Black History Month

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

George Floyd is murdered agonisingly over nine long minutes in Minneapolis, and in Newcastle 5,000 people of all ages, races and backgrounds join an online protest seeking real change. Racism is global, and our response must be.

Let me start by saying why Black History Month matters so much to me personally. I grew up in Newcastle in the ’70s. I went to fantastic local schools, where I learned the history of our great region, and I was inspired by local heroes such as Stephenson and Parsons to become an engineer, but I learned nothing of black history. I would have been hard put to name a dozen famous black people outside music or sports. My knowledge of black achievement was limited to those two sectors and a few walk-on parts in the great histories of nations, generally as hapless victims or stereotypical villains.

I remember as a child being inspired by the words of Martin Luther King, but I did not know that he had come to Newcastle University, that it was the only non-American university to honour him in his lifetime and that he made an amazing speech accepting that honour—a call to arms and international solidarity in the fight against racism. That speech is online and remains relevant today. I did not know that Frederick Douglass, the American campaigner and abolitionist and the most famous black person of his time, lived and lectured in Newcastle in the 1840s. Indeed, it is sad to think that, given the lack of diversity in academia now, Newcastle may have had a higher proportion of BAME lecturers then than it does today. I never learned that African soldiers were garrisoned on Hadrian’s wall. I want in particular to thank historian and fellow Geordie David Olusoga for celebrating the long history of black Britain, often in the face of virulent racism.

That is why Black History Month matters. Yes, there is justice in telling the stories of those whom history has overlooked; there is also power in sharing the diversity of achievement that is our history. My own achievement of being Newcastle’s first black MP is put into context; I am not an outlier, but I stand on the shoulders of the many who go before me in our shared past. So yes, I want black history taught in our schools. I want young girls and boys of each and every ethnicity to learn British history, and I want them to know that Geordie Africanus has a long and exciting history and future in our region.

The stories of black lives now need to be celebrated. Let me give just one example. My constituent Miriam Mafemba came to England 21 years ago from Zimbabwe, where she faced harassment because of her trade union activism. Here, she studied nursing and now works on the frontline against covid. As an active Unison member, she fights for better conditions for all, seeking to address the snowy white peaks that unfortunately remain in our beloved NHS. Miriam, and all those fighting to improve working lives, represents the future of Newcastle.

I praise the work of trade unions such as Unison and all who seek to improve the working conditions of their black members. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, he was in Memphis supporting American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union sanitation workers in their struggle to be recognised as key workers. Their sign was “I am a man” because they were always called “boy”. We may not be called “boy” now, but racism in the workplace remains a barrier to the success of so many. Explicit racial discrimination may be illegal, but implicit stereotyping, exclusion and the burden of being the only black person in the room forms the ceiling of achievement for so many.

The impact of workplace discrimination has been highlighted by the pandemic. Covid feeds on inequality, but I am angry that six months into this pandemic, all we seem to know is that black and minority ethnic people are two to three times more likely to die, not why, where or when. Does the Government Equalities Office have no data analysts?

[Kemi Badenoch]

It is interesting that the hon. Lady raises that point. She may not be aware that I have been looking at that issue since June, and I will give an oral statement on Thursday that will answer many of those questions.

[Chi Onwurah]

I look forward greatly to that statement. Perhaps then the Minister will tell me whether it is true, as I have been told, that the number of BAME women with covid in Newcastle hospitals is eight times that of white women with covid.

I praise the impact of Black History Month and what it does in telling our shared history, but it needs to do more. How do we eradicate racism? I was set that challenge by young people during a Black History Month event recently, and I was flummoxed. I realised that I do not spend enough time imagining the end of racism, but we should. Yes, it will take a race equality strategy, and real action and legislation, but there is more that we can all do as individuals. As someone who was on the national executive of the anti-apartheid movement for many years, I often think about why that international movement was so successful. Certainly, we protested in huge numbers all over the world—and certainly we had the best music—but we also made organisations, companies, politicians and countries change. We boycotted, we voted, we made apartheid South Africa a pariah state. We have to do the same thing for racism. We have to make it unacceptable. Do not buy its products, do not vote for its advocates, do not fund its perpetrators and do not click on its content—and, yes, I mean Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and all the social media platforms whose business model is predicated on promoting the extremes.

I look forward to a day when parents will explain racism to their children in the same way that they now explain hanging, drawing and quartering: as a barbaric practice of our past. Black voices will be celebrated in the story of the ending of racism. For too long, history has been written by the victors. We want a world in which success is open to all, and Black History Month can help to achieve that by remembering all our history in colour and making racism history.