Black History Month

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to some really fantastic speeches we have heard in this debate, including an absolutely inspirational speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and a brilliant speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), who really brought home the point that advantages and disadvantages are characteristics of individuals, not the colour of their skin. There were some brilliant speeches—I do not always agree with the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), but I always think she speaks very well.

It is very important that people understand our history and how Britain over the decades came to be a multiracial society, as it is now. It is very important that people understand that history goes back further than we might think. I was in a pub just north of Corby the other day, which turned out to have had Britain’s first black pub landlord back in the 17th century. The history of ethnic minorities in the UK goes back a long way. It has many distinguished people in it and great contributions. From Olaudah Equiano in the 18th century, the great abolitionist, to Johnson Beharry, VC, today, people from ethnic minorities have served this country in important ways.

In my constituency, 68% of secondary school pupils are white, 23% are Asian and 3% are black, and this month, they will all be studying black history. I would like to see Black History Month evolve into something new—to become mainstreamed, not to be held off on the end of a pair of tweezers anymore, but to be forged into part of our common national story. It seems odd and alienating to me to try to single out one group at a time, because fundamentally, there is no black history. There is no white history. There is just British history.

Do not get me wrong; the story of the American civil rights movement was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer), and the story of the black civil rights struggle in America is inspirational—it has absolutely incredible figures in it and everyone should learn about it—but it is different from our story. It is important that we do not constantly import wholesale these ideas from America, like we are the 51st state of America. Our story is quite different. Black people who came to this country came not as slaves. They came here of their own choice and to work—and to work hard—often in quite difficult working-class jobs. Black people in this country do not have one story. They have many different backstories and they come from all over the world and many different cultures.

I put down that marker because sometimes I listen to this debate, and something about it just makes me wonder. I hear people talking about decolonising the curriculum, as if the curriculum of Britain’s state schools is colonialist or imperialist today. This may be a generational thing, but it certainly was not when I was at a comprehensive in 1980s Huddersfield. There was a conversation about many of the bad things as well as our country’s more positive history. I worry that it is part of an agenda that is part of identity politics, increasingly not seeing us as a single society—a single people—but trying to treat people primarily as members of groups. I worry about that.

There was a headteacher in Sheffield who wrote to all his parents to say that Britain is a society founded on white supremacy and white privilege. That is just not true. Apartheid South Africa was a society founded on white supremacy. The confederacy in the US was a society like that. Britain is not that society. It is incredibly damaging to young people, whether they are Asian or black, to tell them that it is, because it is a lie. I worried about that again when I was walking down Whitehall, with all the graffiti after the BLM protests, and I saw the statue of Churchill, and someone had written “was a racist” on it. Let us be clear: if it was not for that man, there would be an enormous great swastika flying from this building. I worry about the poison that the young man who wrote that had been fed, and I worry that we cannot allow Black History Month to be sucked into that. We do not want this country to be polarised into Balkanised, small groups. That would be a future very different from the one that I grew up expecting and hoping for from this country—one where we would increasingly not see each other as members of groups, where we would increasingly be colour blind and where everyone would fit into our common culture. But I worry that the new woke agenda and identity politics are telling people that they must be on their guard at all times because Britain is a horrendously racist society, and that people cannot assimilate into society because it is completely different from—or incompatible with—them. I worry that that agenda does more to divide people than to unite them.

Britain is a country where there are still problems. There is still real racism; people suffer from real racism every day in this country. But it is also a country in which we have made huge progress. Over the last 20 years, for example, the employment rate for black men and women has not just grown, but has grown faster than the employment rate for white men and women. The gap has been closed. Median earnings in this country are highest for people of Indian backgrounds, lowest for people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds, and black and white people are in the middle. Indian pupils who are on free school meals are as likely to pass their English and maths GCSEs as black pupils who are not. That is a troubling statistic, but, then again, the situation is more nuanced. For example, poor black and Asian girls who are eligible for free school meals are more likely to go to university than white and black boys who are not. There is nuance; it is literally not a story about black and white. There are important things that we have to understand in this story.

I pay tribute to the people, and I understand the great motivations behind Black History Month, and the importance of making everybody feel that they can achieve and are part of this country’s story. I went to an averagely performing comprehensive in an averagely performing area. I saw how people’s culture can sometimes keep them down—that people do not believe that they can do certain things. When my careers teacher asked me how many GCSEs I would pass, I said, “All of them”, and he laughed. All I can say is, I hope you’re watching this now! I worry that the same is even more true for young black people. It is very important that they have role models, can see the wonderful people in this House and can achieve anything they want to, but I also want this to be a unifying agenda. In the end, as I said before, there is no black history and no white history; there is just British history.