TODAY’S “March Against Racism” marking UN Anti-Racism Day organised by Stand up to Racism, supported by the TUC and affiliated unions, could not be more timely. The last few days have exposed the distressing racist sexual abuse, degradation and humiliation that a black girl known as “Child Q” was forced to endure by police officers. 

The government also recently published its Inclusive Britain report which failed to reject the discredited Commission for Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) “Sewell” report or address institutional racism and problems in policing highlighted by the Child Q case. 

A few days ago another boat capsized near the coast of Libya in the Mediterranean Sea, leaving 19 African and Middle Eastern refugees dead and only four survivors, but was met with very little media coverage let alone outrage and compassion. 

There are so many reasons to be marching against racism. 

We send solidarity to Child Q and her family at this difficult time. To be taken out of an exam is humiliating enough, then to be subjected to the awful dehumanising ordeal of being strip-searched by police officers with no safeguarding measures is utterly disgraceful.

For the Metropolitan Police to simply issue an apology is a travesty of justice. The Metropolitan Police must expel the police officers involved. There must be an independent investigation into all authorities concerned to ensure proper safeguarding of children and to take action on eradicating institutional racism.

The Child Q incident has rightly provoked anger and outrage in the black community and the anti-racist movement. It took place in 2020 when the whole world said “Black Lives Matter” and a spotlight was shone on police racism and Britain’s history of racism, slavery, colonialism and imperialism. There is a link between the enslavement of black people and racism in policing. 

The behaviour of these police officers is a legacy of the sexual exploitation, dehumanisation and humiliation black people were subjected to during slavery. This is why de-colonising education, confronting and learning about Britain’s history in order to challenge racism today, is so important. Tomorrow’s police officers need an anti-racist education. 

Sadly but not surprisingly, none of these issues were addressed in “Inclusive Britain: government response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities” (CRED), published earlier this week. 

CRED was a right-wing ideological attempt to shift the narrative on racism away from discussing how to address institutional racism to questioning its very existence. Ahead of the publication of the report last year, CRED chair Tony Sewell said the Commission found “no evidence of institutional racism.”

It monstrously prettified the enslavement of African people stating that: “There is a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain” [sic].
 
The CRED was published last year and was lambasted by many including Baroness Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence and experts at the UN who said the report attempted to “normalise white supremacy.”

CRED was announced in 2020 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, a global movement ignited by video footage showing police officer Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd, which resonated with black communities in Britain because of decades of black deaths in police custody and racist stop and search. The movement also emerged in the context of the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on black communities. 

The government should have rejected the CRED. However its response to CRED said: “We agree wholeheartedly with the Commission’s wide-ranging conclusions and especially the finding that we have made enormous progress as a multiracial society over the past 50 years.” 

Child Q, worsening police racism, tens of thousands of black people continuing to die disproportionately from Covid19 — as illustrated in recent figures from the Office for National Statistics — is not progress. Despite being commissioned in the wake of BLM and George Floyd’s murder, neither CRED nor the government’s response address the need for justice for black deaths in police custody in Britain. 

Instead of taking action to address institutional, systemic and structural racism that has led to racist policing, and the disproportionate impact on black communities of Covid19 and the cost-of-living crisis, the government has been busy suppressing the facts and pretending institutional racism doesn’t exist to prevent another BLM movement. 

In fact the government is deliberately targeting black communities with racist legislation including the Nationality and Borders Bill, Policing Bill, Elections Bill and changing the Human Rights Act.

It is doing so in order to scapegoat and distract from its disastrous approach to the Covid-19 public health crisis, that has led to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths and illnesses, and the cost-of-living crisis, and also to divide the movement against the government. 

This UN Anti-Racism Day we must pledge to unite against this Tory government that stands in the tradition of Enoch Powell “Rivers of Blood” Tories and stand up to racism. 

Today’s events are part of a World Against Racism day of action in the context of the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Europe has been correct to open its doors to Ukrainian refugees and Britain must waive visas for refugees. 

For years African and Middle Eastern refugees drowning in seas has become normalised and dehumanised. This must stop. We need the same compassionate response to refugees from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Syria, Eritrea and Yemen, as Ukrainian refugees. 

Today we will say loudly and clearly that black lives matter — all refugees must be welcomed — and we reject the Nationality and Borders Bill which will lead to more refugees drowning in the sea.