Black History Month

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my friend the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting). I feel like I have stepped back in time. I have known him for about 15 years. Thirteen years ago, he was the National Union of Students president, and his passion certainly has not been reduced in any way. He practises what he preaches, and it was a pleasure to hear his “rant”, to use his own word.

I want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), who spoke about the importance of standing up and contributing to this conversation. I am someone who is passionate about tackling injustices and prejudices wherever we find them, and it is vital that everyone is involved in this conversation.

Of course, I must come to the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), who gave an incredibly impressive and strong opening speech, in which she listed many outstanding people of colour whom we are celebrating. She did miss one—and I am a little disappointed that my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) got in there first on the sporting references. The hon. Lady missed Ian Wright, who was my absolute hero as a young child growing up in Doncaster. I was obsessed by him. I remember getting his biography as a kid and reading everything about him and understanding everything that he overcame—all the difficulties, injustices and racism that he faced. He remains a hero to this day, although I think he owes me an awful lot of money for making me a lifelong Arsenal fan; I have suffered because of that.

The hon. Lady also spoke of those who “barely get a voice” in Parliament. I wanted to come back to that point, because it really resonated with me. There is a broader point to be made about that subject, and I think that it actually transcends race and speaks a lot more to class, occupation and educational standards. As Members of Parliament, we have to have empathy with many different situations and backgrounds. Any hard-working MP who deals regularly with casework will know that in this job we are given responsibility and many different requests, but unfortunately, we are not always given the magic wands to make all those problems go away.

I am proud to be a member of a new intake that better represents the constituencies that I am familiar with in the north of the country, but I am also incredibly proud to be a Member of a House of Commons that is continually becoming more diverse and representing the country that we all recognise and I believe we all love. There is certainly more that we can do, but we must not lose sight of how far we have come and how many brilliant people there are on all the Benches in this Chamber who represent many different walks of life.

Today’s debate is about changing the curriculum. Every time I come into the Chamber, there seems to be a request that something should or should not be taught. We place tremendous strain on our education system with our requests, and I worry that sometimes we do not take a more holistic view of the impact that that can have on teachers.

There is a wider conversation to be had about education—about where the arms of the state end and parental responsibilities begin and about the importance of ensuring that our history is not locked away or torn down. I believe that flies in the face of the petitions that we are debating, which call for us to learn more and to educate ourselves, but we cannot always rely on the classroom to solve every issue.

Indeed, I would argue that the most important role that the classroom can play is to equip the next generation of children, from whatever background, to be prepared for the workforce and to ensure that, as always, education is the great equaliser. I believe that it is working. We have record numbers of black students attending university and record grades for black students at schools across the country. We are discussing our history today, but we must not lose sight of our present and our future.

One of the petitions that we are debating states:

“Now, more than ever, we must turn to education and history to guide us.”

Britain has a long and complicated history. The values that our country proudly promotes today, of tolerance, equality of opportunity and a multicultural and multiracial society living cheek by jowl, are the result of centuries of wrongs being righted—of enlightenment and better thinking being victorious over prejudices and ill-informed decisions. We have progressed as a society because we have learned from our mistakes.

No person, country or institution is perfect; we have made and will continue to make mistakes. To be proud of our history is not to support racism, and to love our country is not to say that it has always been right. Equally, to focus on the mistakes of our history and not highlight the progress that has been made is to give only one side of the discussion.

I have just realised that I am running out of time, so I will edit out a paragraph in real time. We are, I believe, a tolerant nation. I join colleagues from across the House in highlighting the amazing contributions that black men and women have made to our armed forces, our NHS, our businesses, our politics and our culture. I hope that young men or women watching this debate know that we are better than previous generations, but we still have more to learn.