Race tsar bites back after claim he ‘glorified slavery’

THE beleaguered chairman of the Government’s racial disparities commission was forced to deny he had ‘glorified’ the slave trade yesterday.

Dr Tony Sewell said it was ‘ridiculous and offensive’ to claim his report had ‘put a positive spin on slavery and the empire’. And another member of the commission, Mercy Muroki, accused the ‘race lobby’ of attacking it just because they are unwilling to engage with evidence they do not like.

Yesterday Boris Johnson appeared to distance himself from the report, and Baroness Lawrence, whose son Stephen was murdered by white thugs in 1993, said it had ‘given racists the green light’.

Critics branded the study by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities a ‘whitewash’ after it found no conclusive evidence of institutional racism in Britain. The report, published on Wednesday, said factors such as geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion were found to have more impact on life chances than racism.

In his foreword, Dr Sewell called on schools to use history lessons to ‘tell the multiple, nuanced stories of the contributions made by different groups that have made this country the one it is today’. He said there was a new story to be told about the ‘slave period’ that was not all about ‘profit and suffering’, and about how ‘culturally African people transformed themselves into a remodelled African/Britain’.

Labour’s women and equalities spokesman Marsha de Cordova called on the Government to explain ‘how they came to publish content which glorifies the slave trade’.

Yesterday Dr Sewell, a former teacher and founder of the educational charity Generating Genius, hit back.

‘It is absurd to suggest that the commission is trying to downplay the evil of the slave trade,’ he said. ‘It is both ridiculous and offensive to each and every commissioner. The report merely says that, in the face of the inhumanity of slavery, African people preserved their humanity and culture.’

Ms Muroki, writing in The Times, said: ‘The commission’s findings reveal that disparity isn’t always discrimination, that causes are complicated, and that solutions should reflect that.’

Mr Johnson insisted there are ‘serious issues that our society faces to do with racism’ and that work needed to be done to ‘fix it’, while Baroness Lawrence told The Guardian: ‘When I first heard about the report my first thought was it has pushed [the fight against] racism back 0 years or more.’

The report said it requested new research from sources, including The King’s Fund but a spokesman for the health and social care think-tank said it simply shared work it had already done.

‘Giving racists the green light’