Black MP: I was taken for a cleaner in the House
An MP has revealed she was the subject of racism in Parliament when a fellow MP mistook her for a cleaner.
Appearing on BBC 5 Live’s Piennar’s Politics, Dawn Butler was asked if she’d ever been faced with racism in Parliament. The Labour MP for Brent Central said she remembered a confrontation which occurred in a membersonly lift inside the Palace of Westminster.
“Yes – God, there are so many incidents,” she said. “There was a time when I was in the lift. It was a members’ lift that members of Parliament use specially in cases [when] we have get to places quickly.
“I was in the lift and some other MP said, ‘This lift really isn’t for cleaners’.”
The 46-year-old east London-born politician chose not to disclose the name of the MP. In 2008, having become the third blackwoman MP, Ms Butler wrote an article about a separate incident where the former senior Tory minister David Heathcoat-Amory confronted her in the members’ section of the terrace.
“He actually said to me, ‘What are you doing here? This is for members only’,” she wrote.
“He then proceeded to ask me, ‘Are you a member?’ And I said, ‘Yes I am, are you?’ And he turned around and said to his colleague, ‘They’re letting anybody in nowadays.’
“This man could not equate the image he sawin front of him with that of an MP. It was quite upsetting for my team and so we had to take it further.”
Mr Heathcoat-Amory rebuffed the accusation that his remarks were racist.
“It’s quite absurd,” he said.