Grenfell fire charity ‘has racist legacy’
A CHARITY which supported Grenfell fire victims is ‘institutionally racist’, according to a review.
The Westway Trust failed to ‘identify and address racial disparity’ in relation to its employment and services, the report by the Tutu Foundation found.
The trust – founded to manage land under the Westway road, in west London, and help the local community – called itself part of a ‘collective response’ after 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72 people in Kensington.
But the review said the charity had a historical lack of diverse management, with those ‘sounding the alarm’ over issues ignored. And it had treated London’s Notting Hill Carnival with ‘disdain’ – ‘not allowing’ it on trust land.
‘The legacy of institutional racism lives within the organisation in terms of the perceptions and relations with the African Caribbean community,’ said the report. ‘The Trust failed to understand, identify and address racial disparity.’
It added the community had already experienced ‘a sense of injustice’ from ‘a lack of engagement by the trust’ before distress in the area was ‘brought to the fore by the Grenfell fire, which the community believes has arisen because of a culture of institutional racism’. It recom
mended a public apology, plus potential compensation to those impacted.
Toby Laurent Belson, chair of the trustees, said the charity ‘apologises to our entire community’, and vowed to ‘take the organisation through the changes necessary to bring about reparative and restorative justice’.