Tag Archives: racism

Suella Braverman presents as a racist. Is Liz Truss really determined to keep her?

We need to talk about Suella.

This daughter of a Kenyan family who came to the UK as refugees has spoken of her “dream” to deport her family’s fellow refugees to an internment camp in Rwanda without conducting any checks on whether they deserve to remain in the UK or not.

If you can stomach it, you might be interested in watching her speech at the Conservative Party conference earlier in the week:

She has sparked a huge amount of commentary – of course:

Professor Tim Wilson points out: “We cannot deport people until our paperwork and theirs is properly processed. And hospitality to the disadvantaged runs through our civilisation. We ignore that at our peril. Yes, there will be cheats who take advantage of our goodness but we cannot allow them- the miscreants- to dictate our behaviour and our policy! I have difficulty understanding how this policy was conceived but I cannot understand how we can be represented by someone so callous and brutal that she DREAMS of such toxic brutality?”

Here’s his video comment:

Here’s Novara Media’s take on it:

It was discussed on the BBC’s Politics Live today (October 6):

Clearly the views put forward by this Parliamentarian are abhorrent to large numbers of people on all sides of the political spectrum.

Yet Liz Truss – who has admitted that she doesn’t mind being unpopular – is determined to keep Braverman in post to push through legislation that will make this inhumane (some might say inhuman) policy workable.

Truss also reversed her policy to scrap the 45p top rate of income tax because it was unpopular, though, so it seems we cannot trust her word.

Is she planning to pull the usual Tory trick – ditch the unpopular politician but keep the unpopular policy she champions?

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Jeremy Corbyn opens up about racism allegations against him

Early in this video interview, Jeremy Corbyn states that “to falsely accuse somebody of any kind of racism is a major dishonest and dishonourable thing to do.”

To This Writer, that is a welcome claim – but only if it is attached to an admission that, during his leadership, the Labour Party falsely accused many people of racism, and anti-Semitism in particular.

Let’s have a gander at the rest of the clip:

Okay – so there’s lots of other good material in there. The stuff about racism/anti-Semitism comes in around 27 minutes into the interview.

Mr Corbyn had already said that Labour Party officers had not kept him properly informed of developments within the organisation, so it seems strange to This Writer that he accepted their claims about party members being anti-Semitic without any apparent question at all.

… Even more so when we hear him referring to the Forde Report and the leaked report that prompted it, containing allegations about fellow MPs that he knew not to be true. If he was sure of that, about people he knew, then why was he so certain of the opposite about people he didn’t?

It’s the one subject on which he let us all down and, sadly, there’s no joy here for those of us who were so badly wronged with accusations that Mr Corbyn himself described as “dishonest and dishonourable”.

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As others see us: ‘racism is as British as a cup of tea’

Before you point out that tea comes from India and China – isn’t it ironic?

Here’s the UK’s first professor of Black Studies, Kehinde Andrews, talking about the differences in perception of the late Queen Elizabeth II within his own originally-Jamaican family, and concluding that the Monarchy is a symbol of white supremacy that should not be mourned, but rather abolished.

He says this is the perfect time to discuss whether and when the Monarchy should end – which is also ironic, considering the number of people who have been arrested for voicing their objection to it – and indeed the larger number who have been physically attacked for doing the same.

Here’s the clip:

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Investigation launched against four Met Police officers who strip-searched black schoolgirl

All four Metropolitan Police officers who strip-searched a 15-year-old black schoolgirl while she was on her period are now being investigated for gross misconduct, it has been revealed.

It had been claimed that the girl, known as Child Q, smelled strongly of cannabis and may have been in possession of drugs.

So police were called to her school and subjected her to an intimate body search without any other adults present.

The incident took place almost two years ago but only came to light in March this year after a safeguarding report was published. This Site has previously reported on the incident here.

The Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review found that the strip search should never have happened, was unjustified, and racism “was likely to have been an influencing factor”.

“Four constables have now been advised that they are being investigated for potential breaches of the police standards of professional behaviour at the level of gross misconduct,” the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) said.

However, it added that this “does not necessarily mean that disciplinary proceedings will follow”.

“We are looking at complaints that her mother was not given the opportunity to be present during the strip search, and that there was no other appropriate adult present,” it added.

“We are also considering whether the child’s ethnicity played a part in the officers’ decision to strip search her.”

If the officers are found to have breached policing standards, they could be dismissed from their jobs.

Source: Investigation launched against four Met Police officers who strip-searched black schoolgirl

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The UK is supposed to have no institutional racism – so why are POLICE apologising for ‘racism, discrimination and bias’?

All white: look at the police faces behind Boris Johnson at this speech he made in 2019 – not one of them is from an ethnic minority.

Remember when the Tory government released a report claiming that the UK is an “exemplar” of racial equality in all its institutions?

Now members of one of those institutions – the police – are having to apologise for “racism, discrimination and bias”. Bit of a contradiction there, don’t you think?

In a new race plan, to be launched next week, the National Police Chiefs Council and College of Policing will state:

“Many people believe policing to still be institutionally racist and have grounds for this view.

“We accept that policing still contains racism, discrimination and bias. We are ashamed of those truths, we apologise for them and we are determined to change them.

“[The] need for change is evident. Policing lags behind almost every part of the public service as an employer of choice for Black people. Confidence levels are much lower, and our powers are disproportionately applied to Black people. In some crimes, victimisation rates are higher.”

The plan avoids admitting institutional racism but declares that police chiefs are “ashamed” about racism remaining in law enforcement.

One chief constable who supports accepting policing is institutionally racist said: “All the figures show it still is.”

There will be a consultation on the plan, so it may change.

I wonder if the Tories will try to remove the admissions of racism from it, to conform with their Big Lie?

Source: Police chiefs to apologise for ‘racism, discrimination and bias’ in race plan

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Is Labour really complacent about losing ethnic minority support – or institutionally racist?

Starmer takes the knee for Black Lives Matter: to him it meant nothing more than a photo opportunity. Black lives don’t matter to him – as we discovered when he attacked the organisation shortly after.

Labour has lost a lot of ground in “ethnic minority strongholds” that has been ignored by many media commentators, according to the author of this piece’s source article (see the link below).

But is it because the party has become complacent, as the author argues? Or is it because Labour is now racist and does not care about these voters?

One obvious argument for the latter is that Labour has just spent seven years suffering an onslaught of mostly-unfounded and untrue accusations of anti-Semitism. It would be irrational for the party to be complacent about racism after that; therefore the evidence suggests this was a conscious choice.

Damningly for Labour,

Tower Hamlets, which sees British Muslims suffer some of the most deprived conditions in the UK, was notably won by Lutfur Rahman, a former Labour councillor who was banned from holding office for five years after being found guilty of a litany of fraud and corruption charges.

Why would the people of this borough turn to somebody who had been found guilty of fraud and corruption, rather than Labour?

Also lost to the party was Croydon council and the mayoralty of Harrow.

50.7 per cent of Croydon’s population are described as “Bame” and 61.9 per cent of Harrow’s population are non-white British.

The article states that many religious and ethnic minorities, including the author, no longer have faith in Labour because anti-racism and anti-imperialism aren’t given priority in the Labour Party.

Evidence supporting this includes Keir Starmer’s tacit assertion that racism within institutions wasn’t worth tackling when he described calls from Black Lives Matter to defund the police as “nonsense”, adding that it was a shame the movement was “getting tangled up with these organisational issues”. It was particularly insensitive in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

For many, it felt as if he was saying that if voters were worried about police brutality, voting for him would not help.

Worse is the spectre of Islamophobia within Labour – which eclipses anti-Semitism to a huge degree. Starmer refused to stand up for Muslim MPs facing Islamophobia in Parliament. A report by Labour Muslims in 2020 stated that 44 per cent of “Muslim members and supporters do not believe the Labour Party takes the issue of Islamophobia seriously”. A January 2022 poll from Muslim Census also suggested that Labour risks losing half of its Muslim vote at the next general election.

Of course, Starmer’s claim to have tackled anti-Semitism has created a huge blind spot in his thinking (at the very least). So he asserts that Israel is not an apartheid state, in defiance of the majority vote within Labour to sanction that country over its apartheid policy against Palestinians.

Sixty-one per cent of Labour voters support Boycott, Divestment Sanction (BDS) while Starmer vehemently opposes it.

They can’t all be anti-Semites; the level of anti-Semitism within Labour was less than the national average when Jeremy Corbyn was leader and it is unlikely to have risen exponentially since Starmer took over. Starmer’s own stance, of course, implies that he is racist against Palestinians.

Labour MPs have also been criticised for failing to support Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities (think of John Mann, now a Tory lord) – although this falls short of the active persecution of Priti Patel’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts law.

The evidence is clear: ethnic minorities see Labour providing no answer to the discrimination, state violence and indifference to both that plague them in a nation that the Tories improbably claim is not institutionally racist.

But if Starmer continues to ignore the concerns of minority communities, they will continue to abandon his party – and that will make him seem even more of a racist than he does now.

Source: Labour’s complacency about losing ethnic minority support will cost the party at the next general election

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Six-figure payout for civil servant who endured ‘insidious’ Ministry of Justice racism

The face of the problem? It must be hard to clamp down on racism in government when the prime minister is a man who (allegedly) danced around in front of a black woman, waving a banana at her.

This may seem like a good result for Olivea Ebanks – but is it? Does the money really compensate for 20 years of racist abuse in the Ministry of Justice – of all places! – that she says broke down her body and mind?

And how is the government acting to end the racism that, it seems clear, is rife in all the corridors of power? Have the Tories lifted a finger to improve matters?

Let’s see what Ms Ebanks had to put up with…

She was called racially insulting names by a manager, prevented from progressing her career, and had her out-of-work activities monitored.

Ms Ebanks said working in an “abusive” environment led to her physical and mental health suffering.

“The first time I went to court, I lost my good mental health… The second time I decided to go to court, I lost my marriage and the third time, I lost my job.”

Ms Ebanks alleges managers blocked access to career-enhancing opportunities and training open to colleagues.

She says her work was unfairly scrutinised and managers began to “constantly” pick at her work, and claims her concerns about this were routinely dismissed.

One day after asking her manager why she was being treated differently to other members of the team during a meeting, she was shocked when the reply was: “Are you accusing me of racism?”

An internal probe, which pointed towards institutional racism within the MOJ, was triggered soon after.

She decided to write a book about her experiences – she says with her managers’ blessing. But Ms Ebanks found herself the centre of investigation and suspended from work for “bringing the organisation into disrepute”.

The former civil servant claims she was called racially offensive names by senior staff and was subject to privacy breaches, alleging her out-of-work activities following global Black Lives Matter protests was monitored.

Ms Ebanks says she complained about the incidents numerous times but claims she was ignored.

She resigned in June 2020 after the “situation became intolerable” and then began her third case against the ministry which was settled last year.

Ms Ebanks says she applied for upward of 40 promotions without any success and experienced a manager refusing to provide essential backing for a senior role because she “couldn’t see” Ms Ebanks thriving in such a position.

Reflecting on her ordeal Ms Ebanks described it as “exhausting” and said she suffered loss of appetite, insomnia and panic attacks.

“With the accumulation of illnesses, my body and mind were breaking down and I started to feel so unwell that I had to keep going back to the doctor.”

Her account of what happened when she tried to complain is particularly damning: “As a Black person, you complain to a manager, who has no understanding of racism.

“They then say there’s no merit to your complaint. You unpick their reasoning and appeal, and then your manager’s manager will then tell you – the only person who’s experienced the racism – that what you experienced was not racism. It’s torture without the bruising.”

The comment from the MoJ is risible:

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We have a zero tolerance approach to discrimination of any sort. All allegations are investigated fully and action taken where necessary.”

I have a few doubts about that, considering Ms Ebanks’s story.

So let’s think: why would a government ministry make such a claim, in the face of evidence from a victim of sustained racism over a period of 20 years that has resulted in that ministry paying out a six-figure sum of money to end court proceedings?

(And let’s bear in mind that this is not the only case – the source story mentions Kay Badu, who also received a six-figure sum over racism claims.)

Well, isn’t it true that sustained racism of this kind has a “chilling” effect on people of the ethnic group against which that discrimination is being shown?

In other words, aren’t people of the same ethnic group put off applying for government jobs?

So by claiming not to tolerate discrimination – while actually perpetrating it time and time again – the government and its departments ensure that they remain the playgrounds of privileged white boys and girls.

Isn’t that the aim?

If not, then let’s see some evidence of good conscience. How many people have been sacked for perpetrating this “insidious” and sustained racism? What measures have been put in place to monitor it? What is being done to ensure that complaints are taken seriously?

I think we can all guess the answers to those questions: none, none and nothing.

Am I right, MoJ?

Source: ‘It strips your humanity’: Civil servant wins six-figure sum over ‘insidious’ Ministry of Justice racism

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Police who stop-searched UK athletes could lose their jobs

Remember when Metropolitan Police officers dragged UK sprinter Bianca Williams and her partner out of their car and away from their three-month-old child on false claims that they could smell cannabis?

Nearly two years after the incident, five officers involved will face gross misconduct charges that could lead to them being sacked. Another officer will face a charge of misconduct.

It is understood that a disciplinary panel will also consider whether racial discrimination played any part in the actions of some of the officers, who deny wrongdoing and insist they will contest the charges.

This Site reported on the incident when it happened.

Ms Williams and her partner Ricardo Dos Santos were stopped at 1.20pm on July 4, 2020 in Maida Vale, north-west London, by officers from the Met’s Territorial Support Group. He was driving and she was in the back with their child.

Reports of a police statement at the time claimed,

The Met said the vehicle had blacked-out windows and was “driving suspiciously”, including being on the wrong side of the road. It said when officers indicated for it to stop, the car sped off. Officers caught up with the vehicle when it stopped on Lanhill Road, but the driver initially refused to get out of the car, the Met said.

The occupants, a 25-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman, were detained for the purposes of a search under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the statement continued. After nothing was found on their person or in the vehicle, no arrests were made and the pair were released.

It was also alleged that the officers justified their search by claiming they could smell cannabis.

Both athletes are trained by the former Olympic champion Linford Christie, who accused police of institutional racism, and they also said they believed racism played a part in the incident.

In a statement, Christie asked,

“Can Cressida Dick [then Met Police Commissioner, who spoke in support of her officers’ behaviour] or anyone please explain to me what justification the Met Police officers had in assaulting the driver, taking a mother away from her baby all without one piece of PPE and then calling the sniffer dog unit to check the car over?

“Was it the car that was suspicious or the black family in it which led to such a violent confrontation and finally an accusation of the car smelling of weed but refusing to do a roadside drug test?

“This is not the first time this has happened (second time in two months) and I’m sure it won’t be the last but this type of abuse of power and institutionalised racism cannot be justified or normalised any long #BLM #MetPoliceRacist.”

A few days later, the Met referred the incident to the Independent Office of Police Conduct, which has taken two years to deliver its findings.

This Writer’s personal opinion is that I would want access to every piece of evidence used in the case, when the disciplinary panel comes to hear it, because I simply don’t trust the institutions involved to make a correct decision without public supervision.

I have grave doubts about the reasons the Met gave to justify chasing, stopping and searching these athletes’ car, and there is also the matter of the distress caused to them as they were separated from their very young child.

The IOPC’s recommendation is a step in the right direction. But will it be a case of one step forward, two steps back?

Source: Police who handcuffed Bianca Williams to face gross misconduct charge | UK news | The Guardian

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Dominic Raab accused of ‘racist’ overhaul of Human Rights Act

Dominic Raab: it has been said that racists love to drape themselves in their country’s flag – and now we find he is injecting racism into his overhaul of human rights in the UK.

This Site – and others – told you years ago that if the Conservatives had a chance to modify your human rights, you would suffer. This is just one example.

Dominic Raab wants to strip human rights protections from people who have been targeted by police for ‘stop and search’ procedures and/or questioning over their immigration status.

Ethnic minority groups are far more likely to have been targeted in these ways and Raab knows it. But he still wants them to be used as excuses to deny people human rights protections.

That is racist.

We should be glad Liberty is fighting against this:

“Migrants, prisoners and people with historic ‘poor conduct’ won’t get the same rights as those with citizenship, or without a criminal record, which will have racist impacts”, Martha Spurrier, the organisation’s director, told The Independent.

“It will put over-policed communities at risk of losing their rights – even though these are the groups most likely to face a human rights violation by the state.”

The warning comes as Liberty warns the shake-up is far more draconian than expected, something obscured in recent months by public focus on Covid, Partygate and the Ukraine war.

And if you think this is bad, you can be sure that worse is to follow.

Source: ‘Racist’ overhaul of Human Rights Act to strip protections from people targeted by stop and search

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Child Q: is ‘lack of urgency’ minister waiting for inquiry to get police off the hook?

Kit Malthouse: does he look like he cares about anything?

Policing minister Kit Malthouse has been – rightly – slammed for repeatedly saying the Government must wait for the outcome of a police watchdog report into the traumatic strip search of a black schoolgirl.

In December 2020, police – two male, two female – were called by teachers at a secondary school in Hackney, who believed a girl was carrying drugs because they could smell cannabis.

She was subjected to what seems clearly a deliberately humiliating strip-search. She was made to strip naked, to spread her legs, to use her hands to spread her buttock cheeks and then to cough.

She was menstruating. According to family members, the police insisted that she take off the bloody pad and would not let her go to the toilet to clean up. Then they made her reuse the same pad.

No drugs were found, yet the rumour spread around the school that this perfectly innocent girl was a drug dealer.

The experience left the girl traumatised, in therapy and self-harming.

Answering an urgent question in Parliament, Malthouse condemned the “distressing” incident, saying she “could have been any one of our relatives”.

But he insisted that the government had to wait for a report into the incident, on which the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has already been working for 10 months.

He said the police officers involved had a right to “due process”, which is all well and good – but justice delayed is justice denied, and doesn’t Child Q have a right to justice?

And despite a safeguarding review into the matter producing a series of recommendations for the Government and police to act upon, Malthouse insisted there was doubt whether the police have a specific problem or a systemic problem relating to their policies and practices.

“It is the role of the independent police watchdog – the Independent Office for Police Conduct – to investigate serious matters involving the police and the IOPC has said it has been investigating the actions of the Metropolitan police in this particular case,” he said.

“We must let the IOPC conclude its work. We would, of course, expect any findings to be acted upon swiftly but it’s vital that we don’t prejudge the IOPC’s investigations or prejudice due process – so it would be wrong for me to make any comment on the case in question at this time.”

This Writer wonders whether Malthouse is simply hoping the IOPC will find a way to exonerate the officers involved (one of whom, it seems, was male – in a gross violation of police rules).

And he did not respond to a call to publish data on the number of times children are strip-searched. Why not?

Other MPs saw matters differently – not that he should not comment until the inquiry had been completed but that he should life a finger or two to bring the matter to that conclusion:

Labour MP for Eltham, Clive Efford, criticised Mr Malthouse for having a “wait and see attitude”, and said: “I feel like we’ve woken the minister from an afternoon nap to come in and make this statement”.

He added: “There’s a complete lack of urgency in his approach. It is quite clear that there are areas now where the Government can act; why isn’t the minister coming to this house to explain to us just exactly what he’s going to do, rather than this wait and see attitude?”

It seems clear that Malthouse’s fellow Tories felt no need to enact justice for Child Q. Only one Conservative MP turned up to the discussion – Jackie Doyle-Price – and her contribution was to ask what the minister would do to ensure the Metropolitan Police changes its practices.

Underlying this lack of activity there must be the same question that underlies the reasons for the humiliation and trauma of the strip-search of a menstruating teenage girl.

Is it because she is black?

Source: Child Q: Minister slammed for ‘lack of urgency’ over police strip-search of Black girl

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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