UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Streeter. I am very pleased to contribute to the debate, and I join others in commending the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on her passionate and deeply personal speech.

I still vividly remember when I first discovered what race discrimination was. At the age of eight or nine, I was watching the TV in my granny’s house and I realised that there was a lot of stuff in the news about something called anti-apartheid protests, which at the time I could not even pronounce. I asked my mum what it meant, and she explained that it was about a system in which black children and white children were not allowed to go to the same school or play against or with each other in football matches, a system in which black people and white people were not allowed to go on the same bus or to the same shops. Basically, they were supposed to live their entire lives without ever interacting with each other, except, of course, where black people were working as domestic servants, or near-slaves, for white people. Even as a wee boy—I was not an angel; I was still telling the kind of jokes in the playground that we now try to persuade children not to tell—I could not imagine anyone wanting to live in a society like that. Where I grew up there was not a big ethnic minority population, but I could not imagine wanting to see people divided by barbed wire fences because of the colour of their skin, and almost 50 years later I still cannot understand that. I cannot imagine why anyone would choose that as a way to run a society.

Sometimes it is not even anything as much as the colour of someone’s skin. Another clear memory I have, again about South Africa, is that as a teenager I was watching a TV documentary about a wee girl whose parents were white Afrikaners. She was born with white skin, but somehow manged to get facial features that meant she was classed as a negro under the South African system. Her parents refused to let her mix with the blacks, but other white parents did not want their children mixing with her because they thought that she was a negro, so the poor wee soul went to about five different schools as a result of the outcomes of court cases and education board appeals. I could not understand why the parents did not see that as an indictment of the apartheid system under which they lived. The case even led to a change in the race laws in South Africa, not to let black children and white children play together in the playground—that would never have happened—but to say that if two parents were certified white Afrikaner, their children could not be classified as anything else. That completely destroys any shred of credibility that the argument that people are somehow born to be superior or inferior ever had. It is a bit like Crufts having to pass a law saying that it is not permitted to breed two pedigree springer spaniels and call the offspring an Alsatian or a poodle. So even as almost a young man, I was aware that people were trying to put some kind of scientific justification on racism, and I could also see that anything approaching common sense said that that just did not add up.

Something else I saw in that documentary helped me to understand not where racism comes from but how it can be perpetuated. A teacher of a class of white six-year-olds was explaining why the blacks were inferior, talking about how the “funny” shape of their eyes, ears, mouths and noses, and the unclean colour of their skin, meant that they had clearly been made to be inferior. Today, that would, I hope, horrify even white South Africans, but at that time it was how one of the wealthiest and supposedly most developed countries was bringing up its children. It is not surprising that it is taking a long time for those children to realise the error of their ways.

Of course, we do not do that these days, we do not bring up our children to support racial prejudices—except that we do. Perhaps we do not do it in the same way, by getting teachers to teach the creed of racism to our children, but we do it through what we print on the front pages of our newspapers. If we look back through the past year or two of front-page headlines in some newspapers, the word “migrant” appears more than almost any other word, and never in any context other than to create fear and hatred and continue to paint the myth that if someone is an immigrant they are somehow a danger, rather than a benefit, to society. I have even heard Members of the House of Commons speaking in debates in the Chamber in such a way that makes an explicit assumption that we have to vet every single Syrian refugee because the fact that they come from a predominantly Muslim country somehow makes them more likely to be a danger to us than the criminals we are quite capable of growing among the white working-class and middle-class populations around the UK’s towns and cities.

It is that kind of assumption that has been identified as the main theme of this UN international day for the elimination of racial discrimination. The UN talks about racial profiling and incitement to hatred, including in the context of migration, and as someone said earlier, there are one or two people who could do with heeding those words very carefully indeed. I do not think it is a mistake to link racial profiling with incitement to hatred, because I cannot see any purpose behind such profiling other than racial discrimination, and I cannot see any way that racial discrimination can ever avoid going towards incitement of hatred, racial violence and even worse.

Somebody has already mentioned the New York declaration for refugees and migrants. It is worth reminding ourselves of what that says:

“We strongly condemn acts and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance against refugees and migrants, and the stereotypes often applied to them...Demonizing refugees or migrants offends profoundly against the values of dignity and equality for every human being, to which we have committed ourselves.”

Those are very fine words. Sadly, too many of the Governments whose heads signed up to those words show something different by their actions. Imagine if every child in America was asked to recite those words as well as singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at the start of the school day. Imagine if every politician in these islands or elsewhere had to recite those words as part of their oath of office. Imagine that as well as—some people would say instead of—a brief period of communal prayer in the Christian tradition in this Chamber, we all stood on camera and recited those or similar words each and every day before we set about our deliberations. That would at least send a message that what we are here for is to promote the equality of human beings and not to promote inequality and discrimination. Why can we not do something like that?

The horrific statistics that the Equality and Human Rights Commission produced in its report last year have been mentioned. Although the statistics are based on research in England and Wales, it would be foolish and complacent to suggest we would find anything significantly different in most parts of Scotland or in most parts of the rest of the United Kingdom. For all the fine words, and for all the length of time that we have been claiming to be an equal society, we are not.

I want to finish with some personal comments from Baroness McGregor-Smith in the foreword to the document that was referred to earlier. She says:

“Speaking on behalf of so many from a minority background, I can simply say that all we ever wanted was to be seen as an individual, just like anyone else.”

There is no reason on earth why that simple dream should ever be beyond the reach of any human being on God’s earth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on making me cry twice in a week. Thanks very much for that. The first time was last week at the beautiful event held at the Speaker’s House to mark this day. Today, it was understandable that there were few dry eyes in here.

On 21 March 1960 an 82-year-old stonemason in Pretoria, South Africa, wrote a poem in Scottish Gaelic with a Swahili refrain condemning the bloody massacre in Sharpeville of 69 black South Africans, many of them shot in the back. Originally from the Isle of Mull, Duncan Livingstone was a Boer war veteran who had worked and lived in Glasgow before emigrating to South Africa and spending the rest of his life there. What was clear to that Hebridean Glaswegian, whose work is still visible in the city today, was clear to right-thinking people across the world, and in 1966 the UN declared 21 March the international day for the elimination of racial discrimination.

While we seldom see such blatant and violent racism on such a scale in developed countries, at least today, pernicious racial discrimination remains in most if not all societies. Just because most of us will never experience it and most of us will rarely witness it, that does not mean it does not happen. Some of it is in a blatant form. I did not want to intervene on the hon. Member for Brent Central, because the point she was making about race hate crimes was too important, but I will say that the increase in Scotland was very much less. I say that not to say “Scotland good, England and Wales bad”; I say it because I think it has an awful lot to do with the difference in political rhetoric from each Government. It does make a difference.

We have not eliminated racism in Scotland. Far from it. Let me fast-forward to Glasgow, 50 years on from when Duncan Livingstone wrote that Gaelic-Swahili poem. About eight years ago I accompanied a Sudanese friend to the housing office, because I could not understand why, as a homeless person, he had not been offered accommodation—anything at all—one year on from becoming homeless, which happened as a result of his refugee status being granted. The housing office informed me that he was not classed as homeless because he was staying with a friend. “But he’s sleeping on a yoga mat on the living room floor, and has been for a year,” I said. What did they say in response? They told me that that did not necessarily constitute homelessness—actually it does—because “lots of Africans are used to sleeping on the ground. They like it.” That is blatant. He was denied his legal rights. It was only eight years ago. That is racial discrimination.

I think the really dangerous racism, other than institutionalised racism, is that which is under the radar. It is so subtle that unless you are the recipient, you probably would not pick up on it. It is not always intentional—most people do not want to be racist—but I have heard people speak about black friends of mine not in critical terms, but saying how they are quite aggressive and forceful, when they are nothing of the sort—they are simply expressing themselves. We all need to be honest with ourselves about it, because confronting our own thinking is the best way to change it. I am not excluding myself from that. My partner is black and I have had people telling me that therefore I must not be capable of racism; but that is such a dangerous way to think. I am subjected to media images and propaganda the same as anyone else. None of us is immune to thinking or acting in a racially discriminatory fashion, but we are all capable of challenging our own thoughts and monitoring our actions, and morally obliged to do so.

When I say none of us is immune, I primarily mean none of us who are white. I sometimes read comments from white people who say “But black people are just as racist”. I keep saying we need to learn and educate ourselves, and I am going to share something about my education around 20 years ago when I would hear people say that. I did not really agree with the statement, but I was not sure why. It did not sound right to me, but I would have agreed at the very least that there was racism from some black people towards white people. Then a good friend—a Mancunian Pakistani with a bit of Glaswegian thrown in—explained that while there might be prejudice from a black person to a white person, as that black person probably is not as propped up by the levers of power, as embedded in the UK’s institutions, as immersed in the establishment of the UK, it cannot be called racism. It is simply an opinion that ordinarily has little impact on the white person’s life. Racism—I am not trying to define it here—is about the desire and ability to exercise power over someone because of the colour of their skin and the colour of one’s own skin. The world is still weighted in favour of white people. The UK is still weighted in favour of white people.

That brings me to the biggest problem as I see it, which is institutionalised racism. Who runs the judiciary? White people. Who runs the Government? Primarily white people. The civil service, Churches and media? White people. As for some sections of the media and the responsibility they have, we can talk about the irresponsible way they behave—most Scots will remember when every drunk person in a TV drama series or a film had to be Scottish. We hated that, unless it was “Rab C. Nesbitt”, of course, but at least we had positive role models too. Black children growing up rarely had positive black role models. It was not that they did not exist, just that they never got to see them. Just as importantly, neither did we. Instead, when black people were on TV it was generally a negative portrayal. My partner Graham—he is Jamaican, and his mother is from Grenada—told me that when Trevor McDonald came on the news, it was an event. There he was, a black man being listened to and taken seriously. Now, he says, it does not even register with him when a black person is on TV and being taken seriously. He did add, however, that it is absolutely right that the next step has to be for them to get parity in their industry.

I was going to talk about increasing income disparity between people of different ethnicities as they become more qualified, but the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) covered that for me, so I shall take the time instead to respond to a comment from the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) about letters he gets telling him that child refugees should be brought here; he said none of the letters offers to give them a bed. Who would write to their MP to go through that process? That is not what people do. No one writes to me offering to give a bed. It does not mean that those people are not out there. As we have heard, local authorities and Governments across these islands have said that they have places available, and people available to take children in.

[Peter Grant]

I cannot give any personal constituency experience, but I have good friends in a neighbouring constituency who wanted to offer their entire house to Syrian refugees. At that point the reason they could not was that the Home Office was not planning to let in enough Syrian refugees for Fife’s quota to fill one big house in North East Fife. That may be why people have not offered to provide houses—because there simply were not enough refugees being allowed in to need the houses in the first place.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I sometimes do not know whether to laugh or cry in this place.