UK says 'black lives matter'

BRITAIN joined the world in condemning the ‘horrifying’ death of George Floyd after his arrest by US police in Minneapolis on May 25.

People took to the streets - many attempting to social distance because of the coronavirus emergency - to show solidarity with protesters across the United States at the way the 46-year-old African-American lost his life.

Political commentator and author Nick de Bois said demonstrations in the UK took place under the ‘key’ democratic right to peaceful protest. “They are making the case black lives matter; and it does matter.”

Speaking on the Costa Blanca’s Bay Radio, the former conservative MP hit out at the ‘shameful’ attack on the government by the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford claiming it had ‘shuttered itself away’ from condemning the alleged murder of the American ‘and hoped no one would notice’.

Nick said Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was ‘quite legitimate’ in asking Prime Minister Boris Johnson to let President Donald Trump know Britain’s feeling over the ‘appalling’ death in custody.

And he said a ‘robust’ premier had told the House of Commons: “My message to President Trump, to everybody in the United States from the UK is that…racism, racist violence has no place in our society.”

He said Mr Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock had both repeated the message that ‘black lives matter’ in recent days, echoing the mood of the country and the world.

Nick said: “It was not ignored by the government and not ignored by Parliament; words matter and leaders must be heard.” He added that as both prime minister and earlier as Mayor of London, Boris Johnson had brought people together; the SNP claim was ‘just utter nonsense’.

He said police chiefs in the UK also issued a statement. “It says they stand with every other right-minded person around the globe; basically, that they were appalled and horrified at the way George Floyd lost his life.”

And he said it was an important statement as some protesters were challenging the British police and saying it was happening in the UK.

“Not exactly as we saw with George Floyd, which was a particularly horrific incident but there is a fact that we cannot ignore - over the last 20 years there were 1,500 deaths in custody and a third of those were from black and ethnic minority groups,” he said.

“On the face of it, it’s a huge disproportion as the population of black and ethnic minorities is about 14%. But there have been very worrying deaths in custody period but a very high proportion from this group of people.”

Nick said a health report commissioned by the government had investigated victims of coronavirus and the fact that deaths amongst people from ethnic minorities were proportionally higher than those of the white population.

He said the results were both ‘interesting and tragic’ and brought questions of whether it was because of different socio-economic standards within communities.

“The prime minister was accused of trying to bury this report, which is utter claptrap. The government wants the report out to try and take steps to deal with it,” said Nick.

“The government has to get on top of health inequality period - and perhaps this report and these deaths will be the impetus to do so.”