Campaigner says report into race was ‘devastating’
ONE of London’s most experienced anti-racism campaigners has criticised a Government report claiming that institutional racism no longer exists in Britain.
Suresh Grover was one of the leaders of the youth movement established in the aftermath of the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in Southall, west London, in 1976.
Mr Grover’s family came to the UK from Kenya in 1966 for a better life and a British education. But what he saw and heard growing up in the 1970s changed him.
Chaggar was just 18 when he was stabbed to death in Southall on the night of Friday, June 4, 1976.
The unprovoked murder of the Sikh engineering student, targeted during a quiet night out with friends by a gang of white youths, had an immediate impact. Over the following weekend, hundreds of local Asians took to the streets to express their anger.
The incident pushed Asian youth to challenge violent racism and police response throughout the UK.
After schoolteacher Blair Peach was killed during an anti-racism demonstration in Southall in 1979, and hundreds of locals were charged with causing disturbances, Mr Grover was one of the activists who established a legal defence for those charged. He documented the social impact of the incident and galvanised support, for over a decade, to name those responsible for the killing.
The Metropolitan Police later released a report indicating that Peach was most likely killed by a police officer.
Mr Grover later set up the Southall Monitoring Group, which investigates cases of racism across London and the UK, and he has remained an active campaigner ever since.
Now he has been joined by West London groups in hitting out at the Government-commissioned review into racial disparities. The report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, published on March 31, found there was “no longer” a
Britain where the system was deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities, but that other factors, such as family, religion and socio-economic background, had a more significant impact on life chances than racism.
The report also accepted the UK was not yet a “post-racial society” and that outright racism existed that had “no place in any civilised society”.
It added: “But we have ensured our analysis has gone beyond these individual instances, to carefully examine the evidence and data, and the evidence reveals that ours is nevertheless a relatively open society.
“The country has come a long way in 50 years and the success of much of the ethnic minority population in education and, to a lesser extent, the economy, should be regarded as a model for other Whitemajority countries.”
The review came in response to the Black Lives Matter protests last year, which also saw demonstrations in Southall, Ealing Common and Uxbridge.
Southall Monitoring Group previously sought to file a judicial review to stop the selection of Dr Tony Sewell, the commission’s chair, claiming he had a record of “minimising” institutional racism. After the report’s release, Mr Grover said: “I think the report is devastating for areas like Southall, which have a rich history in dealing with discrimination, and people have suffered from it but overcome it, but they’ve only overcome it by people accepting the problem and dealing with it properly. This report totally evades [state] responsibility.”
He added: “We were very clear this review will not be independent, it won’t be impartial… Our reaction to this is that we were vindicated; we should have proceeded with the action.”
The report makes 24 recommendations, including to extend school days – starting in disadvantaged areas – to help pupils catch up on learning missed during the pandemic; to increase legitimacy and accountability of stop and search using body-worn video; and to scrap the term ‘BAME,’ the acronym for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic.
However, Mr Grover fears the
Government may cease policy monitoring of racial disparities by ending the use of BAME, making it harder to track inequalities based on race.
Barbara Karayi, acting director of West London Equality Centre, said she and her colleagues were “very surprised” at the report, adding there was “no interrogation” as to the reasons certain minorities were disadvantaged in the first place.
She said: ”So, for example, was it racism that was contributing to the lack of opportunities for minorities in the job market which meant they were more likely to be in low-paid jobs and treated less favourably than their white counterparts when they try to move up the ladder?
“At this moment, job applicants with foreign names are less likely to be interviewed, so there is clear evidence of a lack of opportunities based on race. In effect, victims were being blamed for being victims.”
The report also drew criticism nationally for describing a “new story” about the slave period not only being about profit but “how culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain”, which Ms Karayi called “plain bizarre”.
Campaign group Clean Air for Southall and Hayes responded to the Government review by saying the multicultural community were victims of “environmental racism” through the impact of odour nuisance from work being carried out at the former gasworks site. This was because they were “denied recognition for our experiences of air pollution and procedural justice”.
Following the Black Lives Matter protests, Ealing Council set up a Race Equality Commission to investigate structural inequalities across areas such as education, housing and employment in the borough.
Lord Simon Woolley, advisory chair to the Government’s Race Disparity Unit from 2018 to 2020, is the independent chair leading the Ealing probe. Writing in The Guardian, he said the report was a “huge missed opportunity” at a time when the nation felt ready for change to undo racism. He said to publish it “after the months of heartache and the awareness-raising of the past year is almost criminally negligent.”
Despite the disappointment, there is hope the outcry will unify groups to talk and protest more about systemic racism and that society has never been so receptive to understanding racism’s effects.
We were very clear this review ... won’t be impartial. Our reaction to this is that we were vindicated Suresh Grover
‘LOCAL LEGEND’ SURESH GROVER CLAIMS REVIEW
‘EVADES RESPONSIBILITY’