British Colonialism and Brexit: Karma keeps receipts.

Empires, though they may last for thousands of years, always, eventually fall. It’s the universal political law of gravity, what goes up must come down. The British Empire lived long and prospered enjoying riches unknown off the broken and welted backs of its oppressed victims and the rape of nations around the world. “The temples of empires come tumbling down, the names of the mighty forgotten. Here is a parable: power never lasts.” wrote Author Cliff James. 

I see the fall of Empire in the challenges of Brexit, the pandemic and the privileged arrogance of the Eton rulers of Britain. 

 As Australian author, Max Barry wrote, “All empires fall, eventually. But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. 

Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.” 

Like the children of self-made millionaires, their spoilt sense of entitlement and consequent insufferable arrogance leads them to squander their inheritance. Modern Britain is built of the blood-soaked profits of Empire of that there is no doubt as all such Empires are built on great crimes. 

What’s less understood and hinted at by the Barry quote above, are the toxic legacies and consequences, for the privileged generations who are the direct modern-day beneficiaries of Empire. The dehumanising legacies of Britain’s colonial past, racism, English exceptionalism, violence, and greed, the primary psychological drivers of settler colonialism/imperialism, have in the 21st century metastasized with lethal psychological, political and economic effect. 

The very things that once made Britain ‘great’ have now wrought the nation low. Arrogance and the incompetence of unearned privilege, racism and greed have all now combined into a lethal mix in Boris Johnsons Government. 

His ambition to ape his hero Winston Churchill that most passionate of imperialists is also now mirroring, at quantum speed, his own rise and fall. Once hailed as the saviour Winston was almost universally despised after the end of the war. I believe in a sort of natural karma. 

The energy you put out will impact upon you whatever it’s immediate or long-term apparent benefits. It may in Britain’s case have taken 500 years however as the late great Dr Martin Luther King said: “The moral arch of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” 

In short, Karma keeps receipts. And today as we see the catastrophe that Britain faces when everything Boris does falls to ashes in his hands and the world looks at the UK like a Leper colony. 

 I cannot help but reflect that maybe, just maybe Karma has come to collect.

Seasons Greetings. I gift you Asian Dub Foundation & Stewart Lee - Comin' Over Here

Government doubles down on anti-racism and gender equality

 

Black Lives Matter

It was the 18th-century English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake who said, "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." And so it is with our black 'friends' who work inside and alongside the current Government. But as we are coming to find out, the tokenistic policy of black faces in high places does not an antiracist administration make.

This week saw the Government doubles down on anti-racism and gender equality campaigners in its efforts to advance a ruthless ideological ground war. The extreme right-wings new version of "political correctness gone mad" is the Black Lives Matter movement and Women rights groups otherwise known in Tory circles as the "woke army".

 

There were two interventions of note; one in the form of a letter from controversial Chair of the Government's Commission on Race and Disparities Tony Sewell to Minister of Equalities Olukemi Olufunto Badenoch (or Kemi as she likes to be called by her English friends). 

 

Tony Sewell: Chair of the Government's Commission on Race and Disparities

You may remember this Commission being launched by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the summer of this year in response to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the disproportionate impact of Covid19 on black communities. 

 

In launching the Commission, Boris declared that he wanted to "change the narrative" concerning racism in Britain.  

 

Tony Sewell was appointed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Tony was selected precisely because he is a) black and b) does not believe in the existence of systemic institutional racism preferring to blame black disadvantage on black communities citing our lifestyle choices and the 'dysfunctionality' of some of our cultural traditions. 

This blame the victim approach is the tired old narrative of the long-dead past, now refreshed by this Government. Sewell is a man perfectly suited for the job. A man who blames black mothers for raising dysfunctional sons as a means of explaining black school exclusions and underachievement in British schools.  

 

The second intervention was from Trade Minister Liz Truss, who in a speech on the 17th December 2020 launched a blistering political attack on what she described as "fashionable" race and gender issues. The Minister set out a set of "new conservative values" surely a contradiction in terms? These old values will focus on traditional liberal ideas of "freedom, choice, opportunity, individual humanity and dignity." 

The problem for Black Britons and people of colour is, of course, these universal values do not generally apply to us. 

 

Truss also quoted the Sewell letter to Olukemi who singing the Governments song stated that there is a "perception of racism that is often not supported by evidence". 

To have a black man speak these words was no doubt music to Tory ears. To the black community and no doubt the vast majority of the country, Sewell's words and the Trade Ministers speech sounded like the routine and practised chorus of white denial and black betrayal. 

All we need now is a Tick Tock video of Truss and Sewell signing Kumbaya.   

 

The speech came as the Trade Secretary faced criticism after it was revealed that of the 253 trade advisers she had appointed, 75% were men and 95% were white, 

Her statement that equalities issues were "dominated by a small number of unrepresentative voices, and by those who believe people are defined by their protected characteristic." was absolutely right. Those people are of course, mostly white, male pale and stale.

Truss went on to speak about the "narrow focus" of the 2010 Equalities Act demanding that class and social mobility (i.e. white working-class communities) should also be considered. This is deeply ironic given that at the time of the Act's introduction, I and others argued for precisely that, whilst it was the Tories who vigorously opposed its inclusion. 

 

All of this follows the opening salvo in this political onslaught we saw in faithfully delivered by Minister Olukemi Olufunto Badenoch in Black History Month,. During a Parliamentary debate, she somewhat incredulously suggested that teaching "critical race theory" in schools and universities is illegal and in breach of the 2010 Equality Act.

 

Tony Sewell's letter to Olukemi also sets out a series of dangerous assumptions and not unsurprisingly arrives at some startling preliminary conclusions. 

 

In the letter, Tony sets out his pseudo-intellectual, inelegant theory of what he describes as the "binary white/BAME" distinctions that determine that "all racial disparities are negative" and the "narrow policy focus" that seeks to reduce rates of racial inequality.

 

He sets out the differential rates of racial inequality amongst distinct ethnic groups. An issue that quite rightly deserves to be highlighted. He then goes on to suggest specific ethnic disparities are less related to racism and more a result of "age, sex, class and geography". 

He concludes that "cultures within institutions, and also communities, can produce racial disparity" figuring that analysing racial and ethnic equality is a "complex…including multiple factors". Using a combination of accepted facts, supposition and conjecture he unskilfully explains away the realities of systemic racism 

 

Of course, in the real world, all of these issues are linked. Still, it is, without doubt, a stone-cold fact that ethnicity and race are a compounding an aggravating factor in determining and analysing rates of ethnic and racial inequality and disadvantage.

 

Systemic Racism.

He states that Commission will be "evidence-led" the political $64.000 question is what "evidence" will they led by? Don't hold your breath; I think we can all guess. 

No doubt we will eventually be presented by a hugely complex interrelated statistical analysis that will conclude that no conclusive determination can be made, but on the balance of the evidence individual lifestyle choices, culture and failure to access opportunity are as much to blame for racial disadvantage as anything else. 

 

Yet examples that conclusively disprove this point are so easily found. 

Stop and search; disproportionate black graduate unemployment; racism in employment and recruitment and the ethnic pay gap which is said to be twice as large as the gender pay gap; sentencing disparities in our courts; the Windrush scandal, all provide substantive and objective evidence of the realities of systemic institutionalised racism.

 

Identifying the dynamics of racism is always complicated for the perpetrators and its Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, black apologists. 

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

This is even though the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the Equality Trust and the Runnymede Trust, and thousands of academic reports that analyse racial inequality, taking into account the variables of age, sex, class and geography" the overwhelmingly vast majority of which have concluded that systemic racial disadvantage and inequality that is a reality in modern Britain. 

Structural disadvantage.

 

But let's be clear this is not just some meaningless exercise in political posturing by this Government and its appointed lackeys. As the Covid-19 pandemic has all too vividly and tragically demonstrated, these are matters that constitute the literal life and death for African, Asian and ethnic minority peoples here in the UK.

 

Structural racism has a material impact on health mortality, wealth and well-being of black people. Recently it was reported by USA Today News that racism had been declared a public health issue in 145 cities and counties across 27 states in America. 

Whilst a new study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine (hardly a hotbed of cultural Marxism) determined that structural and systemic racism leads to a 'marked erosion of health' among African Americans among others. 

 

This Governments favoured tactic is as old as British colonialism itself - divide and rule. 

The strategy relies upon a combination of routine denial of institutional racism and the deployment and or employment of African and Asian people as external black cladding providing black cover to an institutional racist superstructure. This is the core strategy of this Government divide the nation and the promotion of regressive and dangerous libertarian illiberalism. 

 

This is a government that is smart enough to decry individual acts of flagrant racism while simultaneously denying the realities of the much more insidious and harmful, structural and systemic racism responsible for wholesale discrimination and widespread disadvantage.

 

Here in the United Kingdom, institutional and systemic racism is no joke. 

Black and Asian communities are under acute economic and political pressure, The consequences are increased stress, that most notable silent killer, alongside increased mental ill-health. Black communities are now in the grip of the entrenched and harmful effects of generational poverty and discrimination, all of which combine in a powerful vortex of disadvantage. 

 

In American President-elect Biden and Harris manifesto includes the most detailed policy commitment to achieving racial equity. It acknowledges systemic racism and sets out a dynamic and detailed, economic and legislative strategy designed to bring about equality for all Americans. We will need to make strategic links with Biden administration to ensure they bring the importance of recognising racism to the table with a British Government who remains stuck in the past. 

 

Those of like Tony Sewell who do us such grave disservice in our greatest hour of need should be rightfully condemned as the useful idiots of this extreme right-wing administration.

 

There will be no forgiveness for those who mouth the spineless platitudes of their masters in explaining away the realities of racism. 

 

As we enter 2021, we have to ensure that the next generation of Black Lives Matter activists working with existing black organisations constitutes a new radical black civil rights movement. A movement that takes this fight to the steps of number 10 Downing Street and demands not equality of opportunity but racial equity, not an apology but reparation.

 

In any ideological ground war against black people demanding human rights and justice, we expect to be betrayed. Let those who do so enjoy no quarter of comfort. 

 

Come the new year watch out for the call to action.

 
The struggle is real.

 

 

Mangrove. A tribute to my political mentor Frank Crichlow.

 

BAME Lawyers 4 Justice Response to Parliaments Joint Committee on Human Rights Report Black people, Racism and Human Rights.

 

                                                            Sunday 15th November 2020
                                                                                              

We welcome the Black People, Racism and Human Rights report published on the 11th November 2020 by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights

 

The Committee polled Black people in the UK to assess their views on the issues highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement. The report focuses on four areas; health, criminal justice, nationality and immigration and democracy.

 

General comments. 

 

The report makes several damning findings and critical recommendations, all of which we consider to be important in seeking to restore trust and confidence of the Black communities in the rule of law. Access to equality and equal rights is fundamental for all citizens.  The fact that a large proportion of our society continues to live with racism and discrimination and be treated as unequal citizens is no longer a tolerable situation. 

 

The report points to fundamental breaches of the social contract between citizen and State which is essential for any multicultural functioning democracy. Severe violations of Black people's human rights cited in this report provide a vivid illustration of the extent to which Black British people’s human rights are disregarded and abused. These human rights abuses take place despite the Government being aware of these serious issues as evidenced by 

legal commentary, academic reports and government inquiries, all of which demonstrate increased rates of racial inequality, injustice and oppression.

 

Whilst the report is welcome, we do not feel it goes far enough in its recommendations. 

 

For example, the Committee fails to recommend to the government that it should sign up to the general prohibition of discrimination outlined in Protocol 12, Article 1 the European Convention of Human Rights. (ECHR). Doing so would provide a strong indication of the Government's commitment to tackling the systemic and institutionalised racial discrimination. Signing this important protocol would also strengthen domestic race equality and human rights legislation thereby improving the trust and confidence of  Black communities.

 

The report also fails to reference this Government's failure to acknowledge or institute a programme celebrating and contributing towards the UN's International Decade for People of African descent, (2014 -2024)

 

Citizenship, human rights and the rule of law.

 

Fundamental to a sense of shared citizenship is a confidence in the equal application of the rule of law. This report highlights the reality that the majority of Black people do not believe that they are equally valued as citizens of the United Kingdom, nor do they think that they are treated equally before the law. This is informed by strong evidence from legal practice and academic research and validates the belief that Britain remains a deeply racist society where the colour of one's skin is more important than commitment to one's country.

 

The generally accepted principle and basis of the social contract between Government and the British Black community has been breached by a failure of the Government to acknowledge and take action to address systemic institutional racism. The consequences of these failures are profound and erode the very basis of the idea that Britain is a modern, multicultural, meritocratic and inclusive democracy.

 

There is a fragile balance between democracy, protection and obedience to the State. Failure to tackle racism presents an existential threat to our civil condition. The State can no longer credibly demand Black communities' obedience to the law whilst only offering partial protection against the degrading effects of institutionalised racism, injustice and racial disadvantage.

 

As a result, the State not only loses its authority, representative democracy ceases to have credibility in the eyes of those who are denied access to justice and equality.

 

The report's finding that over 75% of black people in the UK do not believe that human rights are equally protected is a chilling statistic that bears witness to the reality that black people in the United Kingdom are third-class citizens living within a supposedly "first-class democracy".

 

We concur with the Committee's analysis on this issue and subsequent recommendation "This is a damning indictment of our society and must be addressed as a matter of the highest political priority. To this end, the Equality and Human Rights Commission must undertake to run an annual opinion survey…" 

 

We welcome the Committee's undertaking to ensure that they hear from a diverse range of witnesses in their deliberations. Black Asian and Minority Ethnic Lawyers 4 Justice will assist the Committee by helping to facilitate input and evidence from a broad delegation from British Black communities.

 

We further agree that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has failed to provide adequate leadership or be effective or gain the trust of British Black communities in both tackling racial inequality and protecting black people's human rights. The recent appointment of Prof David Goodheart as an EHRC Commissioner a man whose on record of denying the existence and reality of institutional racism is a serious and deliberate provocation by Government and will simply further damage Black public confidence in the institution. 

 

The Committee's recommendation that a new Commission of Racial Equality (CRE) and the creation of local Race Equality councils should be established enjoys our support. All available evidence demonstrates that the racial inequality gap has widened since the demise of the CRE. The morphing of the CRE into the EHRC has failed.

 

We also urge the Committee to recommend that Parliamentary select committees conduct race equality impact assessments in all aspects of their work, and in particular, where known racial and ethnic disparities and injustices exist.

 

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities mentioned in the report and chaired by Dr Tony Sewell (someone else who is also on public record as having challenged the very idea of institutionalised racism) and set up by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in response to the Black Lives Matter protests, lacks credibility. We anticipate its findings will not, given the views of its chairman, enjoy the confidence of Britain's black communities and are unlikely to make any strategically relevant or meaningful findings.

 

We support the idea of the need for a comprehensive cross-Government race equality strategy to improve the collection of data on racial equality but any cross-Government initiatives must include representation from affected communities of different perspectives.

 

Health.

 

One of the most significant areas of fundamental human rights breaches occurs in health. The Committee’s notes that "78% of black women and 47% of black men do not believe that their health is equally protected by the NHS when compared to white people".

 

Death in childbirth provides a profound and tragic indicator of the realities of the cumulative effects of systemic and institutionalised racism on black communities.

 

The Committee finds that seven in 100,000 white women, 13 in 100,000 Asian women, 23 in 100,000 mixed ethnicity women and 38 in 100,000 black women die in childbirth. The fact that there remains no significant government action regarding this issue is an appalling indictment. What it tells British black communities is that the Government views black women's lives as of no significant value.  Had white women died in similar numbers, this would be a national scandal.

 

The Committee’s recommendation that the NHS must set a target to end the maternal mortality gap is of critical importance and work must begin on this immediately.

 

We believe that the number of unnecessary deaths of black infants' is an issue that was deserving of recognition in this report. Black Caribbean and Black African infant mortality are recorded as 6.6 and 6.3 deaths per 1000 live births. These are the second and third highest ethnic minority into mortality rates behind that of Pakistani babies that die at a rate of 6.7 per hundred live the births. In contrast, white British babies have an infant mortality rate of 3.3 deaths per 1000 live births.

 

There can be no greater condemnation of any society that the ethnicity of its children should determine their life expectancy at the point of birth.

 

The Committee quotes Public Health England statistics which show the disproportionate and severe impact of Covid19 on Black communities stating that "after accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region, black people of Caribbean and other black ethnicities had between 10 and 50% higher risk of death when compared to white British people."

 

That Government and the National Health Service appear to have no substantive response to the increased vulnerability of Black communities to Covid-19 is further evidence of the extent of neglect.

 

That the Government has recently announced that any new vaccine will be applied to a list of priority groups that does not include vulnerable BAME communities must be revisited immediately based on the evidence.

 

Criminal justice.

 

The continued criminalisation of the British Black community through the process of racial profiling in policing and immigration and the effects of systemic, institutionalised racism have dramatically increased in the last 20 years. The Committee's report states of all the " issues covered in this polling this... [was the one area] where there was the greatest consensus...’. 

 

85% of Black people not being confident that they would be treated the same as a white person by the police."

 

This was particularly true for young Black people between 10 and 17 years old who only make up 4 per cent of the population but make up 33% of children remanded in youth custody. The Committee states "the number of children in youth custody from a Black background has increased 6% in the last year, and now accounts for 28% of the youth custody population".

 

The Lammy Review commissioned by David Cameron's Government in 2016 to look into racism within the criminal justice system identified profound ethnic disparities in criminal justice administration, processing and sentencing. The review made 35 key recommendations of which only six, according to the report's author David Lammy MP, have been implemented.

 

There is a profound crisis of confidence between British Black communities and police services in England and Wales. Public confidence surveys conducted by regional Police services including the Metropolitan Police Service have shown a catastrophic drop in the level of public confidence in policing. It is this area that we believe will act as a catalyst for wider civil disturbance if radical action is not taken to begin to address growing tensions between Black communities and the police.

 

Key to this, in addition to implementing the Lammy Review's recommendations, is addressing critical issues such as stop and search and the disproportionate number of black deaths in police, prison and immigration service custody. We agree with the Committee's recommendations to governments to establish an Article "right to life" Commissioner and Human Rights compliance unit to ensure investigative support to the victims' families and also ensure that critical recommendations for action are implemented to prevent future unnecessary deaths.

 

The recommendations from the Lammy Review and the Angiolini Review must be acted upon with urgency. We welcome the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that has determined that Inquest juries’ inquiries into sudden deaths, in seeking to determine where 

responsibility lies, should not now rely on the legal principle of ‘beyond reasonable doubt but should instead rely on ‘the balance of probabilities.”

Nationality and immigration.

 

We believe a culture of racism is implicit in British immigration policy and practice. The Windrush scandal provides a powerful spotlight on the serial injustice faced by many Black British citizens in seeking to access their citizenship rights. But people were unlawfully detained and deported because of the Government's "hostile environment" in direct breach of their right to liberty contained in article 5 of the ECHR.

 

There can be no more egregious example of the extent to which Black people are subject to racial injustice. Wendy Williams, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary Windrush Lessons Learned Review  into the scandal published in March 2020, found that "failings demonstrate an institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race and the history of the Windrush  generation within the Department, which are consistent with some elements of the definition of institutionalised racism." We believe that the failings identified are entirely consistent with the definition of institutionalised racism and can be categorised as such beyond all reasonable doubt.  Williams found that the effects of the Windrush scandal was to inflict serious harm on its victims.

 

We agree with Windrush victims who wrote to the Guardian on 14 October stating that the Home Office’s improvement plan published on 30 September 2020 is "long on regrets but short on specifics of how and when appropriate changes will be made."

 

The Government's compensation scheme is failing the victims and is in total disarray, adding serious insult to grievous injury. Government’s decision to set the threshold of evidential requirements for eligibility for compensation as "beyond a reasonable doubt" is an insurmountable obstacle for the majority of Windrush victims in claiming compensation. This willful and malicious action by British Government provides powerful insight into the extent to which British Black communities are now treated with utter contempt by our Government.

 

We believe the Government should be subject to a motion of censure in both the Houses of Parliament and the House of Lords condemning its failure to deliver on its promises to ensure that justice was delivered to all Windrush victims. 

 

To restore trust and confidence within Black communities that this process is authentic and meaningful, we believe that the Government should provide a sum of £200 million to be given to an independent body. That body could then adjudicate and administer the process of compensation and reparation to Windrush victims and end the ongoing scandal that has seen victims sadly die whilst waiting for justice.

 

We are also concerned that polices and legislation governing deportation, family reunion, asylum and the fees structure for applying for immigration status documentation, need to be reviewed as a matter of urgency as these disproportionately affect and impact on the lives of the UK’s Black and ethnic minority population in an adverse way. 

 

 Conclusion.

 

Without immediate and substantive action to address the growth in racial inequality as a consequence of systemic, institutionalised racism and in the absence of Government, action to fundamentally address human rights abuses experienced by Black British people, we believe there could be increased racial divisiveness, a breakdown in respect for and adherence for the law and government institutions. 

 

The consequences of allowing Black British communities to continue to suffer such egregious abuses of our human rights will be civil disorder in our major inner cities and a breakdown in law and order. It is incumbent upon Government to recognise the realities of systemic institutionalised racism as it manifests itself in the fundamental abuses of the human rights of British Black communities, and to take urgent action now to avoid, what would be a national catastrophe. 

 

We will be contacting the Joint Committee to facilitate a delegation presentation from a broad range of national Black organisation and expert individuals that can assist in contributing to this important debate in an effort to support the work of the Committee and further highlight these issues. 

 

End.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lonely statues a metaphor for Brixton gentrification. I'm drawn to these statues. I feel a sense of their marginalisation.

The first public black statues commissioned in the United Kingdom left largely unloved and unrecognised, isolated, forgotten, while all around the sights and sounds of diverse and dynamic Brixton are relentlessly eradicated under the crushing heel of an unregulated free-market economy that prioritises profit over people.

Maybe they should be moved, liberated in fact, and taken to a more loving environment like Windrush Square.

But for now, here they stand in resolute silence in the dead of night, and in the bright early morning reminding us of the changing realities of our beloved Brixton. #BrixtonStatues #BlackHistoryMonth2020

Institutional racism in Policing: Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick hides behind an unremitting wall of institutional racism and routine denial.

 

There is a saying in British black communities that all serious accusations of systemic institutional racism are a bit like eternal truths; they both tend to start their lives as heretical blasphemies. Always denied and when eventually accepted it's with begrudging reluctance.  

 

In Britain, there appears to be no exception to this general rule with no historical precedent of serious accusations of racism eliciting immediate acceptance and apology. Only the crudest examples of offensive racism, usually involving the use of racist language, prompts quick apology and regret. All major accusations of systemic and institutional racism are routinely denied. 

And even where 'progress' is achieved Britains cultural default setting, institutional racism, is so deeply engrained into the countries cultural DNA that racism, once the political pressure is relaxed almost always snaps back to its original setting. 

Of course, some progress has been made over the last 50 years. It would be churlish to suggest otherwise but in the words of the legendary reggae, compose/producer Lee Perry on his iconic tune "Down Ina Babylon" it's almost one step forward two steps backwards. 

Accusations of racism are almost always denied. For black communities here in the UK, the word denial denotes don't even notice I am lying. Where policing is concerned denial is often the preface to the justification of injustice.

 

Having challenged institutional police racism for the last 35 years, and as one of the foremost black experts on police-community relations and a former Policing Director for London, I am going to make a confident prediction. Alas, much like an oracle, my predictive track record on these issues, is sadly hundred per cent solid being one of the many who correctly predicted the disturbances of 1981, 1986, 1996 and 2011.  

 

My prediction is that we are heading for a significant series of civil disturbances as a result of the deteriorating relationship between the Metropolitan Police Service and London's African and Caribbean communities. It is only as a consequence of this summers Covid-19 lockdown that we've narrowly averted such a conflict taking place. For many public commentators and ethical black community leaders, people such as former senior black officer Leroy Logan (founder member of the Metropolitan Black Police Officers Association), things that they are as bad today as they were in the early 1980s.

 

They say that history comes round in 30 to 40-year cycles and next year sees the 40th anniversary of the 1981 Brixton uprisings that sparked massive confrontations with the police throughout the country. 

Back then despite repeated warnings by community campaigners warning of the likelihood of community police conflict, the Commissioners and government of the day chose to stick their heads in the sand. Their response was to deny the police were racist or the was a crisis of black confidence in policing. Sound familiar? 

 

Activists of the day, people like Frank Crichlow and Darcus Howe of the Mangrove Community Association, Kaoumba Balagoun of St Pauls, Bristol, Alex Bennet of Merseyside Race Equality Council and Dorothy Kukuya, Linda Bellos the first black women leaders of a Council (Lambeth) and the young, radical campaigning lawyer of the day Paul Boateng, all consistently warned of trouble on the streets as a result of increasing police racism. All were routinely ignored. 

 

Precisely the same thing happened again in 1986, and in the early 90s, it was only the hope offered by Stephen Lawrence public inquiry that prevented a re-occurrence. Nevertheless, disturbances erupted in 1996 in Brixton and again in 2011 in Tottenham. On both occasions, senior police officers and Home Secretaries denied there was a problem. Community activists warnings were routinely ignored at an extraordinarily high cost to the country and black communities.

 

Today the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, Home Secretary Prit Patel, and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick are united in the continuance of this political tradition, the consistent rejection and denial of accusations of institutional police racism.

 

In the aftermath of the tragic death of George Floyd, we have seen and public institutions businesses around the world, reflecting on the nature of their commitment to race equality, embarking on a process of having a dialogue with black and ethnic minority employees and communities on issues of fairness, justice, diversity and anti-racist practice. 

 

The global concern about the issue of police racism, violence and accountability have been central to these ongoing conversations, discussions that have echoed around the world everywhere except in England and Wales. 

 

Even though public confidence in policing of the African and Caribbean community is at an all-time low, the leading police officer in the country Commissioner Cressida Dick, like her counterparts of old, refuses to acknowledge the Mets culture of institutionalised racism. It's this pernicious culture that is the driving force behind the persistent and increasing rates of racial disproportionality in almost all aspects of operational policing in London.

 

Given the wall-to-wall research and statistics that demonstrate the industrial scale of police racism towards black people, the question is, why would she choose to continue to deny this overwhelming and compelling objective reality?

 

It is my view that the police officer "canteen culture" is deeply hostile to the concept of institutionalised racism. The 20-year long backlash against the publication and findings of the Stephen Lawrence report that deemed the police to be institutionalised racist runs deep in the cultural and political DNA of the Met Commissioner Dick cannot contemplate accepting this reality without facing a virtual revolt among the reactionary ranks.

 

The evidence of such resistance can be discerned not only by the figures demonstrating massive racial disproportionality in operational areas such as stop and search: use of police force on black people; racial differences in the rates of cautioning and charging for drug offences; the refusal of bail for black suspects, the failure to sufficiently recruit African and Caribbean officers; and the overrepresentation of serving black officers in police disciplinaries and investigations, it is also evident in the attitudes of police officers as revealed in an alarming new survey conducted by You Gov. 

 

Published in June of this year with very little media coverage, this critical survey revealed the dark attitudinal underbelly of the persistent culture of racism that persists within the Metropolitan Police.

 

The survey asked officers if they believed stereotypes about other groups of people to be true. An astonishing 41% agreed with the statement compared to just 24% of the general public. More worryingly over half of the officers surveyed (55% ) agreed with the suggestion that human rights laws have been bad for British justice. About race equality in the workplace, 65% expressed opposition to any form of positive discrimination in attempts to level up the lack of representation of black people within British companies and institutions.

 

These overwhelmingly racially hostile attitudes provide a unique insight into the prevailing culture within the Met, and that makes this Commissioner a prisoner of her workforce.

 

This, in part, explains why the Met has seen a resurgence in such prejudicial hostile attitudes among serving police officers. What we are witnessing today in this survey is the result of the Mets historical and contemporary hostility towards the Stephen Lawrence report and their retreat from the majority of its recommendations in most notably in the areas policy and performance scrutiny and diversity focus in police cadet training.

 

I recently submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Met asking them to provide me with "...the total number of mandatory, probationary constable training hours solely dedicated to ethnic diversity…". The answer I received from the Met's Information Rights Units reveals the brutal extent of that retreat. 

 

The fact is, in one of the most diverse cities on the face of the planet, there are no specific lessons for police cadets dedicated focused solely on ethnic diversity training or the critical lessons learned from the Stephen Lawrence, none.

 

Whilst there is training for unconscious bias, it lasts precisely two hours. There is a broader one-day training input on the more general question of "diversity" covering the entirety of the equality strands.

 

Finally, there are some online voluntary training packages. Nothing on anti-racist policing practice or the rich and diverse history of Amylticulatutal London. Nothing on the fraught history of the Met and London's multicultural communities. This explains why institutional racism is so resurgent in the Met. Refusal to listen to communities, retreat from the recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence report, failure to mainstream anti-racist practice in one of the greatest multicultural cities in the world. policy and 

 

For a city like London, this is woefully inadequate. 

 

Police denial of institutionalised racism places a lid on the relational and emotional pressure cooker that constitutes relations between African and Caribbean heritage communities and police services. The longer we leave it on, the more pressure we build up. That pressure is becoming intolerable and will, at some point, explode onto our streets with devastating consequences. Denial of the problem is the lid. 

That's why so little focus is given to this issue in police training, it's simply not considered that important by the Commissioner. This is a fatal and critical failure of leadership. 

 

Charles Tremper of the Nonprofit Risk Management Center, Washington, DC, warning of the dangers of denial wrote, "Denial is a common tactic that substitutes deliberate ignorance for thoughtful planning."     

 

The problem for this Commissioner is the routine denial of truth does not invalidate its objective reality. The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. 

 

This Commissioner has made the fatal political calculation that it's better to offer friendly denial than accept the realities of institutionalised racism.

 

She knows, as the survey suggests, that all demands for compliance to anti-racist policing practice will elicit a hostile response from the rank and file. Policing is the only area of command and control employment where such huge power is located in the lowest subordinate rank. 

 

We're in for a hellish time. It was the 17th century English writer John Bunyan who said, "The road of denial leads to the precipice of destruction." This statement is as true today as the day it was written. Having failed to learn from the past, we are about to repeat tragic history

 

You heard it here first, second and third.