contributed 90% of the increase each year. That’s a staggering increase and provides a clear explanation of rising police-community tensions that ultimately led to the inevitable explosions in 2011. This is one of the main reasons the capital community-police tensions rose so high.
Just a reminder of the scale of that increase. A the time of the publication of the Stephen Lawrence report in 1999, the full stop and search rate for London was 100,000 people per year.
The clear signal sent to the Met by Boris from the get-go was that institutional racism was off the agenda, and as a result, the issue of race equality at the Met was placed firmly on the policy back burner.,
In the most diverse city in the world, that was a catastrophic political error that led to the riots of August 2011 and has led to the current deep well of deep anger and frustration between the Met and London’s black communities.
Boris never believed in the concept of institutionalised racism.
As Mayor, neither he nor the Commissioner at the time, Hogan-Howe, believed that the Metropolitan Police Service was an institutionally racist organisation.
The Mayor declared the same in the Metropolitan Police Authority Race and Faith Report published in 2010. This was a severe political error of monumental proportions.
Black History Month
As early as 2010, Boris slashed London’s BHM budget by 92% reducing the funding from a respectable £132,000 to a paltry £10,000.
Boris never believed in the concept of institutionalised racism.
As Mayor, neither he nor the Commissioner at the time, Hogan-Howe, believed that the Metropolitan Police Service was an institutionally racist organisation.
The Mayor declared the same in the Metropolitan Police Authority Race and Faith Report published in 2010. This was a severe political error of monumental proportions.
Black History Month
As early as 2010, Boris slashed London’s BHM budget by 92% reducing the funding from a respectable £132,000 to a paltry £10,000.
The Guardian reported:
“Figures seen by the Guardian show that the London mayor cut funding for Black History Month, a series of events staged in October to celebrate black culture in the capital, from £132,000 to £10,000, though city hall insists the previous figure was £76,000. In addition, Africa Day’s £100,000 grant from the London Development Agency was axed completely.
Funding for Jewish events was halved to £50,000, while a decision to cut funding for the St Patrick’s Day celebration was criticised last year.”
“Figures seen by the Guardian show that the London mayor cut funding for Black History Month, a series of events staged in October to celebrate black culture in the capital, from £132,000 to £10,000, though city hall insists the previous figure was £76,000. In addition, Africa Day’s £100,000 grant from the London Development Agency was axed completely.
Funding for Jewish events was halved to £50,000, while a decision to cut funding for the St Patrick’s Day celebration was criticised last year.”
And finally, and in more recent times, and demonstrating a consistent pattern of activity, in 2017, Boris met with US white supremacist millionaire demagogue Steve Bannon, founder of Breitbart News, a global platform for the lunatic racist right.
Conclusion.
I could have included the ethnic cleansing of the senior black GLA staff under Boris during his time in office or, indeed, his failure to have any credible black full-time advisers other than his part-time association with his longtime friend and adviser Ray Lewis.
I could have cited the disastrous Prevent programme and anti-terrorist policing strategies that have alienated many in London’s Muslim communities by AC Mark Rowley.
These issues are covered well elsewhere. So please do share and make sure that before the Tories come knocking on your door, promising an all-inclusive vision of one-nation Toryism and regaling you with the empty rhetoric of Boris Johnson, please have them read this.
No sane black or Muslim person, and there are millions of us, should be voting for Boris Johnson.
Conclusion.
I could have included the ethnic cleansing of the senior black GLA staff under Boris during his time in office or, indeed, his failure to have any credible black full-time advisers other than his part-time association with his longtime friend and adviser Ray Lewis.
I could have cited the disastrous Prevent programme and anti-terrorist policing strategies that have alienated many in London’s Muslim communities by AC Mark Rowley.
These issues are covered well elsewhere. So please do share and make sure that before the Tories come knocking on your door, promising an all-inclusive vision of one-nation Toryism and regaling you with the empty rhetoric of Boris Johnson, please have them read this.
No sane black or Muslim person, and there are millions of us, should be voting for Boris Johnson.
