Category Archives: UK

news, UK

Windrush scandal rolls on as head of policy resigns over racism

Alexandra Ankrah, the head of policy at the Windrush compensation scheme, has resigned, reports Amelia Gentleman at the Guardian.

Ankrah complains that the scheme, run by a department of the Home Office, is institutionally racist and says the team members she worked with “showed a complete lack of humanity”.

By the end of October, the compensation scheme had been running for 18 months and only £1.6m had been paid out to 196 people. Officials had originally expected thousands to apply and estimated that the government might eventually have to pay out between £200m and £570m. At least nine people have died before receiving compensation they applied for.

Amelia Gentleman in the Guardian

This is a restatement of what is already known, thanks to the outstanding work of Gentleman, but the fact that nothing has changed since the government claimed it was going to put right this travesty of justice is still shocking.

The Windrush scandal saw people from the African Caribbean, who were invited to the UK in the 50s and 60s, declared to be ‘non-British’ despite being colonial subjects of the Crown, and barred from public services, denied access to health services, kicked out of their homes , losing their jobs and – most shamefully – deported from the country or refused entry after visiting the Caribbean to see relatives or go on holiday.

Politicians in parliament have got no where trying to get answers as to why so few have been compensated.

Same discriminatory procedures that created Windrush ‘hostile environment’ scandal being used to limit compensation claims

It turns out that the same procedures that demanded unreasonable documentary evidence from people when they tried to access services, such as payslips from the 1970s, are being used now to effectively bar victims from being compensated.

Of the tiny number (196) who have managed to wring money out of this government, the sums have been an insult, averaging just £8,163 per applicant.

That contrasts with the lavish sums the government is paying out to its well-connected friends to supply the NHS with personal protective equipment (PPE).

One middleman received £21 million for basically doing next to nothing.

Meanwhile, the government resisted funding free school meals for hungry children in this country, is going ahead with a cut to welfare benefits next year and thinks £8k is all that black people victimised by government policy is perfectly adequate.

Windrush scandal – radical action needed to win justice for victims

We are going to have to take radical action to correct these ongoing wrongs – that means action on the streets, our communities and through our unions and campaign groups to fight for justice now.

There are three different bodies that have been set up in response to the scandal: the compensation scheme itself; the Windrush taskforce, whose job it has been to contact those affected and inform them of how to get compensation and thirdly, the independent Windrush Lessons Learned review by Wendy Williams.

The institutional racism of those running the ‘Lessons Learned’ body that 20 team members have been hauled before the civil service “equality, diversity and inclusion”.

The Windrush scandal crimes were a direct result of a government policy known as the “hostile environment”, which sought to scapegoat migrants for the problems of inequality and poverty that afflict the UK.

It all went down under Theresa May’s Tory government as she tried to prove that she and her government were more racist Nigel Farage, who they feared was outflanking them from the right.

They claimed it was all a big mistake and not intentional, but it was part of a deliberate and consciously crafted policy war against all migrants to the UK.

It is a continuing outrage. Enough!

Latest victims

Support the campaign of the Roberts brothers to stay in the UK.

Amelia Gentleman has written the definitive investigation of this continuing scandal and you can order your copy here:

Buy the award-winning book on the Windrush scandal:

The Windrush Betrayal by Amelia Gentleman

Watch her recent talk at the Bookmarks bookshop:

news, UK

Met police BAME recruitment will fail because of racism

The institutionally racist London Met police introduces its so-called “race action plan” today, and a key recommendation will be that 40% of new recruits must come from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

Unfortunately, however, the head of the London police, Commissioner Cressida Dick, remains in denial about racism in the force.

At a recent select committee parliamentary hearing on the police’s outrageous racial profiling seen in its rampant and ineffective (from the point of view fighting or preventing the commission of crimes) stop and search policies, Dick claimed the disproportionate number of black people being stopped was “because they committed more crime”, despite evidence to the contrary.

Netpol highlights over-policing of BLM protests

In addition, a report this week from from Netpol, a network of police monitoring groups, has discovered what we already knew – the BLM protests were over policed by Uk police.

Violent incidents were almost not existents around the country and when some scuffles with police happened in London it was in response to police actions, such as when they charged horses into peaceful protesters on Whitehall.

Police more violent towards black people

Not only are black people disproportionately stopped and search, the police also use more violence when doing so than the average for society as a whole.

Recruitment of officers from minority backgrounds has increased markedly in recent years, but that has made no difference to the institutional racism with the ranks of the Met. This is no surprise – it is the institution that is the problem.

Individual police officers can no doubt be “non-racist” or even “anti-racist” but the culture and operational practice of the police is the problem and that stems from the nature of the work they do. Policing is about maintaining the rule of those at the top of society and racism is a useful divide and rule stratagem.

Police are more racist than rest of society

Add to that the fact that we live in a racist society, it is not surprising that the police are racist. But the key point here is that the police do not just reflect society – they are the worst of society. The oppressive nature of their job leads them to operate in a fashion that presupposes that working-class people commit more crimes and that black people as part of that, are the worst offenders.

So when shocking crimes such as the ignoring of fire regulations that led to the installation of flammable cladding to blocks of flats, such as at Grenfell in west London, leading directly to the deaths of at least 81 people, not a single person has gone to prison or even been prosecuted.

So what are the chances of the police hitting their 40% target for black and minority ethnic new recruits? Zilch. The police are uniformly hated in the black community for good reason.

BLM movement puts Met police on the back foot

But the fact that the Met police are talking about a “race action plan” is because of the power of the mass movement on the streets that took hold in the BAME mobilisations – supported by hundreds of thousand of white allies – behind Black Lives Matter summer.

The police have been forced to do some window dressing, but behind the scenes nothing much will change.

Instead, we need to strengthen the movement on the streets and in our communities and social organisations as our best defence against police racism.

We need to get to a situation where every time they stop and search a black youth in London, they are met by a surrounding throng of concerned citizenry challenging their behaviour.

Met police BAME effort set to fail

Having more black faces in the police will make no difference. Just as in the US where there are plenty of black officers in police forces, it hasn’t stopped the continuing reign of terror by the police there. Indeed, whole police departments in the inner cities are supposedly run by black politicians – from police chiefs to attorney generals – but the racist murders by police still take place daily.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/478270414
Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper on the Netpol report into over-policing of Black Lives Matter protests in the UK

Read more on the case for scrapping Section 60 – the powers that allow police to apply draconian laws to whole borough so they don’t even have to provide a reason for stopping people. The number of such stops are on the rise in the big cities, especially London and the Birmingham.

news, UK

BAME and frontliners not on Covid vaccine priority list

Despite the well-documented fact that those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are twice as likely to die from Covid, that’s not enough to warrant inclusion on the priority list for the rollout of Covid vaccinations.

Just two weeks ago the inquiry into the disproportionate deaths among BAME communities led by Baroness Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen who was murdered in a notorious racist attack, found that “systematic racism” was at the root of the problem.

Working-class people in general, and those from BAME backgrounds in particular, are dying in larger proportions because of the jobs they do, not the genes they have.

This is because working-class people are much more likely to be in jobs where they can’t work from home, and this applies doubly so to those from Black and Asian backgrounds.

Health inequalities key to understanding higher death rates among those from BAME and working-class backgrounds

Professor Wei Shen Lim, chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said yesterday that it was “really, really important” to take into account disparities between ethnic groups and the related health inequalities.

It should be added that the disparities between social groups, namely those doing the frontline jobs from all ethnic backgrounds, should be at the front of the queue for a Covid vaccine.

“We know that there has been a disproportionate representation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups for severe Covid disease, and the underlying factors behind that association are complex, and they are multiple,” said Lim.

But the government is ignoring the scientists, as usual.

The first doctors to die from Covid in the UK were all from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds

Researchers at the universities of Leicester and Nottingham have found that Asian people are the most likely to have the worst outcomes (a euphemism for being most likely to die) from Covid and this was because of social conditions not genetics. 

Dr Shirley Sze from the University of Leicester who led the study said: “The clear evidence of increased risk of infection amongst ethnic minority groups is of urgent public health importance.

“We must work to minimise exposure to the virus in these at-risk groups by facilitating their timely access to healthcare resources and target the social and structural disparities that contribute to health inequalities.”

– Dr Shirley Sze

And even where a middle-class demographic is concerned, such as doctors from BAME backgrounds in the NHS (see picture above), the impact of institutional racism rears its head: non-white doctors are far more likely to be working on the Covid wards (as our BAME nurses) and much less likely to be the senior consultants who are most distanced from the frontline.

But despite all of this evidence, and the mounting death toll which is now the highest in Europe, the government has so far refused to make those from Black and Asian communities – or the poorest in the northern cities for that matter where the incidence of poverty and other markers such as overcrowding and poor diet are more prevalent – a priority for the rollout of the Pfizer vaccine.

Since this video was made, Hesketh Benoit can count 37 people he personally knows who have died from Covid, as reported in the Huffington Post

news, UK

Greg Clarke’s racism shows British football is rotting from the head

One third of the players in the premier league are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the top of the game.

And where better to start than with the chairman of the Englsih Football Association Greg Clarke.

In comments to the culture and sport select committee in parliament yesterday, he managed to offend almost everyone.

Girls scared of getting hurt by the ball says Clarke

He wrote-off half of humanity when he claimed that girls and women were scared of getting hurt by the football.

Tell that to Megan Rapinoe!

Megan Rapinoe

Being gay a ‘life choice’ says Clarke

He then moved on to gay people, where he said sexuality was a “life choice”.

Racist generalisations about Asian fans and players

 As for people from South Asian backgrounds, he reckons they are more interested in being a doctor or accountants, which apparently is meant to explain why there are so few Asian people involved at the higher levels of the game.

According to Clarke, there’s “a lot more South Asians than there are Afro-Caribbeans” in the FA IT department because “they have different career interests”.

“Coloured” like its 1950 or apartheid South Africa

And just to cap it off he decided to deploy the racist 1950s word coloured to descrribe black people.

This all comes after months of Black Lives Matter movement protests.

This is after the FA claimed to be supporting the cause of racial equality by urging players and clubs to get behind taking the knee.

The sad truth is that the people who run the game are far behind the times and need to be cleared out wholesale.

Players should strike action against Football Association’s racist bosses

It is not surprising when people like Clarke are running the game that such little progress has been made on diversity. There are still just three non-white managers in the whole of the professional game.

Fans – black and white – deserve better than this.

BLMM urges black players and their white colleagues to demand that this happens and to threaten strike action until it does.

As campaign group Kick it Out has pointed out, the FA launched its diversity code just a couple of weeks ago – it’s such a shame the FA don’t follow it!