Black History Month

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

I am truly honoured to close this debate for the official Opposition. I want to begin by congratulating my friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) on securing this important debate and thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

Members have heard that this is the first debate in the House on Black History Month for five years. I hope that we do not have to wait another five years to have another such debate, because the House should always have time to consider and debate issues of great importance. We have heard speeches and contributions from dozens of hon. and right hon. Members across the House which, for the most part, have been good-natured. There were a few parts of the debate that were not so. Many Members have shared stories from their communities, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), who is not in her place now. She discussed Dr Pitt, who stood for Labour in an election in the 1950s and was the second black person to become a Lord. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead gave a powerful opening speech about the importance of Black History Month and why we need to celebrate it. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) shared her experience of growing up in the ’80s and the education she had. She also cited Mary Seacole, as have many other Members in this debate.

Black History Month has been celebrated every year in the UK since 1987. That was also a historic year because it was the year we elected the first three black MPs to this place: the late Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). In Black History Month we aim to highlight and celebrate the contributions of black people who may not be part of the black history or our curriculum.

This Black History Month is even more important, as we face the global health pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, which has shone a light on some of the structural racial inequalities experienced by black people here in the UK and around the world. The tragic murder of George Floyd by white police officers in the United States ignited a global show of solidarity through the Black Lives Matter protests. Thousands of people from different backgrounds came together to demand fundamental change and challenge the racial injustices in Britain today. Racism is a systemic problem and requires systemic solutions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said, it is not enough for someone merely to say that they are not racist; they have to be an anti-racist.

It starts with knowing our history, as so many Members across the House have said today. My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) gave us such a great history of Caribbean politics and sport, telling us all about the great Michael Manley, the Jamaican Prime Minister. My right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) cited the history of the transatlantic slave trade and the fight of those enslaved who fought for freedom. He rightly cited the injustices and disparities that exist.

We should celebrate our history and be proud of our history. As many have said throughout this debate, black history is British history. We should be proud of people like the abolitionist Mary Prince, who was the first black woman to write her own story in her book published in 1831. We should be proud that the first pan-African conference took place just down the road in Westminster town hall in 1900, and was attended by people from Africa, the West Indies and US, including John Archer, who I shall come back to shortly.

I want us all to know about the thousands and thousands of black people who fought for our country in the first world war and succeeding wars, including the men who served in the British West Indies Regiment in 1915. The Windrush generation made such great contributions to our society. Many of them were among the first to work in the NHS, including members of my own family.

In the 1960s, Paul Stephenson, alongside Roy Hackett, Guy Bailey and many others, challenged racism and discrimination and led the Bristol bus boycott, which lasted four months until the company backed down and overturned the colour bar. This is all part of our history—our British history. The boycott helped to influence the passing of the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968 and 1976, all of which were passed by Labour Governments, of course.

We will never forget the tragic murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the institutional racism that surrounded the investigation and led to the long fight for justice of our friend Baroness Lawrence and her family.

Whether we know it or not, we are all affected by those who have gone before us. I myself am proud to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before me, including some of the greats who represented Battersea, such as John Archer who, when elected mayor of Battersea in 1913, became London’s first black mayor, and who rightly cited his election as a pivotal moment. One of the first Asian MPs was elected in Battersea in 1922: Shapurji Saklatvala. I do indeed stand on the shoulders of many greats.

We all need to know about, and be able to talk about, Britain’s colonial past and the structural racism that continues to exist. Although we have made progress, we still have some way to go. As has been cited by many this afternoon, black workers with degrees still earn around 23% less than their white counterparts; Caribbean children are still three times more likely to be excluded from school; and black men are more than nine times more likely to be stopped and searched, and a disproportionate number are dying in police custody.

It matters that we understand and acknowledge those things. The Wendy Williams “Windrush Lessons Learned” review made it clear that it was possible for the Windrush scandal to happen in part because of the public’s poor understanding of Britain’s colonial history, our history of inward and outward migration, and the history of black Britons. We need to learn, and we need justice for the thousands of people from the Windrush generation, many of whom lost their homes, their livelihoods and, in some cases, tragically, their lives.

We need justice for the black people whose deaths could have been avoided during this pandemic, and we need action to address the hugely disproportionate impact that coronavirus is still having on our black, Asian and minority ethnic communities right now. This Government have so far failed to implement many of Public Health England’s recommendations. The countless families who have lost loved ones, and their communities, should not have to wait any longer. That is why Labour has set out the need for a race equality strategy that takes lessons from the covid-19 virus pandemic and seeks fundamentally to change the systems and institutions in which these structural racial inequalities exist.

Today, I call on the Minister to say that she will urgently look to implement a race equality strategy, which includes fundamental reform of the national curriculum—as cited by so many hon. Friends, including my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) and so many others—so that it includes an honest account of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.

Will the Minister commit not just to a review of the curriculum, but to a strategy that addresses racial disparities, such as those mentioned by the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes)? I will hold to account the Women and Equalities Committee, which she chairs, to ensure that we start to see mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting. Will the Minister commit to a strategy that seeks to implement the many recommendations that have been made concerning racial inequalities, whether in the McGregor-Smith review, the Lammy review, Wendy Williams’s lessons learned review or countless others? Will she commit to a strategy that seeks to recognise all our different ethnicities within black, Asian and minority ethnic communities? There is so much more that this Government can and should do, and now is the time to act.

We continue to celebrate Black History Month, and we will continue to celebrate black history, because, as Marcus Garvey says,

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”

Each of us in this House has a role to play to stand for and demand that change. Black history is British history.

[The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)]

I am pleased to be standing at the Dispatch Box to close this much needed debate on Black History Month. I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), who has managed to be both a Front Bencher and a Back Bencher today; that is quite a feat. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and giving me an opportunity to speak on an issue that is very close to my heart, and I thank all the hon. and right hon. Members who have made thoughtful contributions. I will speak as quickly as I can, and I am afraid I will not be able to reference every speech, but I think that this has been a fantastic debate.

This year, more so than for decades, race has been at the heart of our national conversation. Black History Month remains an opportunity to shine a light on those whose contributions to our national history deserve to be better known. This month, the Government have taken the opportunity to celebrate the contribution of black Britons who enrich our collective national life and form an inseparable part of our national history—women such as Yvonne Conolly, who in 1969 became the UK’s first black female headteacher. Throughout her 40-year career, she has inspired and mentored generations of educators. The work of Ms Conolly and her fellow heads is key to the topic that we are debating. Education is key to our mission as a Government to level up and spread opportunity to everyone, whatever their background.

Many hon. Members have said that they want more black history to be taught, but they do not seem to be aware of what is actually on the curriculum. Our curriculum is not that of 50, 40 or even 20 years ago. Children today can learn about the British empire and colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition, and how our history has been shaped by people of all ethnicities. They also have the opportunity to study non-European cultures such as Mughal India and the Benin empire, which is where my ancestors decided to take over the world in their own way. Pupils can currently study migration, empires and the people in the AQA history GCSE, but the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) is quite wrong to say that that is the only place that it can be learned, as many other exam bodies offer that.

Our curriculum does not need to be decolonised, for the simple reason that it is not colonised. We should not apologise for the fact that British children primarily study the history of these islands. It goes without saying that the recent fad to decolonise maths, decolonise engineering and decolonise the sciences that we have seen across our universities—to make race the defining principle of what is studied—is not just misguided but actively opposed to the fundamental purpose of education. The curriculum, by its very nature, is limited; there are a finite number of hours to teach any subject. What we have not heard in this debate, from hon. Members on both sides of the House who want more added to it, is what must necessarily be taken out. Perhaps we will get to that another day.

The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and many others have raised the Black Lives Matter movement. The hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) raised the education guidance and believes that we are trying to stop children becoming activists. Another hon. Member—apologies; I have forgotten who it was—also mentioned that. What we are against is the teaching of contested political ideas as if they are accepted facts. We do not do that with communism, socialism or capitalism.

I want to speak about a dangerous trend in race relations that has come far too close to home in my life, which is the promotion of critical race theory, an ideology that sees my blackness as victimhood and their whiteness as oppression. I want to be absolutely clear that the Government stand unequivocally against critical race theory. Some schools have decided to openly support the anti-capitalist Black Lives Matter group, often fully aware that they have a statutory duty to be politically impartial.

Of course black lives matter, but we know that the Black Lives Matter movement is political. I know that because, at the height of the protests, I have been told of white Black Lives Matter protesters calling a black armed police officer guarding Downing Street—I apologise for saying this word—“a pet nigger”. That is why we do not endorse that movement on this side of the House. It is a political movement. It would be nice if Opposition Members condemned many of the actions of that political movement, instead of pretending that it is a completely wholesome anti-racist organisation.

Lots of pernicious stuff is being pushed, and we stand against that. We do not want teachers to teach their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt. Let me be clear that any school that teaches those elements of critical race theory as fact, or that promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law.

Hon. Members have mentioned the police. Our history is our own; it is not America’s. Too often, those who campaign against racial inequality import wholesale a narrative and assumptions that have nothing to do with this country’s history and have no place on these islands. Our police force is not their police force. Since its establishment by Robert Peel, our police force has operated on the principle of policing by consent. It gives me tremendous pride to live, in 2020, in a nation where the vast majority of our police officers are still unarmed.

On the history of black people in Britain, again, our history of race is not America’s. Most black British people who came to our shores were not brought here in chains, but came voluntarily because of their connections to the UK and in search of a better life. I should know: I am one of them. We have our own joys and sorrows to tell. From the Windrush generation to the Somali diaspora, it is a story that is uniquely ours. If we forget that story and replace it with an imported Americanised narrative of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow, we erase the history of not only black Britain, but of every other community that has contributed to society and that has also been a victim of racism or discrimination, from the Pakistani community to the Jewish community.

I have listened to Opposition Members talk about a race equality strategy. They know that the Government have set up a Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, but they have not engaged with it. They do not want a race equality strategy; they want the Government to adopt their race equality strategy, and that is not what we are doing.

[Marsha De Cordova]

rose—

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am afraid that I do not have enough time to give way.

We won an election a year ago. If Opposition Members want to implement their race equality strategy, they should go ahead and win an election. If they win the support of the British people, they can have their way, but at the moment this is a Conservative Government and we are going to do this in the way in which we believe the people of this country want.

[Marsha De Cordova]

rose—