Black History Month

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Buck, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) on securing this important debate.

I want to mention some of the speeches that have been made. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) made some important points about the glass ceiling that black and minority ethnic people face. He raised issues about higher education institutions and the lack of diversity among professors, and that is incredibly important. The Government should take action and call on all the universities that take public funding to address the issue as a priority. I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Greg Clarke and the Football League on their excellent work to try to increase diversity in the league. They set a great example to encourage premier league clubs to follow suit.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) made a lovely speech and raised the important issue of slavery, a shameful chapter in Britain’s history, in which the port of Lancaster in my constituency played a significant role. I try to be very aware of that in the work I do. I hope that future chapters in the book of the history of Britain will make amends for the role that we played in the international slave trade.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has long been a campaigner for race equality, following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Bernie Grant, who was a pioneer at a time when black people did not have it easy. He led the way and was a shining example to everyone. I hope he is an inspiration to many young people today, who can look to figures like him and the hon. Members present in the Chamber to show that no door should be closed to them. I thank my right hon. Friend for reminding us of the role that Commonwealth countries played in the first world war, and of the fact that it is 50 years since the Race Relations Act 1965 was passed. My goodness, we still have a long way to go.

I also thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) for the lovely compliment she paid me as she looked at me when asking whether anyone would remember “Record Breakers”. I must look younger than I am, because it finished airing in 2001, so I do remember it, and I enjoyed it very much. I am not that young.

It is often said that history is written by the victors. I certainly heard a lot about that when I was growing up, as my father was an enthusiastic lover of history. History is written by dead white men, because they were the people who had power and who wrote it down. Black History Month therefore offers an opportunity to learn more about history that has not been recorded and that is not talked about in the same way that the dead-white-men history is written about. We rightly celebrate many victories and achievements, but, sadly, the legacy of racism and discrimination remain in too many areas of public life today. The stories of many of those who fought for the advances that have been made have not yet been told properly, so Black History Month is as vital for children in schools as it is for Members of Parliament, to enable us to learn about the communities we represent.

I want to play particular attention today to the contribution that black and ethnic minority communities have made to the labour movement. The Labour party and the wider labour movement can be proud when it comes to fighting racism and discrimination.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Karen Buck (in the Chair)]

The debate may continue until 4.25 pm if necessary, but I stress that that is not mandatory.

[Cat Smith]

Labour Members took a leading role in the anti-colonial campaigns in the first half of the 20th century and in the anti-apartheid campaigns more recently. Labour Governments introduced the Race Relations Act 1968, the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Equality Act 2010 to ensure that all our communities receive equal treatment under law.

There are, however, episodes in our history of which we must be sadly less proud, particularly from the first half of the 20th century, when many black and ethnic minority workers were not welcomed into the labour movement in the way that they should have been. I therefore pay tribute to those who stood up for their rights and successfully changed attitudes and transformed the labour movement into the proudly anti-racist movement that we have today, although there is, as Members have mentioned, some work to do in respect of representation among its leadership.

Those who stood up for their rights include the black workers in Cardiff who formed the Coloured Seamen’s Union in 1936 to fight against the operation of the colour bar in Cardiff docks. The Indian Workers’ Association was also formed around that time in Coventry. It fought not only against racism, but for better employment rights and Indian independence.

In Bristol in the 1960s, black communities boycotted bus services owing to the refusal of the Bristol Omnibus Company to employ black or Asian bus crews. The boycott lasted four months and forced the company to back down and overturn its colour bar. In 1972, Pakistani workers at Crepe Sizes Ltd in Nottingham went on strike over working conditions, redundancies and pay. They were supported by the local community and won union recognition and the reinstatement of workers made redundant.

More well known is the 1976 strike at Grunwick by Asian and West Indian women who walked out owing to poor working conditions and attempts to cut pay. Although the strike was ultimately unsuccessful, it represented one of the first times that a dispute affecting BME workers received the mass support of the trade union movement, with electrical workers, miners, electricians and Post Office workers all backing the strike.

Those episodes represent just a fraction of the contribution that BME workers have made to the labour movement during the 20th century. Those workers not only improved their own lives and those of their communities, but they transformed the labour movement into a more inclusive movement that today has equality at its heart. We owe all of those workers a huge debt of gratitude and we must learn from their example to address the challenges we face. It is shameful that, earlier this month, we learned that black people are three times more likely to have a Taser used against them than white people. It cannot be right that the number of black and Asian workers in low-paid jobs increased by 12.7% between 2011 and 2014 compared with a 1.8% rise for white workers in the same period.

As a society, we need to show solidarity and stand shoulder to shoulder with those fighting injustices today. I look forward to hearing the stories of victories over such forms of discrimination in Black History Months to come.