RUNNYMEDE SUMMER 2010 / ISSUE 362

ipation
Partic
and n
entatio
repres

q&A: hope not

hate’s nick lowles
Achieving diversity
in the media
Race equality and
the election Intelligence for
a multi-ethnic Britain
Runnymede

Bulletin
editor’s
letter
Dr Rob Berkeley
Director
Sarah Isal
Deputy Director
Dr Debbie Weekes-
Bernard
Senior Research &
Policy Analyst
Dr Omar Khan
Senior Research &
Policy Analyst
Jessica Mai Sims
Research & Policy WELCOME to the Summer 2010 edition of the online Runnymede Bulletin.
Analyst
Kjartan Páll Sveinsson As our young coalition government finds its feet, this quarter’s magazine
Research & Policy takes the timely theme of participation and representation.
Analyst
Phil Mawhinney Look out for the symbol on our contents page for everything on topic.
Research & Policy
Analyst Our main interview from page 26 is, fittingly, with Nick Lowles - head of the
Vastiana Belfon Hope not Hate campaign, which we all have to thank for keeping the British
Real Histories Directory National Party out of London’s councils.
Robin Frampton Meanwhile, from page 4 our public affairs officer Vicki Butler condenses
Publications Editor
months of campaigning and complex policy ideas into a handy two-page
Nina Kelly
Editor, Runnymede
guide on all things race equality related.
Online Why do local politicians across the party lines think that greater black and
Colin Kelly minority ethnic representation matters? Find out on page 29.
Business Development
Manager Away from politics, turn to page 14 for a comment from the BBC’s head
Vicki Butler of diversity on how we might encourage more and better ethnic minority
Public Affairs Officer representation in broadcasting.
Klara Schmitz
Project Assistant
And away from representation, on page 16 Dr Rosalind Edwards brings
together some of the findings of a fascinating research report looking at
Kam Gill
Project Assistant
single mums bringing up mixed-race children.
Riffat Ahmed Guardian readers among you may also have heard mention about an
Art Project Manager article on academy schools, exclusions and race equality. Read it in full
Rebecca Waller from page 12.
Administrator
That is far from all, so I’ll leave you to leaf through in your own time and
7 Plough Yard
London EC2A 3LP explore the rest.
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ISSN: 1476-363X together Summer edition. We know your time is precious, and we appreciate
© The Runnymede Trust, every second of it.
May 2010. Open access,
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Nina Kelly, Editor
leading race equality nina@runnymedetrust.org
thinktank. We are a
research-led, non-party
political charity working
to end racism. Front cover photo by Georgie Gallop

2 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362 www.runnymedetrust.org

Contents

04 On the cover Features

26 Q&A 06 financial inclusion

Hope not Hate’s Nick Lowles on
how the campaign is successfully
tackling the threat of the far right
04 race equality & the 2010
general election
A look at the election campaigns
and results from a race equality
perspective
12 Achieving diversity in the
policy & the coalition
How might our young coalition
government affect race equality
in financial inclusion?
08 combatting the bnp
Fresh tactics needed in
campaign against far right
10 Academies & exclusions
As the debate about academy

14 media industry
The BBC’s head of diversity on
how more diverse faces behind
schools rages, we take a look at
their worrying exclusion rates

the scenes could change output 14 lone mothers of miixed

REgulars
24 key facts
Ten facts you ought to know
about race and representation
25 vox pop
Local councillors on why
representation of black and
minority ethnic groups matters
29 reviews
Reader on race and a film about
suicide bombers
racial and ethnic children
Read about the experiences and
racisms faced by lone mums with
mixed race children
18 is proportional
representation better?
A look at alternative voting
systems and how, if at all, they
could impact black and minority
ethnic representation
21 racist violence
Best practice in prevention and
why it is so important

31 director’s column
Rob Berkeley on why we need to
remember the longer term costs
of spending cuts

A view from...
12
22 ...Wales
How does ‘black Welsh’ fit in with
‘black British? Or doesn’t it?

23 ...poland
The Polish political climate has
changed since the death of a
retinue of its top politicians

www.runnymedetrust.org summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 3

Race equality and the
2010 general election
Vicki Butler and Farrah Sheikh take a look back at the election and
assess what the changes may mean, in terms of black and minority
ethnic representation and for race equality more broadly

T
he last few months have seen a
variety of changes within the UK
political scene. We have had
one of the most exciting election
campaigns, resulting in the UK’s first
hung parliament since the 1970s. In this
article we examine the events of the last
few months and their potential impact on
race equality.
The election campaign
The 2010 election campaign was a
historic one for a number of reasons
– not least because it saw the first
televised prime ministerial debates in
the UK. While in retrospect the debates
appeared to have little impact on the final
election result, one of the most striking
aspects was that the public for the first
time saw Liberal Democrat leader Nick
Clegg placed head to head with Brown
and Cameron – and, for a short while at
least, they liked what they saw.
While Clegg’s rise to prominence did not
translate into votes on polling day, it did
draw attention to the Liberal Democrat
policies on immigration – which had
been seen by many migration rights
groups as being the most progressive of
the three parties’ policies on the issue.
The Lib Dem’s manifesto for example
called for ‘a route to citizenship’ for non-
documented migrants who had proof
of their residence in the UK for at least
ten years. Meanwhile Labour argued in
favour of their points based system, and
the Conservatives argued for a cap on
numbers of migrants.
However, Clegg’s policies came under
fire in the press as well as the leadership
debates, with both Brown and Cameron
labelling the Lib Dem’s policies as weak.
Perhaps because of this criticism, if
not because of the realities of coalition
politics, when entering government
after the election, Clegg was forced to
retreat on his manifesto commitments on
immigration. Instead he has supported
the Conservative’s plans for a cap on
non-EU migration.
Though race equality was not given
the same attention as immigration in
the election campaign, a number of
campaigning groups worked hard to
keep it on the electoral agenda.
Organisations including Operation
Black Vote (OBV), Equanomics and the
1990 Trust were particularly active in the
campaign. The groups collaborated to
produce the Black Manifesto, a document
designed to keep race equality issues
high on the political agenda
OBV also hosted the popular Black Britain
Decides rally which featured senior
parliamentarians Harriet Harman, Vince
Cable and George Osborne. Throughout
the election campaign, OBV argued that
the black vote could significantly impact
the outcome of the general election,
highlighting the fact that marginal seats
could easily be swung by black and
minority ethnic (BME) votes, in particular
highlighting Finchley & Golders Green,
Battersea, and Crawley.
The final election result saw a
historic number of ethnic minority
MPs elected to parliament
The result
The final election result saw a historic
number of ethnic minority MPs elected to
parliament, with the number rising from
14 to 27. Notable winners include Priti
Patel and Helen Grant, the Conservative
Party’s first Asian and Black female MPs
respectively, as well as the UK’s first
Kurdish politician Nadhim Zahawi.
Labour newcomer Chuka Umunna
took the seat of Streatham with a 3529
majority, while Rushanara Ali achieved
one of Labour’s only gains in the election
by winning the seat of Bethnal Green and
Bow from Respect with an 11,574 majority.
Other new BME MPs included
Conservatives Rehman Chishti, Sam
Gyimah, Sajid Javid, Kwasi Kwarteng,
Alok Sharma and Paul Uppal. New
BME Labour MPs included Shabana
Mahmood, Lisa Nandy, Chi Onwurah,
Yasmin Qureshi, Anas Sarwar and Valerie
Vaz, Keith Vaz’s sister.
Veteran BME MPs David Lammy, Diane
Abbott and Adam Afriyie were also
returned to Westminster with increased
majorities. In one of the biggest surprises
of the night, former transport minister
and Labour MP Sadiq Khan successfully
defended his Tooting seat from strong
Tory opposition.
However, the evening also saw a number
of prominent BME parliamentarians lose
their seats. In one of the tightest battles
of the election, Labour’s Dawn Butler
was defeated by Liberal Democrat Sarah
Teather, who has since been appointed
as an education minister. The pair were
previously MPs in neighbouring seats,
but boundary changes put the two head-

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Unsuccessful Conservative
Party candidate Wilfred
Emmanuel-Jones
to-head in the new seat of Brent Central.
Other unlucky former MPs included
Labour’s Parmjit Dhanda and Shahid
Malik who were defeated in Gloucester
and Dewsbury respectively.
Several high-profile BME parliamentary
candidates were also unlucky on election
night. The self-styled ’black farmer’
and Conservative candidate Wilfred
Emmanuel-Jones unexpectedly failed
to take the seat of Chippenham from
the Liberal Democrats. Another shock
result was the failure of Shaun Bailey
to win the seat of Hammersmith for the
Conservatives from the Labour Party.
Bailey was one of the most well-known
Conservative hopefuls, dubbed by some
as being one of the ‘Tatler Tories’ after
posing for the high-society magazine. The
total number of BME Labour MPs is now
13, up ten from 2005. Most strikingly, the
number of ethnic minority Conservative
MPs has leapt from two to 11. However,
the Liberal Democrats still have no ethnic
minority MPs in Westminster, having had
only one BME MP in their history.
Local election results
Despite claiming that he would create
a ‘political earthquake’, British National
Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin failed to
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make it to Westminster. The BNP were
in fact unceremoniously ejected from
Barking & Dagenham Council, as all 12
of their councillors lost their seats. The
openly racist party’s campaign cannot
have been helped by former party group
leader, Bob Bailey, who was filmed fighting
in the street in the run up to the election.
Overall the BNP suffered catastrophic
losses. Prominent BNP councillor, Chris
Beverley lost his seat on Leeds City
Council. The party also lost councillors in
Stoke-on-Trent, an area once described
by Griffin as the party’s ‘jewel in the crown’.
The aftermath
The battle did not end on election night,
as there was no party that achieved an
overall majority on 7 May 2010. Instead,
after five days of discussions between
the Conservative Party and the Liberal
Democrats, the unlikeliest of couples
formed a historic coalition agreement
– the first between the two since 1974.
New prime minister David Cameron
and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg
have hailed the union as the beginning
of a new kind of politics in Westminster,
and as an agreement greatly needed
due to the current economic backdrop.
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 5
feature
Impact on equalities?
Despite the coalition partners appointing
a cabinet of diverse political views,
there is little diversity of ethnicity,
gender or economic background in the
government. Though Baroness Warsi,
now chair of the Conservative Party,
made history by becoming the first
Muslim to be appointed to the cabinet,
she is one of only two politicians from an
ethnic minority background in the entire
coalition government, with Shailesh
Vara MP appointed as an assistant
government whip.
Fresh from the wounds of electoral
defeat, the Labour leadership battle,
for a while at least, looked as if it would
be no more diverse, with an entirely
white, male and Oxbridge-educated
list of candidates. However, after calls
from many for a more diverse group
of candidates for the position, long-
term race equality campaigner and MP
Diane Abbott announced her candidacy.
Following a dramatic battle to receive the
33 parliamentary nominations required to
formally stand, Abbott finally made it onto
the ballot paper on 9 June 2010, making
her the first black candidate ever to stand
for the position of leader in the UK’s three
major political parties.
Financial inclusion
Phil Mawhinney explores the new financial policy landscape.
R
unnymede’s financial inclusion team
has been rifling through the new
government’s coalition agreement
and listening to the Queen’s speech,
hungry to know which direction things are
moving in. We have been thinking keenly about
how the financial inclusion policy landscape
will change under a new government that has
a clear priority to reduce the public deficit
at a fast rate, and largely by cutting public
spending. Which policies will be scrapped,
kept or introduced? It is an important time to
pause, take stock and anticipate what this new
situation means for race equality.
Our work in the forthcoming couple of
years will focus on barriers to money advice
services, pension inequalities and obstacles
to saving. We have also been looking at
financial inclusion issues among older black
and minority ethnic (BME) people. This
involves finding out how the disadvantage
and exclusion that older people experience
affects their freedom to choose where to retire
to (in the UK or abroad), to live in a decent
home, to contribute to family life and to
access appropriate health and other services.
Progress in money advice
Giving people access to affordable and
quality money advice has been a central
aspect of financial inclusion policy for years.
Indeed, March of this year saw the then-
chancellor Alistair Darling MP officially
launch the Money Guidance service, which
gives free and impartial guidance on a range
of financial matters, from budgeting to
borrowing to planning for retirement. This
coincided with the publishing of our report
Seeking Sound Advice: Financial Inclusion
and Ethnicity (bit.ly/soundadvice), which
describes Bangladeshi, black Caribbean and
Chinese people’s financial troubles, their
desire for money advice and their experiences
of exclusion from existing sources of advice,
such as banks and independent financial
advisers. We then presented to the Financial
Services Authority (FSA) the report’s
recommendations on how Money Guidance
could include and meet the needs of BME
people. These include the important role of
BME money advisers and face-to-face advice
6 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362
sessions, in encouraging marginalised people
to take up the service.
Time will tell whether the new government
really values financial inclusion initiatives
such as Money Guidance, but we are pleased
at plans to continue to support this particular
scheme. Now operating under the recently-
created Consumer Financial Education Body,
we are optimistic that Money Guidance will
provide financial support to many BME
people in different communities. However,
receiving advice can only improve people’s
financial situation so far – tackling upstream
issues such as a lack of opportunities in the
labour market and low levels of education are
central to improving people’s lives.
Pensions policy
Changes in pensions policy are significant
given the marked ethnic inequalities in
pensioner poverty. The risk of pensioner
poverty among Bangladeshi and Pakistani
people is 49 per cent, compared to 17 per cent
for white people. BME people are also less
likely than others to have a private pension
or to receive the State Second Pension (S2P).
To reduce the large number of people
not saving for retirement, the previous
government developed a policy to ensure
that employers would automatically enrol
their employees into a workplace pension
scheme from 2012, giving them the choice of
to opting out. The new government appears
willing to support auto-enrolment, although it
is unclear whether it will continue to develop
NEST, which is a simple pension scheme into
which employees, employers and government
would make contributions.
We have welcomed these developments,
recognising that auto-enrolment would help
overcome the inertia that partly explains why
half of those aged 25 and 34 are not saving
for retirement. However, there is a real danger
that advances in policy will do little to enable
many BME people to save enough to enjoy
a comfortable and stable retirement. A report
that is with the priniters now looks at the
barriers to pensions faced by self-employed
BME people - owning small businesses is
particularly common among Pakistani and
Bangladeshi people. This is partly due to a
cultural appreciation of running a business, but
is also a response to the limited opportunities
and discrimination that BME people face.
Concerns
Concerns highlighted by the report include
the worry that BME people who are self-
employed will continue to be at risk of
pensioner poverty through not being able to
contribute to and receive the State Second
Pension (S2P). Furthermore, self-employed
people will not be auto-enrolled into NEST,
they must voluntarily opt in. However, even
those that do so will not benefit from the
employer contribution, providing them with
fewer pension savings overall.
Another worry is the plan to increase the State
Pension Age to 66 (and eventually 68) at an
even faster rate than planned by the previous
government, as set out in the Pensions and
Savings Bill. This may particularly affect
BME people, who often experience high
levels of ill health. Statistics from the 2001
Census show that Pakistani and Bangladeshi
people are much more likely than white
British people to suffer a long-term illness
or disability that restricts daily activities.
Raising the pension age may mean that many
BME people suffering ill health are forced to
work later into life.
Work and welfare
Disadvantage in the world of work and
the resulting low income is at the root of
much financial exclusion that BME people
experience, such as low levels of savings,
reliance on expensive credit, high levels of
debt. Unemployment is high among BME
communities, particularly among black
and Bangladeshi people. Recent research
carried out for the Department for Work and
Pensions (DWP) involved applying for jobs
using application forms containing identical
qualifications, but with a variety of names
associated with different ethnic groups. The
results showed that job discrimination on the
basis of ethnicity still exists.
www.runnymedetrust.org

after the election
Figure 1. Access to pensions by ethnicity
(% of all employees and self-employed)
75
80
70
53
60
50
39
40
30
20
10
0
Proportion accruing Proportion building up
private pension entitlement to S2P
The coalition government has said it will
promote equal pay and introduce measures
to end discrimination in the workplace. One
planned measure is to provide internships at
Whitehall departments for people from under-
represented ethnic groups. We welcome
such measures, but it remains to be seen
whether new policies will have enough bite
to deliver real change. One way to combat
racial discrimination could be to require job
applications to be name-blind. To make a
real impact such a policy would have to be
applied to the private as well as public sector,
requiring strong political will.
Less positively, the government has
scrapped the Future Jobs Fund, which
guaranteed work or training to 18-24 year
olds out of work for six months. This
will have a big impact on BME people
trying to get into work, with almost half
of black people aged between 16 and 24
unemployed, compared to 20 per cent of
white people of the same age.
Welfare reform has been a hot topic since the
election. Sweeping changes are expected, with
a renewed drive to ‘get people off benefits’,
coupled with the likelihood of significant
cuts to welfare spending. It will be important
to monitor policy changes, including the
progression of the Welfare Reform Bill, in
order to anticipate any potentially harmful
www.runnymedetrust.org
Whole population
Ethnic minorities
65
effects on people living in poverty, including
many BME people.
Other financial inclusion
policies
Welcome news includes the government’s
plans to give Post Office Card account holders
the ability to set up direct debits and enjoy the
discounts they bring. In the area of credit, the
government intends to ban excessive interest
rates on credit and store cards, to introduce
a seven-day cooling off period for store
cards and to oblige credit card companies to
provide better information to allow customers
Business ownership is common
among Pakistani and Bangladeshi
people, partly due to discrimination
in other employment
to compare prices. These measures may help
protect consumers from entering into spirals
of debt. However, they will not address
the underlying reality that many people
experiencing poverty and disadvantage take on
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 7
feature
credit to make up for shortfalls in their income.
We were disappointed to hear that Child Trust
Funds (CTFs) will be scrapped. CTFs are tax-
free investment funds for children, made up of
contributions from the government and family
members. The children who benefit from the
scheme get access to the fund when they
reach 18, with the option of putting it towards
further education fees or a housing deposit.
CTFs are seen as an aid to social mobility,
particularly helping people in low-income
families to invest in their future, as well as
to develop good saving habits. It is therefore
a blow to the financial well-being and social
mobility of many disadvantaged and BME
people that this policy will come to an end.
Surveying the landscape
Stepping back from the detail of individual
policies, we can see that the way the whole
policy landscape is shifting raises big
concerns over financial exclusion and its
underlying causes. The new government
is focusing squarely on cutting the public
deficit through fast and deep cuts to public
spending. Some observers are sceptical about
the likelihood that the pain will be shared
across society, despite David Cameron’s
pledge to protect the poorest among us. As
the ‘Big Society’ is promoted, the state is
likely to shrink. This may mean a reduction in
financial support, whether direct to people’s
pockets, or indirectly via schools and other
public services. It may also mean that we have
a government with less hunger, willpower and
strength to intervene in the market to reduce
inequality and to support those who start life
at the bottom of the pile. Such a government
is unlikely to be one that tackles racial
inequalities head-on.

Fresh tactics needed in
campaign against far right
Kamaljeet Gill argues for a more
sophisticated discourse to tackle
the far right as it gains legitimacy
The recent general election offered, for the first time, the
unpalatable prospect of the British National Party (BNP)
gaining a foothold in British Parliament. BNP leader Nick
Griffin challenged Barking’s Labour MP Margaret Hodge and,
if successful, would have crowned a streak of victories that
has seen the party win seats in the London Assembly and the
European Parliament.
Griffin was defeated into third place, but the fact of his challenge
has caused many observers to become concerned by the
renaissance of the far right in recent years. Past efforts to counter
the party’s rise have tended to focus on the disruption of party
events and gatherings and an insistence on not allowing the BNP
to share a platform with mainstream parties. Rhetorically, such
anti-BNP attacks have relied on more or less open accusations
of Nazism. While this comparison has emotive power, it is not
necessarily the most effective tactic and, as the party’s growth in
popularity implies, new methods are required. A more effective
strategy may be to focus debate on subjects with which serious
parties must engage, such as taxation, in order to highlight the
lack of intellectual rigour that the BNP would bring to these key
issues. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies
it will be useful to compare resistance to the BNP with the
resistance to an equivalent extremist movement: the post-war
Union Movement led by Oswald Mosley, the founder of the
British Union of Fascists (BUF).
At the end of the Second World War, thousands of British citizens
were released from internment for fascist sympathies under the
18b legislation. This followed the release of Oswald Mosley in
1943. A significant number of these internees retained their old
political sympathies and it was not long before a variety of smaller
movements sprung up that advocated much of the old fascist
programme. This time, however, they had learned the lessons of
the pre-war period and of internment. As far as possible the term
‘fascist’ was eschewed in favour of ‘patriot’ or ‘union’. The most
prominent of these groups, and the one which would later subsume
most of the others, was Oswald Mosley’s Union movement. There
are considerable similarities between the Union movement and
modern far right parties such as the BNP. Perhaps the most
prescient for this discussion is that both engaged in extensive
efforts to re-brand themselves, yet were and are persistently
labelled as ‘disguised’ (often barely disguised) fascists.
Large swathes of the population felt deeply aggrieved that
people should be free to preach the sort of hatred they believed
the country had gone to war to combat. While the Labour
8 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362
feature
government was reluctant to act against these groups, a
collection of ex-servicemen – by no means all of whom were
Jewish – were intent on preventing the spread of these ideas
by whatever means available. To that end they founded ‘The 43
Group’. The group’s preferred tactic was to rush fascist street
meetings and wherever possible overturn the speaker’s tables,
causing fights to break out and the meetings to be broken up
by the police. Constant pressure from the 43 Group and others
eventually caused the post-war fascist revival to grind to a halt.
In the context of the current wave of far-right activity, this tactic
holds an appeal for many anti-fascists who grew up hearing
tales about the glorious Battle of Cable Street, which apparently
halted a fascist march through London’s East End. As such, it
seems profitable to consider just what relevance, and therefore
utility, such tactics would have in the current climate.
Groups like Unite Against Fascism (UAF) do not openly
advocate violence, but their strategy still centres on interrupting
or preventing BNP campaigns wherever possible. Surely
the 43 Group provides a clear and encouraging model for
resisting the far right in our own time? Well, I’d argue probably
not, and for several reasons. The first is the particular political
situation in which the group operated. Short of inciting active
public disorder, the Union movement was legally free to make
extremely offensive and threatening comments about ‘Jews’
and ‘Aliens’, or even about the Holocaust. Making these claims
today would render them liable for prosecution.
More important is the level of legitimacy under which the different
parties operated in the past. Even in their pre-war height, fascist
movements in Britain had not gained anything like mainstream
political status. Arguments can be made as to why, but the fact
remains that even compared to their opponents on the left, the
BUF remained a threatening fringe rather than a serious electoral
prospect. Smaller groups like Arthur Leese’s Imperial Fascist
League remained minuscule, even by the BUF’s standards. Of
course, the BNP remains a minority concern as well. However,
like it or not, the party has won seats in local elections and
on the international stage, and has even challenged a long-
standing representative of the incumbent party for a seat in
parliament. Even a failed electoral attempt at a parliamentary
seat represents significant progress for the party in terms of
being taken seriously on the national stage. This represents
a level of integration into the political mainstream that Mosley
could only dream of. This difference is significant because a
lack of legitimacy made the Union movement and its outliers
particularly susceptible to the disruptive tactics of the 43 Group.
Every disturbance at a Union rally and every fight that had to
be broken up by police reinforced the idea that this was not a
valid or credible political party and never could be. Crucially,
it cemented this impression among the respectable middle
class, which had not been exposed to fascist aggression before
the war and was susceptible to propaganda if the distributors
www.runnymedetrust.org

seemed trustworthy or respectable. The constant association
of the Union movement with violence was fatal to this dynamic.
Similarly disruptive tactics deployed against the BNP simply do
not have the same effect. Rather they serve to confirm the party’s
narrative of a patriotic underdog being suppressed by whatever
means. By simply declaring ‘The BNP is a Nazi party; smash the
BNP’, movements such as UAF simply reinforce the idea that the
BNP’s assailants will say anything to discredit them. Meanwhile,
the party has made studious (and apparently successful) efforts
to re-brand itself as respectable, and separate its new identity
from its old, violent image. At a conference in 2008 British
sociologist Paul Gilroy argued prophetically that when the party
is in a position to send “... well spoken and respectable young
women” out canvassing, the anti-racist campaigners would
struggle because the old cries of ‘Nazi’ will no longer appear
credible. The BNP’s recent electoral successes and Nick
Griffin’s not entirely laughable bid for the Barking constituency
suggest that this time is upon us.
Yet still the debate has consisted of accusations of Nazism,
countered by BNP claims that they are being suppressed by
leftist traitors inimical to British interests. While the debate
remains at this level there is little room for engagement with
what those interests are. This is a serious issue; it ensures
the BNP have had an easy ride with the sections of society
they intend to attract. They never have to formulate a
serious policy beyond muddled ethnographic claims about
‘Anglo-Saxon’ Britishness and repatriation of immigrants.
Their record in power is almost universally abysmal, their
policies on the NHS, the economy, pensions and education
ill-thought through, un-pragmatic and, on occasion, simply
bizarre. These issues would sink a more established party,
yet they are not fatal for the BNP because the debate never
even approaches them.
www.runnymedetrust.org
feature
Photo: Kerry Buckley
There are a great many moral objections to racism and
fascism, however, one very good practical objection is that
they do not work. The NHS would not last a day without the
kind of large-scale immigration the BNP opposes. Even the
fact that racial violence almost always increases in the wake
of a BNP local victory has not proved as damning for the
party as it should because potential supporters are so cynical
about the opposition that such accusations lack credibility.
The final point that separates the 43 Group and the Union party
from the BNP and groups like UAF, is that the 43 Group was well-
established within the communities in which it operated. These
communities often had a history of fascist intimidation and
recognised a blackshirt when they saw one, even if the uniform
had become casual. Without serious community engagement
with the issues that gave the BNP a foothold in the first place,
mere sloganeering rings hollow.
Unfortunately there are no quick fixes to this problem. Opposing
the rise of the far right and the political ambitions of the BNP
are vital issues. However it cannot be done with counter demos
and posters alone. There are reasons why people move over to
supporting the far right. These issues run deeper than simply
being duped by fascist propaganda. Political disillusionment
brought on by economic hardship, unemployment and a
collapse of alternative forms of identity and solidarity all play
their part. In such an environment the habit of yelling abuse at
the BNP without presenting alternatives seems a particularly
misguided tactic. Rather, what is needed is serious and long-
term community engagement with these complaints and the
demands of the communities involved. Support for the BNP is
more of a symptom than a cause of political crisis; it is a fatal
mistake to view it otherwise.
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 9
 Academy exclusions
The expected rise in the number academy schools raises several
concerns. David Gillborn and David Drew compare exclusion rates
between types of school, and among different ethnic groups
Photo: Benjamin Chia
Lewis Hamilton MBE,
who was excluded
from school aged 16
I
t is easy, when looking into school
exclusion rates, to forget that human stories
lie behind the numbers. Formula One 2008
Drivers’ Champion Lewis Hamilton is one
case in point. Aged 16, he was excluded from
school in a case of mistaken identity after he
witnessed an attack.
In his autobiography, My Story, he writes:
“I knew I was innocent but (the headteacher)
did not appear to be interested. Subsequent
letters to the local education authority, our
local MP, the education secretary and even
the prime minister, were of no help. No one
appeared to listen – no one either wanted to or
had the time. We were on our own, and I was
out of school.”
Hamilton’s experiences of isolation and
rejection due to this miscarriage of justice
are shared by many black pupils each year,
10 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362
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as documented in various research studies,
such as Maud Blair’s Why Pick on Me?
Though the public image of excluded pupils
is one of unruly youngsters attacking staff
or other pupils, this is not the reality in
most cases. The most common reason for
permanent exclusion is ‘persistent disruptive
behaviour’: a very broad and ill-defined area
that accounted for more than 30 per cent of
permanent exclusions in the most recently
published data. By contrast, physical assaults
against other pupils and staff accounted for
15.7 per cent and 11.6 per cent of exclusions
respectively. Such assaults are of course very
serious, but they do not lie behind the majority
of school exclusions.
Growth in numbers
Academy schools were established by
the last Labour government as a means
of granting greater autonomy to selected
secondary schools. Initially, City Academies
were established in urban areas to serve
disadvantaged communities: they are publicly
funded independent schools, financed by
central government and operating outside
local authority (LA)- control. Subsequently
academies were established beyond urban
areas and the requirement to find an initial
contribution of £2million from outside public
funds was waived. Both the Labour and
Conservative parties entered the 2010 general
election making academies a major part of
their education plans, at which point there
were 203 of them open to students.
Following the establishment
of our Conservative Liberal
Democrat coalition
bled
government in May 2010,
ith th
academies have been at
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rg
the heart of rapid policy
developments. Two weeks
after the coalition published its
initial agreement, Secretary of
State for Education Michael Gove
MP wrote to all headteachers inviting
them to apply for academy status.
Seven days later, Gove announced that
1,114 schools had contacted his department
in response to the invitation, 626 of which
were rated as ‘outstanding’ in their last report
by inspections body Ofsted, and therefore
already pre-approved for academy status.
The expansion in the number of academy
schools could see a steep rise in the number of
permanent exclusions. It has been known for
sometime that, on average, academies exclude
considerably more pupils than LA-maintained
schools. However, no data on race and academy
exclusions has been available, until now.
Earlier this year Runnymede’s exclusions
e-conference (bit.ly/exclusions) included an
exchange about academies and their record on
exclusions. A reply by the then Department
for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)
(now the Department for Education) offered
the first concrete statement on race and
academy exclusions. The response said:
“Academies often inherit a large number of
disengaged pupils from their predecessor
schools and need to establish good behaviour
in order to raise attainment. As the new ethos
and behaviour policies are implemented
www.runnymedetrust.org
in an academy’s early days, the number of
exclusions may rise, but it typically falls
as behaviour improves. Taking account of
academies’ overall exclusion rates (across the
range of ethnicities), recent analysis has shown
that there is not a disproportionately higher
rate of exclusions of black pupils against non-
black exclusions in academies compared with
mainstream secondary schools.”
Composition of academies
The first thing to note is that, at present,
academies are somewhat more diverse than
the pupil population nationally: 62 per cent
of academy pupils are white, compared with
83 per cent of pupils across LA-maintained
secondary schools.
After their white peers, black pupils
make up the next largest group in academies:
almost 20 per cent were categorised as black
Caribbean, black African, other black or
mixed (with one white parent and one black
Caribbean or black African parent). This same
group accounted for just 5 per cent of pupils
in LA-maintained secondary schools.
This profile reflects the location of
academies; most have been established in
urban areas with greater than average levels
of disadvantage. However, as academy status
spreads and includes a significant number of
schools that are already performing above the
average, it is likely that the pupil profile will
become less diverse.
Race and exclusions
Academies permanently exclude pupils at
roughly twice the rate of LA-maintained
secondary schools.
Overall, pupils in academies are excluded
at a rate of 0.42 per cent (which means that
around four pupils in every thousand are
permanently excluded); the rate for LA-
maintained secondaries is 0.21 per cent
(roughly two pupils per thousand).
In academies the relatively high rate of
exclusion among several groups is striking.
Black pupils are generally the most likely
to be excluded from academies; pupils
categorised as ‘any other black background’,
black Caribbean, and mixed: (white and black
Caribbean) are excluded at the rate of 0.74,
0.72 and 0.64 per cent respectively. The black
Caribbean rate is 3.6 times that for whites in
an LA-maintained secondary school.
However, white pupils are twice as likely
to be excluded from academies as from LA-
maintained schools. By contrast, pupils
categorised as black African or Asian are
marginally less likely to be excluded from
academies than from other types of school.
www.runnymedetrust.org
Of course, it is not possible to guarantee
that we are comparing like with like. To date
academies have served more diverse and
disadvantaged populations than the national
average. However, in view of the imminent
expansion of academies these figures sound
an important warning. Academies exclude
significantly more pupils than their local
authority counterparts. Despite the doubling
of exclusion rates for white pupils, a
significant race inequality remains because
most exclusion rates for black pupils also rise
in academies. It is vital that the expansion
of academy status is carefully monitored for
signs of continuing, even worsening, ethnic
inequalities in the rate of permanent exclusion.
Appeals panels
Appeals panels represent a vital safeguard
against miscarriages of justice; a chance for
parents’ voices to be heard. Lewis Hamilton’s
experience of exclusion provides a fitting
example. Hamilton’s school career was saved
because his father mounted a meticulous
defence that persuaded an independent appeal
panel to reinstate him.
Every year significant numbers of
permanent exclusions are overturned in this
way. Hamilton’s experience is important in that
it shows the pupil’s side of the story. Appeals
panels are the last hope for those wrongly
accused who are facing a hugely negative
impact to their future life chances. And yet
appeals panels are frequently scapegoated
as somehow linked to disruption and
indiscipline in society in general, and schools
in particular. The coalition government has
yet to make any announcement on their future
but pre-election statements cast doubt on their
continued existence. In a 2008 working paper
on behaviour and schools, the Conservative
party stated: “We will end the right to appeal
against exclusion to an independent appeals
panel, which undermines headteachers’
authority and signals that the school cannot
cope with violence.”
Prior to the 2010 general election, David
Cameron said: “The headteacher should have
absolute discretion over excluding pupils who
are behaving badly. Right now a headteacher
can exclude a child who behaves appallingly
and the appeals panel can put that kid straight
back into school.”
In our experience appeals panels think long
and hard before reinstating an excluded pupil,
not least because of the adverse publicity
that can be generated as the result of a bad
decision. Indeed, many parents have reported
a sense of fear and bewilderment when facing
such panels, often without professional
representation or support. Furthermore,
research suggests that panels rarely reflect
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 11
the diversity of the pupil population that
they serve. Once again, the exclusions reality
does not support the public image. The most
recent statistics on the impact of exclusions
panels shows that more than 90 per cent of
exclusions were not even taken before an
appeals panel. This contradicts the idea that
countless appeals are frivolously entered into.
In total, around 2 per cent of permanent
exclusions were eventually overturned by
appeals panels, and so the system hardly
constitutes a huge disruption to the flow
of exclusions. However, panels are highly
significant to the people who take their
cases forward in hope of finding justice. In
2007/08 panels found in favour of the parent/
pupil in around a quarter of cases that were
heard. In the last decade for which data are
available, the proportion of appeals that
have found in favour of the parent/pupil has
ranged between a high of 37 per cent and a
low of 20 per cent.
Clearly exclusions are by no means a
straightforward issue and panels appear to find
that a significant proportion raise causes for
concern. In view of these findings, any move
to abolish appeals panels would be premature
and, by denying pupils and parents the right
to be heard outside the school, contrary to the
principles of natural justice.
The effects of exclusion
Exclusion from school is the most serious
sanction available to headteachers and
permanent exclusion is strongly related to
negative academic and social outcomes.
Pupils who have been permanently excluded
from school are four times more likely to
leave education without qualifications and
much more likely to come into contact with
the criminal justice system, according to data
provided by the Cabinet Office. Academy
schools currently exclude a much higher
proportion of their pupils than other types of
school, and their rate of exclusion for black
pupils is higher still. As the new government
expands the academy programme, therefore,
there is a very real risk of even higher
rates of exclusion nationally, with all the
associated financial and social costs this
would involve.
However, this is not an inevitable
outcome, as the rate of exclusion is
susceptible to external influence. Official
targets to reduce exclusion rates in the
1990s made a significant impact, with black
exclusion rates roughly halved within this
period. It is essential that as academy status
is taken up by increasing numbers of schools,
the possible impact on exclusions is taken
seriously and genuine safeguards are put in
place to tackle racial inequality.
Key to diversity in the
media is off-screen
The BBC’s head of diversity Amanda Rice brings together some of
the most interesting outcomes of a conference to discuss the media
industry and how to improve the diversity within it
I
t is the responsibility of public service
broadcasters to reflect the complexity of
modern society. This means reflecting the
differences within and between the UK’s
communities, nations and regions across all
programming and output. What audiences
see, hear or interact with on screen or on air
is a representation of the world, channelled
through the interpretation and production
choices of the programme makers.
Striving to achieve a fair, sensitive and
nuanced portrayal of cultural difference is
key. Taking care to avoid the stereotypes
of old is crucial if programme makers and
broadcasters are to succeed in this purpose.
Authentic portrayal is something audiences
recognise as soon as they see it; they expect
to see it, and so they should.
The importance of accuracy
For anyone who identifies as being from
a particular ethnic or cultural community,
specificity is all-important. Cultural references,
as long as they are accurate and do not appear
gratuitous, will resonate with particular
audiences because they serve to identify
backgrounds, social mores, beliefs and so on.
Such cultural signifiers, and the distinct and
varied representational contexts within which
they appear, can also add great richness and
creative potential. Choosing subject matter
that has a universal relevance but which can
also appeal in specificity to distinct audience
groups will be all the more resonant for some.
Within drama, storylines must be relevant,
and meaningful and written from a position
of experience and understanding within any
given representational context. Get the stories
right and believable characters are far more
likely to follow.
So, achieving diversity off-screen among
the myriad back-room and behind camera
personnel can have a huge impact on the
12 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362
ability to accurately reflect the diversity of
the UK’s many audiences. Couple this with
using people on-screen who look and sound
like modern Britain to present programmes,
deliver news and appear regularly across all
genres in a variety of capacities, and ratings
are likely to increase. Moreover the public
service broadcaster will be truly serving the
UK’s diverse audiences.
The real challenge is how to make sure the
whole industry recruits, develops and retains
employees from diverse backgrounds. These
choices are many and powerful. Decisions
about subject matter, casting, contributors,
commentary, storylines, scripts, editing,
music, location, as well as how, when and to
whom output is promoted, all influence the
‘reality’ which is then portrayed. This, in turn,
can shape the views of society in relation to
those groups.
Is it all white now?
With all that in mind, I attended the Royal
Television Society event Diversity in
Broadcasting - is it all white now? in May
2010. It was encouraging to hear Equalities
and Human Rights Commission chair
Trevor Phillips, Diane Abbott MP, and Pat
Younge (the BBC’s first black Head of TV
Productions) acknowledge that some progress
had been over the past decade.
It is worth noting that headline findings
from a report commissioned by Channel 4
for pan broadcast industry body the Cultural
Diversity Network do seem to support this
perception. Top line data that was revealed
to representatives from the independent
broadcasting sector recently show that within
a snapshot analysis of TV content across C4,
BBC1, BBC2, Sky, ITV1 and Five during a
three-week period in September last year
10.2 per cent of the total TV population were
identified as being from an ethnic minority
background. The highest figure of the same
research as regards separate television genres
was 18 per cent – in relation to those appearing
in soap operas. It is interesting to look at the
detail too. I was not surprised to see that what
is described as ‘Far Eastern’ in the report were
only represented at 5 per cent, whil the broad
‘Black’ category was the biggest at 41 per
cent, followed by South Asian at 32 per cent.
It is early days and robust processes need to
be agreed, but it is encouraging that the whole
industry - public service broadcasters as well
as commercial and some independents - are
now working together far more actively to
identify ways to build up a true picture of
what is happening on screen.
Returning to the event, Younge compared
viewing now to when, as a child in the 70s, he
had excitedly called upstairs to announce the
fleeting appearance of a black face on screen.
Phillips remarked on the numbers of people
from all backgrounds who were interested
enough in the topic to attend the debate at all.
Given this however, he questioned why there
are still so few black and minority ethnic
(BME) people at the top in the broadcast
and creative media sector. His contention
was that it is the culture of the industry,
which is still underpinned by an innate lack
of confidence in the abilities and leadership
potential of ‘the other’ to hold and succeed in
key decision making roles, that still hinders
progress. Abbott, while acknowledging a
degree of progress, asked why it had been
so slow in coming. She cited the habit of
recruiting in one’s own image, particularly
in an industry where it is all about who you
know, as being a key factor that continues to
inhibit opportunities for black talent. In the
words of BBC non-executive director Samir
Shah in 2008, the problem is not deliberate
discrimination but something which is far
more insidious: ‘cultural cloning’.
A discussion on ways to counter this
phenomenon then focused on the need for
www.runnymedetrust.org

policies. Marcia Williams, formerly head of
diversity at the UK Film Council, spoke from
the audience about the work that the Broadcast
Training and Equalities Regulator (BETR)
has been doing with the major broadcasters
to develop a performance measurement
framework promoting equal opportunities in
employment. Monitoring employee diversity
- and using that data year on year to assess
progress and identify patterns or trends
which can then be addressed - underpins the
framework. While such data collection is
crucial, it must be used in conjunction with
clear advice and training to ensure everyone
understands how to help open up the industry
and provide opportunities for all groups, and
to demonstrate why employing a diverse
workforce matters.
Diversity matters
So, why does it matter? Younge and Helen
Veale, of Outline Productions, described
what they saw as the fundamental drivers for
diversity both on and off screen. Veale focused
on the overarching imperative to attract big
audiences. That, she argued, was the rationale
for reflecting diverse audiences. In addition to
the moral imperative and the obvious good
business sense of seeking to reflect diversity
www.runnymedetrust.org
in output, Younge emphasised the BBC’s
clear public service imperative to serve all
licence fee payers and to ‘reflect the diversity
of the UK’, which is a core public purpose.
The assumption here of course is that
employing a diverse workforce will naturally
contribute to greater diversity on screen.
While I would agree with that in principle,
care should be taken not to assume that
greater diverse representation is an automatic
outcome. A dominant organisational culture
can cause many to leave their difference at the
door and to wear a somewhat different identity
at work. Women are fairly well-represented
across the industry, if less well in more senior
roles, yet a recent snapshot content analysis
revealed men still outnumber women 2:1 on
screen. This figure has remained the same for
a number of years.
All that being said, the industry
undoubtedly values diversity as a bringer of
great talent and as a catalyst for creativity. It
is just the small matter of how to bring it in
and develop it, so that there are more diverse
faces and perspectives around the top tables
and among the key decision makers.
Younge, while acknowledging
improvements in policy and practice around
recruitment, pointed to the whole industry as
still being notoriously difficult to navigate for
any potential new entrant. Just understanding
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 13
feature
Photo: Benedict Hilliard
the language is the first hurdle and there is a
broad recognition that the industry functions
through networks. Issues of exclusion for
those from working class backgrounds
were discussed as being a very real obstacle
to achieving greater diversity. The long-
standing convention that media industry work
experience trainees are unpaid means that those
from lower income families are highly unlikely
to get that first foot in the door and exposure to
all important networks. The panel all conceded
that it is far easier for well-educated, middle
class young people whose parents can afford
to support them, to gain the experience needed
to progress. Thankfully, the major broadcasters
are increasingly introducing opportunities for
various paid internship programmes.
The event finished with the panel and
audience asked to reflect on the critical
difference between intentions and outcomes.
All those who had bothered to turn up were
likely to have plenty of the former and there is
much good work underway across the sector.
For those working in the industry though, it
is achieving the latter that matters. We must
now ensure the industry successfully brings in
and develops a critical mass of highly skilled,
creative talent from the widest range of social
and cultural backgrounds. This will be pivotal
in shaping and influencing the future look,
feel and sound of UK media output.
Then and now
Rosalind Edwards outlines the key findings of a report on the
particular prejudices faced by lone mothers of mixed-race children.
Lone mothers bringing up children from
mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds
have long been subject to negative
judgments about their moral behaviour
and childrearing. Any mother bringing
up a child without a resident man has
been seen as transgressing various
social boundaries. But for those women
whose children are from mixed racial
and ethnic backgrounds, it is clear that
such pathologisation is compounded.
However, mixed-race families,
including those headed by lone
mothers, have been part of the
social fabric of the UK for decades.
Knowledge about their situation,
however, both now and in the past, is
thin on the ground. This is where Lone
Mothers of Mixed Racial and Ethnic
Children: Then and Now, the research
report I co-authored with Chamion
Caballero, fills in some of the gaps.
14 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362
acial prejudice and social
assumptions
We found that, in both the 1960s and
2000s (the periods from which our
data came), mothers - and particularly
white mothers whose children’s fathers
were from black African or African
Caribbean backgrounds – keenly felt
that derogatory assumptions were made
about women who partnered outside of
their own racial or ethnic backgrounds.
These social judgments usually involved
the mother’s sense of morality and her
sexual behaviour. In this respect, it
seems that little has changed over the
past half a century.
But the mothers’ accounts did indicate
that there may have been some shifts
in the way in which such attitudes
are expressed socially, especially
regarding interactions with officials and
professionals. Though overt forms of
prejudice can still be all too prevalent
in the everyday lives of lone mothers
of mixed racial and ethnic children, the
contemporary mothers spoke about
assumptions and racism taking covert
and implied, rather than more direct,
forms. By contrast, the 1960s lone
mothers reported direct and explicit
remarks and discriminatory treatment.
Raising children
A striking distinction between the
concerns of the two sets of lone mothers
relates to changing understandings
of children’s needs over the past half
a century. All the women expressed
similar worries about their financial and
material situations, but the contemporary
mothers also focused on concerns about
supporting their children’s emotional well-
being in relation to their ethnic identities
as well as being in a lone parent family.
These kinds of references to children’s
identity and family structure were almost
entirely absent in the discussions of the
1960s mothers.
These distinctions may well be connected
to wider social changes. Both in relation
to understanding of the relevance of racial
and ethnic identities and, secondly, the
reframing of contemporary childrearing
as a complex set of skills that require
parents to be ever-involved and watchful.
Fathers’ involvement
Assumptions are often made that mixed
racial and ethnic children brought up
in lone mother families have little if any
contact with their biological fathers. The
mothers’ accounts, both then and now,
showed that non-resident fathers could
be a presence in their children’s lives
in variable ways. The level of contact
and contributions of fathers differed
as much in the 1960s as they did in
the 2000s. Some were a noticeable,
even constant presence, others were in
contact intermittently or absent entirely.
In this respect, it seems that fathers’
www.runnymedetrust.org
involvement has not changed over time.

However the social context has shifted

considerably. The responsibility that most
of the contemporary mothers expected
their children’s fathers to take is echoed
in government policy, which obliges the
non-resident parent to contribute regular
financial support for their children. Such
policy obligations are accompanied
by social expectations, which see the
presence of biological fathers as playing
an important role in children’s identity and
development. These sorts of obligations
and expectations were not a part of the
1960s mothers’ lives, either on personal
or societal levels.

Family relationships
Hostility, rejection and isolation from
their parents and families of origin have
long been thought to be the fate of lone
mothers of mixed racial and ethnic
children. The accounts of both sets of
mothers we looked at for our research
showed a continuation of variability in
experiences of such relationships within
the two time periods. Some have close
and supportive relationships with their
families, others have more strained or
difficult interactions - and not necessarily
due to the fact of having partnered
outside their racial or ethnic group.

A significant shift, however, is the family

relationships that contemporary mothers
may now have with their children’s
fathers’ families, particularly if those
families are from ethnic or racial minority
backgrounds. The majority of the
contemporary mothers had contact with
the father’s family, many on a regular
basis. Again, although the type and
quality of this contact varied amongst
families, it appears present in a way that
was almost completely unknown for lone
mothers in the 1960s. This lack of contact
is doubtless reflective of patterns of
migration and settlement in Britain among
minority ethnic families at the time, with
men likely to have travelled to England
alone. The availability of wider minority
ethnic kin suggests an additional support
source for lone mothers of mixed-race
children in modern Britain.
Support networks
Over the past 40 years or so,
considerable shifts have taken
place in the formal support services
available to lone mothers. There are
now numerous specialist organisations
that provide advice, information and
support. Furthermore, the provision of
resources that help mothers to support
their children’s racial or ethnic identity
development, as well as other aspects
of their children’s emotional well-being,
has also been a significant development
for mothers.
These trajectories of continuity and
change in experiences of attitudes and
support for lone mothers bringing up
mixed-race children in the UK across
40 years reveal both similarities and
differences, not only between the
1960s and 2000s, but also within each
time period.
What appears to have remained a
constant over the last half a century,
however, is the type of informal support
that lone mothers of mixed racial and
ethnic children draw on. In addition
to the roles that the children’s fathers
and extended families may play,
friendship networks feature strongly in
mothers’ accounts, both then and now.
In particular, though their importance
can often be overlooked, friendship
networks in which mothers can share
common experiences with other women
in the same circumstances appear to
be of great importance to them. With
such informal networks often providing
sources of invaluable support in mothers’
lives, it may be important to consider the
effect of an absence of such networks
may have, particularly in situations where
other resources are limited.
For the full report: http://bit.ly/lonemothers

www.runnymedetrust.org summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 15

 feature

Migration
and risk
Camille Aznar argues for a new
discourse on risk analysis as
related to migration policy

O
ver the past two decades, EU discourse has served to
emphasise the positive role of migration for social and
economic development and has highlighted the role
of diasporas in the development of migrants’ countries
of origin. Additionally, national governments have persisted
with the political priority of securing Europe’s external borders
with an increasingly reactive approach to immigration. Many
migration management measures have intensified, particularly
since 9/11 (with the development of citizenship tests, increase in
deportation orders, militarisation of border control and so on); a
tendency which has been heightened by the current economic

Photo: David Dennis

crisis which has left millions in Europe jobless.
Migration management policies that limit entry to skilled
migrants have become increasingly stringent and somewhat
of a policy trend in many European countries. Faced with
conflicting dynamics (while the economic logic of liberalism
is one of openness, the political and legal logic is one of citing the importance of ‘risk management’ as a strategy for
closure, something that James Hollifield refers to as the “liberal border control. This strategy is reportedly oriented towards
paradox”) and in attempts to balance the costs and benefits of identifying and screening out risky immigrants and visitors from
immigration, countries have had to re-conceptualise migration desirable tourists, business visitors and skilled migrants. New
in terms of risk management. e-borders, involving the biometric data collection of visitors to
the UK are being used to fix people’s identities at the earliest
point practicable. The young coalition government is likely to go
Managing risk a step further, considering their pledge to introduce an annual
limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants allowed to
On one hand migration is depicted as an essential adjustment
work in the country.
variable for the labour market which is couched as a positive
Though issues of border security and control are not to
risk, while on the other hand it is often portrayed in terms of
be minimised, it is important to note that imposing excessive
negative risks (i.e. terrorism, crime, disorder, cultural anxiety,
controls on migration poses its own risks. For example,
public health, etc). Arguably, stringent migration management
excessive control might deter wanted and needed migration.
has resulted in high-risk migration, primarily in the form of
Meanwhile the contraction of legal entry channels can
irregular migration, which is currently targeted for attention,
cause more desperate migrants to enter the country via illicit

Those leaving their

means, thereby fuelling people smuggling and the criminal
organisations associated with it.

country of origin due to a Migration risk and government policy

lack in opportunities will
continue to run the risks
involved in migration
while low risk migration, such as the influx of skilled workers,
is channelled through specially designed entry programmes.
Recent documentation from the Border and Immigration
Agency of the Home Office has mirrored this shift, explicitly
Over the last 20 years, the broader notion of risk has become
central to every government policy initiative, from the ecological
risk to the terrorist and medical risk. According to contemporary
thinker Ulrich Beck we now live in an era of risk or a ‘risk society’,
which is characterised by a heightened awareness of risk and its
changing nature. He argues, along with supporters of his work,
that living in a ‘world risk society’ makes us both involved and
vulnerable to local, national and global risks in our personal and
professional lives. In his book Risk Society Beck notes that, prior
to this notion of global risk, “hazards assaulted the nose or the

16 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362 www.runnymedetrust.org

 feature

eyes and were thus perceptible to the sense, while the risks of resources are then pooled with income from migration in order
civilisation today typically escape perception.” One of the main to meet the needs of families elsewhere.
concepts of the risk society is that of reflexive modernity. Broadly High-risk migration, typically involving non-documented
speaking, this has several interlinking threads. The first is that migrants, can include a spectrum of risks with various
economy, governance and culture are now global, and that the combinations of probability and severity. For example, the
power of the nation-state has diminished. Going alongside this maximum severity risk – that of death - may only be of a
is an increase in the magnitude and complexity of risks that are small probability. However, economic loss, physical abuse,
now out of all proportion to any previously encountered, and or other forms of hardship, though less severe than death,
have outgrown the regulatory ability of national state-based could be much more likely. Making this distinction between
legal systems. The risk society, Beck asserts, is also a society the various types of risk and their levels of severity can refine
based on ‘individualisation’, that is, traditional social ties are analysis of decision-making processes in high-risk migration.
being replaced by individualised, choice-based social, political Information about relative risk in these cases becomes one
and economic institutions. Though this increases freedom, it of numerous factors affecting the decision to migrate, and
also increases the risks that individuals are forced to take in is often not the most important. Often, risk-taking decisions
areas such as employment and welfare – i.e. they may well are made on the basis of risk perceptions, which are in turn
struggle to earn a basic living. Social hierarchies are now based influenced by information about the potential risks involved in
on risk rather than wealth, and people are more focused on the the migration process as well as also personal experience.
distribution of ‘bads’, (or the realisation of untoward risks) than For example, evidence on ‘pirogue migration’ (unauthorised
on the production of goods. migration aboard small boats from West Africa to the Canary
Marginalised people, among them migrants, become Islands) suggests that, in many cases, the migration does
vulnerable to an increasing number of risks, while also not result from ignorance about risks, but from the need to
categorised as being ‘risky’. Those in need of help potentially overcome poverty and hardship. A similar point is observed
are more likely to be seen as a threat and potentially further by U.S border policy analyst, Joseph Nevis, in demonstrating
marginalised or excluded from the societies in which they live. the US government’s use of risk as a tool to discourage
Migrants, and particularly irregular migrants, are more likely unauthorised crossings. The U.S Border Patrol have
to be excluded in their host countries by being categorised increased the number of agents on each major entry corridor
as “risky”. This experience of exclusion then negates full civic such as El Paso or San Diego while developing its use of
membership of a community, hindering migrants’ potential technology; attempting to raise the risk of apprehension high
contribution to wider society. enough to be an effective deterrent.
If states put risks, potential or real, However, there appears to be no
at their heart of their decision making decrease in crossings.
on migration management, migrant Information campaigns that purport
populations will bear the consequences Fact box the assumption that migrants are
of associating migration with risk. While unaware of the dangers involved in high-
risk and uncertainty are pervasive in all Since 1998 more than 4,000 risk migration have proved ineffective.
forms of migration and at all stages of the people have died trying There is indeed no straightforward
migration cycle, this uncertainty should to cross the Mexican-American relationship between risk awareness
not be used to malign migrants and the border. Annually, more than and attitudes to dangerous migration.
migration process. 600,000 migrants are apprehended What appear to be the deciding factor
as they attempt to cross the border for migrants considering a perilous
to the north without documents border crossing, is how dire the life
Reducing risk opportunities they are escaping, rather
More than 5,900 child than the risk involved in the process.
It is important to acknowledge that migrants arrived in the
people decide to migrate for a multitude European Union in 2009, compared
of reasons: poverty, social upheaval, with 3,380 in 2008. The UN High A change of perspective
political turmoil, economic instability, Commission of Refugees (UNHCR)
unstable climates as well as to live and has warned that these children Repressive migration management
earn outside their country of origin. Many could be in danger of abuse policies are, therefore, doomed to fail for
of the factors that lead to migration, such as long as the conceptualisation of risk
as social upheaval, increase a person’s Over the last decade, more remains outdated. As long as the main
vulnerability, but those who migrate than 13,000 bodies have been reason for migrants to leave their country
often do so as a risk reduction strategy. recovered in the Mediterranean, of origin is the lack of opportunities or
In many cases, migration becomes a many of them thought to be right to make a decent life in their home
a necessity in order to earn a living, or migrants attempting to reach Italy country, they will continue to run maximum
to escape or recover from traumatic from North Africa. severity risks. Treating migration as a
experiences. The intention of the migrant ‘risk’ needing to be managed has proved
Around 1.7 million Afghan
is to further reduce risks of violence and ineffective. The debate on migration
economic vulnerability. refugees and migrants live
and development should focus on
The American sociologist Douglas in Pakistan, and 933,000 in the identifying positive synergies between
Massey argued that for many migrants, Islamic Republic of Iran migration and risk management, rather
migration was a way to capitalise on the than the development of more restrictive
household’s labour power, as household migration control policies.

www.runnymedetrust.org summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 17

 How representative would
proportional represenation be?
Omar Khan takes us through alternative voting systems. With an
example for each available for scrutiny, it is possible to draw some
conclusions as to whether a change in voting system would equal a
T
he question of what makes a voting
system proportional is difficult and
contentious, so it is important to
focus on the question of how different
systems may impact black and minority ethnic
(BME) representation in the UK.
According to Nick Clegg in his first speech
as deputy prime minister, more proportional
systems provide better representation for
under-represented groups. But the evidence
(internationally and in the UK) on this point
is more complicated, especially for the AV
(alternative vote) system on which the coalition
government has agreed to hold a referendum.
Most European countries have various
kinds of proportional voting systems. Only
one country - the Netherlands - does as well or
better than the UK in terms of the representation
of black and minority ethnic people.
The Netherlands has a party list system and
8 per cent of Dutch MPs are BME (compared
to roughly 11 per cent of the population).
Conversely, France, which has a non-
proportional voting system, has only 2 BME
MPs out of 555, or 0.4 per cent compared to an
overall BME population of 12.6 per cent.
But countries with more proportional voting
systems do not always deliver more BME
representatives. For example, in Germany
(where exactly half of all candidates are selected
on a mixed member proportional system) only
1.3 per cent of representatives are from a black
and minority ethnic background, compared to
almost 5 per cent of the population.
For whatever reason, BME candidates are
not selected for their parties’ lists in Germany,
and indeed elsewhere in Europe. It is of course
also likely that different political cultures,
citizenship law, and responses to ethnic
diversity are likely to affect representation
whatever the electoral system.
It is not always appreciated that the UK has
a number of different electoral systems in its
various representative bodies. The key point is
that the sorts of proportional systems we have
in the UK do not tend to result in a significant
increase in the number of BME representatives.
Westminster elections are decided by
perhaps the most influential example of first
past the post (FPTP). In the 2010 UK General
Election, this system resulted in 27 BME MPs
18 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362
being elected, 16 Labour and 11 Conservative
Just over 4 per cent of parliament is now
BME, compared to roughly 10-11 per cent
BME in the total population; the 2001 Census
counted 8% BME people, while the 2007
estimate for England was 11.3 per cent and,
given existing trends, the 2011 Census is
likely to estimate a UK BME population at
11 to 12 per cent
The Scotland, Wales and London
Assemblies all have mixed voting systems,
with the majority decided by FPTP, and
between 33 and 44 per cent of their members
chosen by proportional lists. Scotland and
Wales have very small BME populations, but
each assembly has returned one BME member
through their list system. The Scottish MSP,
Bashir Ahmed, has since died, while the Welsh
AM, Mohammad Asghar, defected from Plaid
Cymru to the Conservative party.
In London, the four BME assembly
members (16 per cent) represent roughly half
the proportion of London’s BME population
(35 per cent or more), and only one of the four
was elected via the list. While proportional
systems seem to provide greater representation
of BME people, so far this has provided a quite
modest effect. Indeed, when Scotland moved to
a single transferable voting (STV) system for
local elections in 2007, there was no increase
in the number of BME councillors.
The European Parliament election
further explains the role that proportional
representation (PR) might be able to play in
increasing the number of disadvantaged groups
on UK representative bodies. There is a slightly
higher number of BME MEPs from the UK (5.7
per cent) than there is in the House of Commons
(4.1 per cent), but there are three caveats.
First is that there are fewer MEPs,
meaning that each MEP contributes more to
proportionality (or indeed disproportionality).
Second is that the number of overall MEPs
from all European countries is very low indeed
(1.1%). Third is that the House of Lords - a
chamber that is currently wholly appointed - has
a roughly similar share of BME members (5.2
per cent), as does the UK delegation in Brussels,
and more than in the House of Commons.
What conclusions can we draw from this
admittedly brief study of BME representation
and electoral systems? First, that the choice of
system does indeed have some effect, but the
effect derives from more ‘pure’ proportional
systems, such as single transferable vote (with
more than one representative per constituency)
or party lists. Other considerations include how
constituency boundaries are drawn, and the
dispersal of a given population.
Second, however, is that party leadership
and commitment to ethnic representation is as
important as the proportionality of a system in
increasing the numbers of under-represented
groups.
In the Netherlands, for example, the
popularity of anti-immigrant parties led leaders
to place black and minority ethnic candidates in
a high position on their lists, thereby ensuring
they would get voted in. If, however, party
leaders do not select BME candidates for their
list, then such candidates are no more likely to
get voted in than they are under FPTP.
This last point is worth reflecting on in the UK
context. In recent Westminster elections, both
the Labour Party and the Conservative Party
have been able to improve the representation
of women and BME people through measures
adopted by the party leadership, namely all-
women shortlists and the ‘A-list’. Whatever
the merits of these policies, they have been
successful in increasing representation, even in
a FPTP electoral system.
And, of course, the unelected House of Lords
is still more representative than the Commons,
indicating that party leaderships could perhaps
deliver even better results. We should therefore
be cautious in agreeing with Nick Clegg’s
claim that PR will increase the representation
of disadvantaged and under-represented groups.
It is worth bearing in mind that the Liberal
Democrats currently have no BME MPs, and
have only a very small number of women MPs.
Given that the coalition agreement explicitly
states that our future referendum will be on
the alternative vote only, which is not strictly
speaking a proportional system at all, there is no
reason to believe that this reform will increase
the number of women or BME MPs. Without
wider changes in political party leadership,
membership and procedures, electoral reform
will not result in our representatives being any
more proportionate.
www.runnymedetrust.org
A long way to go
Liberal Democrat councillor and journalist Lester Holloway on
political representation for black and minority ethnic groups
I
n the words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr
“We’ve come a long way; we still have a
long, long way to go.” This was a comment
taking stock of gains made in the civil
rights movement. Yet the sentiment equally
applies well when reflecting on the increased
numbers of black and minority ethnic MPs at
the 2010 general election.
Since the 1987 breakthrough, when Diane
I remember feeling a great
sense of pride when I saw Bernie
Grant turn up to parliament
wearing traditional African robes
Abbott, Keith Vaz, Paul Boateng and the late
Bernie Grant made it to parliament, progress
has been painfully slow. Until this year. On 6
May 2010 BME MPs almost doubled, up from
15 to 27, while the number of Asian women
rose from zero to six.
The recent gains are impressive on the face
of it, yet put the figures in context and they tell
a different story altogether. Collectively the
BME MPs only represent four per cent of the
House of Commons. This is well short of the
respective figure for the BME population in
Britain, which is now estimated to be between
13 and 15 per cent.
Labour’s acting leader Harriet Harman
said in 2007 that Britain needed four times
more BME representatives in Westminster
in order to reflect the society government
serves. Yet progress remains slow – according
to new figures from the Office of National
Statistics, we still need three and a half times
more MPs of colour.
I remember feeling immense pride as a
teenager when I saw Bernie Grant turn up
to the state opening of parliament wearing
traditional African robes, and when Paul
Boateng declared: “Today Brent South,
tomorrow Soweto!” It felt like the dawning
of a new era and the end of years of struggle.
That new era faced its first setback when
Grant’s attempts to set up a parliamentary
black caucus floundered as Boateng refused
to cooperate.
Grant realised that representation was not
www.runnymedetrust.org
just about getting black and brown faces into
the club, but also recognising that the hopes of
BME communities rested on their shoulders.
And if they were serious about tackling racism
and disadvantage they could not do it alone;
they needed to organise. Grant was saying, in
effect, that we still have a long way to go.
Today we seem to have come full circle
with talk of a UK version of the Congressional
Black Caucus. But most of the new intake is
likely to shun black self-organisation, just as
Boateng did 23 years earlier.
Fooled into believing that the patronage
of their party’s elite and their own talents are
enough to guarantee them success, I predict
that BME MPs will overlook the achievements
that African-American politicians have made
courtesy of the Congressional Black Caucus,
favouring instead the ‘mainstreaming’
approach that is fashionable now.
But mainstreaming needs to be judged
by results. Has mainstreaming equality in
the workplace worked, when the already
disproportionate levels of BME unemployment
have rocketed during this recession? Has it
worked in the police, where racial bias in stop
and search has also increased inexorably over
past years? I think not.
Race, gender and religion do have an
impact on politics where there is a critical
mass of candidates from a particular
community to affect change. Labour
introduced all-women shortlists in the 1997
election, resulting in more than 100 new
women MPs, which gave parliament a critical
mass of women. This was used effectively by
Harriet Harman to introduce new measures
on childcare, maternity leave, domestic and
sexual violence and forced marriages. In this
case, representation led to results.
How different might life have been for
BME communities today had Grant been
successful in creating a caucus? Sadly, a lack
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 19
of unity between MPs of colour has cost the
very communities who most looked to them
to combat race discrimination. This cost will
only be made more striking by the increased
numbers of BME MPs, while the status quo
remains the same.
This is where voter participation counts.
Not just at election time, but holding our
MPs to account on a daily basis. Criminal
justice, unemployment and mental health
data all show disproportionate numbers of
BME people faring much worse than their
white counterparts.
Black communities can, and should,
play a greater role in selecting MPs. Open
primaries offer one route, as does the idea of
an Apprentice-style talent search first floated
by Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society. We
must not let talk of ‘inclusive politics’ put us
off recognising how much BME talent there is
out there – and the need to find it. As an issue,
black representation is too important to be
left to party apparatchiks picking candidates
behind closed doors. Not only has progress
been too slow but the BME MPs who have
been successful have often shied away from
directly tackling ingrained racism in society.
In an era of ‘new politics’, now is the time to
grasp just how much there is still to do.
Are you passionate about race equality?

Do you want to increase your connections and challenge racism?

Runnymede 360° is a new national network connecting aspiring and established leaders in
race equality. By joining the network you would increase your knowledge base, improve your
professional skills, and make contacts that may help you in your work, while also contributing to
challenging racism.

Being part of Runnymede 360° will enable members to:

•• have the opportunity to raise their profile
•• share their experience and learn from others
•• create partnerships across regions and sectors for future work
•• have early access to Runnymede’s work and events
•• have access to the latest policy developments related to race equality

Runnymede draws on over forty years’ experience providing research intelligence, policy
influence, and partnership building in order to promote a successful multi-ethnic Britain. The aim
of Runnymede 360° is to bring together the most passionate and innovative thinkers and actors in
race equality from all sectors, backgrounds and regions of the UK. The network meets monthly at
seminars, e-conferences and receptions. It also has an online discussion space to keep up with
the latest current events and policy developments on race equality.

The ideal candidate will:

•• have been working in private, public or voluntary sectors for a minimum period of five years
•• have an understanding of the policy and practice landscape on national and/or local levels
•• have the ability to apply their knowledge, creativity and experience to their commitment to
race equality, equal opportunities and social justice
•• be committed to the network for at least two years during which they will be expected to con-
tribute to the Runnymede Bulletin, attend Runnymede 360° on/offline events, and participate
in the Runnymede 360° social networking space

Most importantly, the Runnymede 360° member will have something to say and will want to say it.

Why not apply to join? The deadline for applications is 30 August 2010 for interviews taking
place in the cities of Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow.

For more information on current members and details on how to apply go to:
www.runnymedetrust.org/360net

20 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362 www.runnymedetrust.org

Ending racist violence
Sarah Isal is co-author of a forthcoming Runnymede report on
preventing racist violence in the European Union. Here she outlines
what can be learnt from the great work already being done
T
here is currently not a single
European country untouched by the
problem of racist violence. Numbers
of incidents seem to be increasing
every year, a trend which goes hand in hand
with the growing popularity of extreme right
movements, both in EU member states, as
well as in the European Parliament itself.
Therefore, European countries simply cannot
ignore this problem.
Racist violence and harassment takes
various shapes and forms. In some cases, it
expresses itself through extreme violence,
such as the recent murders of Roma families in
Hungary at the hands of extreme-right groups.
However, racist violence is not only about the
extreme cases, it also manifests itself in the
daily harassment of minority groups because
of what they look like, whom they worship
Racist violence is also about
the cases of daily harrassment
or where they come from. As Ben Bowling
stated: “Any discussion of violent racism
must link the extreme to the everyday.”
Taking all these things into consideration,
as well as the fact that most perpetrators of
racist (and other) violence do not get caught,
Runnymede has long argued for a stronger
focus on prevention. While it is crucial to
ensure that victims of racist violence and
harassment get appropriate support and
particular attention needs to be paid to bringing
perpetrators to justice, it is equally important
to find ways to reduce the number of people
actually engaging in such violence. This can
be done by working with them to challenge
sometimes deeply entrenched racist attitudes.
Over the past decade Runnymede has taken
an interest in what works to prevent racist
violence, in particular through challenging
racist attitudes with potential perpetrators.
Past research has found that prevention work
takes many forms, and can work at a variety
of levels. In particular, our 2005 research
(see bit.ly/prevracistviolence) reported that
prevention work could be found in diverse
policy areas, ranging from community
cohesion to crime reduction strategies, youth
www.runnymedetrust.org
policy and arts engagement. For instance, a
theatre project, working with young people
to express and then question some of their
prejudice was effective in preventing young
people from engaging in racist violence
and harassment in their neighbourhoods.
Similarly, a targeted intervention by a youth
worker on an estate working with a group
of young people who expressed extremely
racist views led to a drastic reduction of racial
harassment in that particular neighbourhood.
We have seen a variety of responses to
the violence affecting minorities in Europe.
The response can depend on the country’s
tradition of answering to racist violence,
whether it is recognised as an issue, whether
data on racist violence is available or not, or
if for instance extreme right parties are part of
government. All these factors have an impact
on both levels of racist violence nationally and
any responses (or lack of) to it. Runnymede
organised a European roundtable in October
2009 in London, bringing together a range of
projects from 8 European countries that work
with young people to tackle the underlying
causes of racism, with an aim to prevent
it. At the roundtable, participants shared
their experience of working on prevention,
focusing on the specific themes affecting
their work, such as inter-agency work, whole-
community approaches, the support needs of
staff, the challenges around funding and the
strategies to accurately monitor and evaluate
their work. A forthcoming report has emerged
from this roundtable, which draws together
the commonalities and lessons learnt from the
different practices outlined.
Prevention is not always a popular notion.
It is hard to quantify, and showing the impact
of preventative strategies can also be a
challenge. How do you, for instance, prove
that a particular young person would have
committed a racist crime without a particular
intervention? Similarly, not all racists will
go on to commit an act of racist violence,
but those who do often operate in a broader
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 21
context of racist attitudes, coming from their
peers and the wider society around them. For
this reason, it is important to have a holistic
approach to prevention. These are just a few
of the themes discussed in the roundtable and
which feature in the roundtable report, out
shortly. In addition, the report includes good-
practice examples of work carried out by the
various organisations present, highlighting
the unique feature for each project that could
be replicated in different settings.
Broadly speaking, the projects show-
cased in the report could be categorised into
three types. First, those that challenge racist
discourses and change the environment
through leisure activities or humour. For
example, Les Indivisibles (France) seek to
identify racist prejudice in public discourse.
Rather than directly challenging the language,
they use humour to allow people to think
about it and not take the newspaper headlines
for granted as being true. Les Indivisibles
also stage a mock ceremony, handing special
‘awards’ to politicians and journalists who
have made the most racist comments.
Second, there are those projects that bring
different groups together in various activities
to challenge racist attitudes and stereotypes.
For example, Plant a Flag Against Racism
(Belgium) uses leisure activities to teach
about anti-racism, bringing youth of different
backgrounds together to break down
stereotypes. They give quality labels to local
youth work groups and projects who work on
anti-racism.
Third, there are projects included that
provide training and promote awareness
raising. For example, Show Racism the Red
Card (UK) engages in anti-racism education
using the high profile of professional
footballers. The organisation produces anti-
racist resources such as DVDs, education
packs, posters and magazines, and organise
educational programmes of work for young
people, as well as festivals, events and
competitions.
The roundtable report will therefore be
of use to any practitioner working towards
combating racist violence, through work with
young people in particular.
* Roundtable report will be available shortly.
For 2002 report see: http://bit.ly/racistviolence
 A VIEW FROM... Wales

Isabel Adonis has explored her own mixed-race identity through

literature and visual art in the past. Here she reflects on her
experience of being non-white and Welsh.

W
ales is light years away from
London; and north Wales is
light years away from Cardiff.
Llandudno, where I live, is still
trying hard to be Victorian. What is ordinary
in London is still extraordinary here. Not that
there are no tensions between cultures and
communities in cities across the border, but
there is a familiarity, a notion at least of a
growing multicultural society. Here in north
Wales, however, people like me are supposed
to live in London or Manchester, or go back to
where they came from. I am one of a scattered
few; not one of many. This makes a huge
difference to every aspect of life as a minority
ethnic person in Wales.
Over the years, all manner of confusion
has been brought to my door, which has been
nothing to do with me. But this is the place
I came to when I was a little girl and this is
the only place I can call home. My mother
was Welsh and my upbringing was Welsh. I
am Welsh, and yet I do not fit in Wales, and
neither do my children.
community. The only place I can have in the
legislative framework is as an ‘other’.
The pressure on ethnic minorities is one
of participation and representation, as if there
were a unified community or group that we
must join. But this sense of nation is for the
purpose of power, and only imagined. There
is no homogenised Welsh community, neither
is there a unified notion of self or a fixed
identity. I am Welsh, West Indian, mixed,
whatever, and not truly any of these. Identities
and nations are ideas - fictions that serve to
divide people as they bring them together. The
discourse of power is always about whom to
leave in and whom to leave out.
Wales as separate
Wales has separated itself from England.
And it has separated itself from ethnic
minorities, gays and Gypsies, only to then
claim them back under the rubric of diversity relationship. There are no new meanings and
and inclusiveness. There is talk about the there is nothing new about the new nation.
Even as I write I am making a judgement

There is talk about the black about who I am and it is an impossible,

uncertain place to be in. I am standing between
what I know and what I do not know, and I
Welsh, but no one mentions the cannot rely on the former. I am simultaneously
an ethnic minority and not an ethnic minority,

white Welsh; it is taken for granted
that Welsh means white
My problem with the devolved government
and just about everyone else is that they want
to make me black. To claim I am white would
be a joke, but I certainly do not want to be
grateful for being granted a place in my own
country. The so-called ‘new nation’ (in Wales)
is welcoming black people as though there
is a need to catch up with London. Ethnic
minority credentials must be paraded, and
Wales must be seen to be inclusive. Wales’
interest in slavery is now being discussed and
written about, though no one was interested
before. But even as I am given a place as
‘black Welsh’, I am denied my own voice,
which is not black Welsh. I don’t know any
black people apart from saying hello to the
odd one or two, and I don’t live in a black
‘black Welsh’, but no one mentions the
‘white Welsh’; it is taken for granted that
Welsh means white. Again, being Welsh
means to assert racial difference; ‘we’ are
not English, or any of those other categories.
And Wales is unfortunately reinventing the
culture of its English oppressor, even while
claiming its unique Welshness. To every
English thing there must be a Welsh thing
- even a Full English (breakfast) is replaced
by a Full Welsh!
Difference and identity
To establish a cultural identity Wales requires
difference. This is not a hybrid or renegotiated
Welsh and blatantly not Welsh. When I leave
the house I’m black to the world, but to
myself, I don’t even come under the mixed
category since I scarcely knew my father and
have never visited the Caribbean.
There is no game to be won here and it is
impossible to do anything about it, though
understanding of course helps. Yet there is
everything to do. And I guess it is the same for
those in power, caught always between doing
something about it and not doing anything at all.
Changing our mentality
A new society requires change and not merely
a change in policy. We have to change our
minds, which is the difficult part. Same and
different have to sit comfortably side by side.
White folks so often think they are dealing
with difference as though it is some entity
outside of themselves, not understanding that
they too have to be different.

22 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362 www.runnymedetrust.org

 A VIEW FROM... Poland
Rafal Pankowski looks back at an extraordinarily turbulent year in
Polish politics. What might the unexpected loss of a number of the
country’s political elite mean for race relations?
P
olish President Lech Kaczynski, his
wife, almost 100 members of the
Polish political elite and other figures
died in a plane crash in Smolensk,
Russia, on 10 April 2010. The group included
leaders of the Polish left, such as Izabela
Jaruga-Nowacka MP, a former minister of
equality and a good friend of the anti-racist
NEVER AGAIN Association.
President Lech Kaczynski was a
controversial figure. He alienated many
liberal-minded voters with his hardline
policies and rhetoric during his term in office.
His rightwing populist party Law and Justice
(Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, PiS) scored an
international success by allying itself to the
UK Conservatives in the European Parliament,
but domestically it was on the way to political
oblivion. It had been reduced to just 20 per
cent support in the polls and it was bound to
lose the forthcoming presidential election,
scheduled for October this year.
The plane crash shook up the political
landscape. Wild conspiracy theories about the
accident have been championed by the far
right, including the notoriously anti-Semitic
Radio Maryja, which is closely connected
with the PiS.
There were fears of a renewed social
polarisation and a revived rightwing populist
campaign in the run up to the early presidential
election in June 2010, with Lech Kaczynski’s
twin brother Jaroslaw eventually losing out
A Nigerian-born man was
shot dead by the Polish police,
evidence points to a case of
brutality amplified by racial
prejudice
for a place in the top job. He had positioned
himself as a standard bearer for the hard right.
His party includes politicians with racist
www.runnymedetrust.org
views, such as Artur Gorski who lamented
the election of Barack Obama as ‘the end of
white man’s civilisation’..
Populist anti-minority mobilisations are
employed in Polish politics even despite
the numerical weakness of today’s minority
communities. As a result of the Holocaust
and other wartime atrocities, as well as
postwar resettlements and emigration waves,
once multicultural Poland is now largely
homogenous, with only around 3 per cent of
society made up of ethnic minority groups.
The new migrant communities have grown
slowly but steadily since the early 1990s.
They are often confronted with prejudice
and discrimination. The hegemonic ideal
includes the belief that ‘all Poles are
Catholic’ and the underlying assumption
that members of ethno-religious minorities
cannot be ‘truly Polish’.
Anti-minority discourse was a typical
feature of the PiS-led government
between 2005 and 2007. In the words of
Peter Vermeersch, writing in 2007: “The
disjuncture between the growing EU concern
about the promotion of the acceptance of
ethnic diversity, equal opportunities, anti-
discrimination and social inclusion, and the
way in which minority rights are protected
in Poland points to the current limits of
European involvement in domestic policy-
making and domestic social relations in the
new member states.”
At the same time, whole ethnic groups
have suffered from structural marginalisation,
due to their geographical concentration, a lack
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 23
of educational opportunities and a disastrous
situation in the job market in some regions.
This is coupled with prejudices persisting
in institutions and in the wider society, in
particular the Roma in the south of Poland and
the Belorussians in the north-east. Michael
Fleming argues that: “the marginalisation of
minority communities continues to be the case
despite the advent of the new minority rights
regime, the entry of Poland into the European
Union and the passing of a law on national and
ethnic minorities.”
Thus, the legal institutional safeguards on
minority rights ring hollow in confrontation
with socio-economic problems and the
substance of real life.
The Brown Book, published by the NEVER
AGAIN Association chairman Marcin Kornak
in 2009, documents hundreds of hate crimes
committed in recent years against various
minority groups.
In a very recent case, a Nigerian-born man
was shot dead in broad daylight by the Polish
police near the newly built National Stadium
in Warsaw on 23 May 2010. Evidence points to
a groundless case of police brutality amplified
by racial prejudice. More than 30 black people
were arrested as a result of the scuffle at the
scene of the shooting. Many are demanding an
independent inquiry into the case; it remains
to be seen if they are heard.
Most of the high profile black figures in
Polish society are football players. They, too,
are frequently subject to racist attitudes. The
East Europe Monitoring Centre was set up by
the NEVER AGAIN Association in 2009 to
document racist incidents in the run up to the
European Football Championship, which is to
take place in Poland and Ukraine in 2012. The
centre is supported by UEFA and the Football
Against Racism in Europe (FARE) network.
Racism and xenophobia were not invented
in the football stadium, but we have to start
somewhere - and football can be a good tool
to change hearts and minds.
*Rafal Pankowski is coordinator of the
Warsaw-based East Europe Monitoring
Centre, and a lecturer at Collegum Civitas. He
recently wrote ‘The Populist Radical Right in
Poland: The Patriots’ (Routledge, 2010)
 key
facts
about... Race and representation
18%
1
of Londo
Diane Abbott became the councillors n’s
be
to a non-w long
first black woman in the
House of Commons in 1987. hit
ethnic gro e
Now, more than 20 years later, she up
is the first black person to run for
Labour leadership
Hansard

2
Among ethnic minority
groups, Indians are most
likely to regularly use the
internet and read newspapers and
magazines; Black Africans are the
least likely to do so
Ofcom

3
Since 2008, 45% of all black
and minority ethnic (BME)
third sector organisations
in the UK have had their funding

Photo: Wexner Center

cut by local authorities and
other funders
Architect David Adjaye
Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector
Organisations (CEMVO)

Architect David Adjaye is

4
In London, where more than
30% of the population is
from an ethnic minority, only
18% of local councillors belong to
among just 2% of those working in
a non-white ethnic group
London Councils
the profession who are black

7 9
Operation Black Vote (OBV) When he was first elected

5
After the general election
in May 2010 the number of
minority ethnic MPs almost
doubled from 14 to 27
The Guardian Newspaper
has existed s­ince 1996
to urge black and ethnic
minority people to vote and claim
a place in British democracy
Operation Black Vote (OBV)
in 1999, Claude Moraes
was London’s first ethnic
minority Member of the European
Parliament (MEP) and one of
the first Asian MEPs in the
parliament overall

6 8
PSE Socialist Group in the European Parliament
Scotland Yard’s leadership Only 2% of professional
architects are from black

10
is all white for the first time
minority backgrounds. Best French-Ivorian Tidjane
in ten years, after deputy
known among them is David Thiam is the first
assistant commissioner Shabir
Adjaye, who has worked to and only black chief
Hussain left in February 2010. He
promote his profession to ethnic executive in Britain’s FTSE 100,
unsuccessfully sued the force for
minority young people appointed to run Prudential plc in
racial discrimination
Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust
March 2009
BBC News
The Guardian

24 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362 www.runnymedetrust.org

 vox
pop
Florence Nosegbe
Lambeth Councillor
Labour Party
Democratic institutions that are
representative are fundamental
in 21st century Britain. This
means more than a few black
and minority ethnic (BME)
faces in key areas.
It is argued that lack of
representation is a key barrier
to participation in politics.
Parties must therefore review
their selection processes
and use the networks that
already exist through their BME
members.
We must address the issues
that affect these communities
to understand why they feel
alienated in the political
process. We must recognise
that these groups have an
interest in the full range of local
and national issues.
As a six-year old girl, little did
I know that the first black MPs
were elected in 1987.Twenty
three years later representation
still falls short of reflecting the
total BME population. Positive
action needs to be taken to
ensure that we are not in the
same position in 2033.
www.runnymedetrust.org
How can political representation among
black and minority ethnic groups be
increased and why is it important to do so?
Duwayne Brooks
Lewisham Councillor
Liberal Democrats
Before criticising political
parties, black people need to
know who the candidates are
in an election, and vote for the
ones they expect to have an
understanding of their issues.
This election has shown that
black voters decided on purely
national issues, not paying
attention to whom they were
actually voting for.
The argument that political
parties should install a black
person in a safe seat to increase
numbers is a foolish one.
We, have a duty to ourselves
to join parties in our droves
and stand for election
as councillors or MPs
before passing the buck.
Representation will not
increase until we make active
movements.
In the past our voice has been
ignored, allowing a large part of
society to become disillusioned
and rebellious to authority.
It is now a necessity it is heard,
and acted upon.
Lurline Champagnie OBE
Harrow Councillor
Conservative Party
To be a truly democratic society,
all our communities must be
well-represented at all levels,
including the socio-political and
economic spectrum.
Statistics and experiences
show that there are vast
discrepancies in race
representation in the civic and
democratic processes, and
at the social, economic and
political decision-making levels.
Diversity enriches decision-
making processes by enabling
policymakers to take action
based on the lives of all men
and women, including those
from ethnic backgrounds. Our
democracy is stronger when
fully representative.
We must develop better
evidence-based experiences
of minority groups. We must
take action to meaningfully
include them in all aspects
of work and life. Finally we
must facilitate access to
information and education
without discriminatory barriers
embedded in our democracy.
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 25
Samir Jeraj
Norwich City Councillor
Green Party
The painfully slow rise in
representation of black and
minority ethnic (BME) people in
government and public bodies
is an embarrassing indictment
of our democracy.
Exclusion of whole groups
of society from political
life creates distrust and
discrimination. While inclusion
means that new perspectives
can be brought to the issues
we face.
I have always supported
proportional representation if
accompanied by changes to
how political parties select their
candidates, to avoid party lists
being stacked with “pale, male,
and stale” candidates. Models
for opening up selection
processes include BME
shortlists and open primaries.
The wider challenge is grass
roots change, starting with
participation and leadership
in political parties. We could
raise the profile of our BME
candidates, showing our
commitment to inclusion.
 Q&A

nick lowles Nick Lowles

hope not hate

Nick Lowles is the editor of the anti-fascist Searchlight

Magazine. He has campaigned against the far right for all
his working life. Most recently he successfully headed the
Hope not Hate campaign, which mobilised hundreds of
campaigners to the British National Party’s primary target
of Barking and Dagenham during the 2010 UK general
election. The campaign was a resounding success, and
has been widely credited with helping to ensure that the
BNP lost all 12 of the council seats it formerly held in the
area. BNP leader Nick Griffin was also beaten into third
place in his bid to become the local MP.

How and why did the Hope not Hate campaign

come about?
Hope not Hate was set up in 2005 to respond to the
increase in members of the British National Party (BNP).
We had previously linked up with (social development
trust) the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on some
research into the BNP vote, which found that women
were much less likely to vote for them than men. This has
helped shape our campaign over the last few years. We
found that many women did not like the aggressiveness
and macho-ism of the BNP, or the trouble this brings to
communities. At the same time, however, these same
female voters were put off by traditional forms of anti-
racism and anti-facism campaigns, which were also
quite macho though from a very different perspective,
such as ‘Smash the BNP!’ and the like. So we began to
dilute the aggressiveness of our message. We also found
that people wanted something positive to support, rather
than just being ‘anti’ something, and that is where Hope
not Hate came from.
Hope not Hate is a fantastic vehicle that enables us to
rally people around, allowing us to obviously differentiate
ourselves from the BNP and hate. Our methods are
always developing and we are always learning new
things, some of which work, while others don’t. We have
tried to tap into a mood, particularly over the last couple
of years, connected to the growing disillusionment
with mainstream parties, not only in terms of voters in
communities where the BNP are strong, but also in terms
of civic society. Some have interpreted this apathy as an
indication that people are not interested in politics, but
instead we think that what mainstream political parties
do doesn’t attract, excite or enthuse people. So with Hope
not Hate we have rallied people around a very simple
moral cause, and that is what has been successful in the
2010 general elections.
In Barking and Dagenham alone we estimate that there
were more than 1,000 people out campaigning for us,
who we found via our online campaigns over three
weeks. This is a level of involvement that political parties
cannot create. We have found that this year, as compared
to last, we have a bigger percentage of people completely
new to politics helping our campaign. There was a feel-
good factor. For one of our activities we had 540 people
out posting 92,000 leaflets in one day. Just to see that
number of people creates a mood of euphoria. Obviously
once we heard the results it was fantastic, people could
feel that they had really made a difference.
What are your main aims?
Our short-term goal was to curb the rise of the BNP,
hopefully pushing them back in the areas in which they
were getting elected, which we have accomplished in
some areas. At the moment we are the fire brigade, if you
like, running around trying to put out the BNP fire. My
own view is that they do well in communities that have
lost hope. These communities turn in on themselves and
political parties don’t listen to them.
This leads to the longer-term goal, which is what we

26 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362 www.runnymedetrust.org

 are looking at now. We are training people up in their
local communities so they can self organise around
local issues, along the lines of traditional community
organising. Hopefully they can also achieve local goals,
which will prove to people that they don’t need to go
down the BNP route. Not everyone who votes for the
BNP is a hardcore racist. Obviously race is the issue
that the BNP mobilise people around, using this as an
easy explanation for why their supporters haven’t got
something themselves. At the end of the day, though, it
is normally that people are disillusioned and the BNP are
giving them simple solutions.
We cannot change things around overnight, and there
are public policy issues to be addressed, but this
community organising is part of our long-term goal to
make people feel more positively about their own areas.
How did you set about affecting real change?
We used a combination of new media and old organising;
it was this fusion that worked for us, each with a
different role. For example, the online organising made
very little difference in terms of the vote in Barking and
Dagenham, but what it did do was enable us to speak to
our supporters on a regular basis to tell people about the
issues. This meant that people could get involved even if
they couldn’t physically take part. In the first five months
of this year our online campaign raised £86,000 from just
under 5,000 people. The average donation was around
£16.50, which was fantastic.
We did some canvassing, but we didn’t set out to turn
BNP voters around. This would have been very difficult to
do, and it would not have been fair to put our supporters
in these potentially difficult situations, as this could have
caused conflict.
Instead, we identified groups less likely to vote for the
BNP and we worked on those, going door to door with
targeted leaflets. Women were one key group, as well as
the black and Asian communities, first-time voters and
pensioners.
At the moment the BNP vote comes primarily from men
between the ages of 30 and 55 living in areas where there
is lower educational achievement. High unemployment
in an area is a factor, but usually the BNP voter is in
social groups C2 or D, so not actually the poorest people
in society. The BNP vote tends to come more from those
who work hard and play by the rules, but who feel that
other people don’t. Crucially, all six surveys on the BNP
vote I’ve seen show that men vote BNP more than women
at a ratio of 2:1, so the more women we get to the polling
booths, the better from our point of view.
www.runnymedetrust.org
What elements contributed to the success of
your campaign?
It helped that the Labour Party worked hard. Their party
message can also be quite negative, however; banging
on about immigration doesn’t enthuse people. The higher
voter turnout typical of a general election also helped.
We turned the local election into a referendum on: ‘Do
you want the BNP running your council?’. We upped the
stakes and made it a really clear choice for people.
A sign that our
campaign was effective
is that the BNP put out a
leaflet attacking us
The campaigning we did around different groups, such as
women voters or black and Asian voters, also helped to
produce a higher turnout for these different groups - the
overall turnout was massive. We employed someone just
to do faith work, for example, and on the final Sunday of
the campaign, we addressed 2,500 people in one church
congregation. They were all chanting ‘hope not hate’ and
had our material.
What, apart from the local election results in
Barking and Dagenham, would you say were
your biggest successes?
One of the signs that our campaign was effective is that
the final leaflet the BNP put out in their campaign in
the borough was a two-page attack on us. This proved
that we had shifted them in a certain direction and we
certainly saw that as a victory.
In an election campaign people don’t shift that much.
They don’t go from being racist one minute to not racist
the next. But we did get some emails and letters from
local women in response to the 12-page booklet we put
out to female voters with a covering letter from a local
person. There were replies from ordinary local women
saying that they were thinking of voting BNP, but had
changed their minds as a result of learning what we had
to tell them.
I think the key day for me was on 17 April when we had
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 27
a big day of action with 540 people. There were people
queuing down 85 stairs and down the road just to get their
papers, with 30 to 40 people outside. No one complained.
We put on food and there was entertainment, it was just
the most amazing day, people just kept coming and
virtually all were brand new people to us. It really was
unbelievable to see the numbers of people of all different
ages. On election day, we even had three teenagers in
London on a school daytrip from Kent who had bunked
off to come and help us!
We have 250 people willing to become local organisers
in their areas and who can help us set up Hope not Hate
groups up and down the country. We are now trying to
build on these networks.
What are your concerns about the far right
for the future?
I have a worry that people will think that the BNP have
been defeated. Over the next few years, the cuts that are
coming will really hurt some of the BNP profile voters,
such as the semi-skilled, the public sector workers and
those in the building trade.
I also worry about electoral reform because the reality
is that the BNP have a much better chance of getting
elected under proportional representation, as we have
seen in the European Union elections. They have two
MEPs, which has enabled them to employ 40 of their
members full time, who will no doubt do party work
rather than European work.
I think there’s a danger in complacency. I take the view
that for any place in which the BNP got more than 15 per
cent of the vote in the local elections this year, you can
add another 10 per cent next year when there is no general
election. There are places, even in big diverse cities like
Manchester and Leeds, where the BNP got 30 per cent of
the vote this year. Also, the BNP realised that they were
out-organised in Barking and Dagenham, which means
that they are looking at how we campaigned and how
major political parties do it. Their work will become more
sophisticated as a result.
How will the operating under the Liberal-
Conservative coalition affect your work?
It is not yet clear what the government’s position will be on
community cohesion. One of the things we are focusing
on a lot more now is the English Defence League (EDL)
issue. Government cannot just keep sitting on its hands,
pretending nothing is happening. Unfortunately the last
government took a very narrow public order position,
using the police to control protest, but protecting the far
right under freedom of speech laws.
28 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362
Our fear is that the climate is in a worse state than it was
in 2001 with the last riots, because we are post-9/11 and
communities are more divided. The EDL can organise
1,500 people in the North East of England just through
the internet. This is a major issue, which I don’t think any
of the political parties are dealing with. We have got to
use this as an opportunity to bring communities together.
We have to embed ourselves wherever the problems are
and make links with community figures.
The BNP is now looking
at how we organised
ourselves, and so their
work will become more
sophisticated
What difference would greater representation
of black and minority ethnic (BME) people in
parliament make?
If the quality (of the BME representative in public life) is
high, and the person is seen to deliver, this can make a
positive difference. It is a great way to peel away some of
the BNP voters, or others around them.
I think having more BME representatives in politics is
good in the sense that it helps to break down myths
and stereotypes, helping to show that we are all in this
together. However, there is a group (of white people)
in our society whose members feel that they have lost
their identity and, where possible, these people must be
taken along on the journey too.
What role does the media play in perpetuating
negative opinions of certain groups?
Authorities need to be far more vigilant about what
comes out of certain papers. Some of the stuff the
Daily Star and the Daily Express print is far worse than
you would see in a BNP pamphlet. While the BNP are
conscious that they must stay within the law, elements
of the press are more free with what they say. It would be
important to have more people of different backgrounds
writing, to help do away with outrageous things that get
written about certain ethnic groups. But the law should
come down on those in the press that perpetuate these
views, because it is not surprising that people vote BNP
or are distrustful of some ethnic groups when they are
fed a daily diet of hatred.
www.runnymedetrust.org
A reader on race
John Solomos explains why he and co-editor Les Back saw the need for a
second edition to their widely-read text and where it goes further than the first
T
he study of race and racism has
been transformed in a radical
fashion over the past three decades.
From a relatively minor sub-field
of sociology and other disciplines, we now
have a proliferation of courses at all levels
of university study, a massive expansion of
scholarly publications and of research.
In this rapidly evolving environment
it becomes easy to lose sight of what is
established theory and what is new, of what
key issues we should be exploring and what
research and policy agendas we should be
addressing. The proliferation of theoretical
paradigms and perspectives over the past
three decades has accentuated this problem
even further. It is partly in response to this
challenge that Les Back and myself set out
in the late 1990s to produce the first edition
of Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader,
seeing it as an overview of a field of research
that was very much work in progress. It is with
this objective in mind that we intentionally set
out to include in the reader both classic texts
by foundational scholars as well as examples
of the work of new scholars.
The first edition
The first edition was published in 2000 and
became a widely used course text on both
sides of the Atlantic, and in a wide range
www.runnymedetrust.org
of disciplines and sub-fields. Yet even
in the short period since the first edition
was published we have seen important
developments in both how scholars study
race and racism and in wider public and
policy debates about this question. These
transformations have centred on a wide range
of issues and events, including new patterns
of migration, the rise of extreme right-wing
racist and ethno-nationalist movements,
debates about cultural and religious diversity
and multiculturalism and, more broadly,
the emergence of new forms of racist and
racial discourses. Wider geopolitical events
such as 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ have
also played a role in shaping debates about
race and racism. More generally, scholars
from a range of disciplines and empirical
perspectives have raised important questions
about what it is that we study when we
research race and racism.
The new extracts address
whiteness, emerging racial
identities and future trends
Second edition
It is in this context that we decided there was
a need to produce a second edition of Theories
of Race and Racism, which was published in
2009. The second edition includes revised
editorial overviews from Les Back and
myself that situate the shifting boundaries of
scholarship on race and racism contemporary
theoretical trends. We have kept the original
structure of organising the readings in six
broad thematic parts, and have added new
readings within those confines. In part one,
on ‘origins and transformations’, we have
added new readings by Robert Bernasconi,
Albert Memmi and Pierre-André Taguieff
that provide somewhat different perspectives
on the history of ideas about race. In part two,
on ‘sociology, race and social theory’, we
have included the work of Runnymede trustee
Claire Alexander on the construction of
summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 29
racialised identities and politics. Perhaps the
most important additions we have made can
be found in part five on ‘feminism, difference
and identity’ and in part six on ‘changing
boundaries and spaces’. In part six, the work
of Kimberley Springer and Sarita Srivastava
has been added to give voice to current
preoccupations in black feminist discourses
and in debates about race and racism within
feminist movements.
What’s new?
Not surprisingly it is in the forward-looking,
concluding part that some of the major
additions to the reader can be found, with new
extracts from the work of David Roediger,
Jennifer Hochschild, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
and Howard Winant. The new extracts address
issues such as whiteness, emerging ethnic and
racial identities and future trends in racialised
politics and mobilisations. All of these are
areas on which there is intense debate and
research activity in the current environment.
A good case in point is the extract from
David Roediger’s work on whiteness, which
provides an indication of the impact of
research on whiteness in the past decade.
It is perhaps inevitable that even extensive
volumes such as this reader do not cover all
the themes and issues that are being debated
in the contemporary environment. But the
42 extracts included, alongside the extensive
introductory material, provide a basis for
students to explore the key issues in race and
racism studies from a range of conceptual
perspectives. Certainly my own experience
in using the reader as a teaching resource
for a wide range of students has highlighted
the need for texts that cover both historical
and contemporary issues, and challenge
students to look at a range of perspectives and
theoretical frames.
 REVIEW
Stereotypes and suicide bombers
TO BORROW THE SUCCINCT SYNOPSIS
sold to me by my husband, Four Lions is ‘a
comedy about four stupid suicide bombers
from the writers of Brass Eye’.
On first impressions, I was not at all happy
with the few female characters there were in
the film. Sofia, the wife of main character
Omar, was frustratingly one-dimensional.
For a film that has some great writing and
touches of realism to it, telling Omar: ‘You
were much more fun when you were going to
blow yourself up’ without any emotion was
not funny or plausible.
The violence in the film shocked me – I
found myself gasping and had both my hands
over my mouth at one point. But I wasn’t
given time to reflect on this, as the comedy
kept coming and I found myself laughing,
albeit guiltily.
On reflection perhaps that was the point
that was being made. Real violence and death
The film gave certain insights
into Muslim experiences, though
not enough of them female
are portrayed so frequently and glibly within
our society that their consequences are not felt
by those not experiencing it for themselves.
This came across very well in the film,
with the characters referencing video game
violence and ‘play fighting’ together. I felt
that the characters would most likely not have
got into their situation if they had a true idea
of the consequences. It was evident by the end
of the film that, at some point on their path
to destruction, disaster for the main characters
could have been averted.
While the film is very thought-provoking
in terms of terrorism, I felt the main strength
was its portrayal of Muslims. It presented
facets of Muslim life that never normally get a
mainstream airing. I must admit I was uneasy
about seeing a film portraying Muslims
written by a non-Muslim, particularly given
the topic. In fact, as a Muslim, I was fully
expecting to be offended. But instead I was
roaring with laughter throughout most of the
film, was everyone else in the cinema. Aside
from presenting a non-stereotypical image
of Muslims, I feel that the film really showed
30 | RUNNYMEDE BULLETIN | SUMMER 2010 / issue 362
an intelligent understanding of Muslim
culture, so I was not surprised to later read
that writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain
had spent years researching before writing
the script.
The film does play to stereotypes, in the
form of main character Omar’s pious brother-
in-law. Though I did feel that this character’s
presence served a purpose in representing
a part of Muslim communities that many
Muslims cannot engage with.
Balanced against the new insight into
Muslim variety, I am conflicted as to how
this film may potentially help or hinder
public perception of Muslims. Showing
these non-stereotypical characters behaving
as extremists could represent a danger of
criminalising the whole community – because
it’s not just the ‘weirdy beardy’ types that
pose a risk. Four Lions
The film really brought home the danger Directed by Christopher Morris, 2010
Film review by Elvira Doghem-Rashid
of home-grown terrorists, making this issue
more real for me, rather than dispelling my
concerns. I actually felt quite nervous leaving
the cinema, worrying about the serious reality
behind the humourous depiction
For me the film offered something, but
not enough. It gave certain insights into
different Muslim experiences, though not
enough of them female. The main character
knew something about Islam, but not enough
to realise there is no justification for what
he had planned. There was some hint at the
motivations of the wannabe suicide bombers,
but by no means enough. I wanted to know
more about what set the characters on their
fateful paths, to inform what we, as a society,
are really up against.
For its failings, though, I would still
strongly recommend that everyone watches
Four Lions. I am still thinking about the
film some weeks later. Love it or hate it, it
is certainly thought-provoking, and is brave
enough to broach a particularly controversial
topic? Maybe it does not deliver quite enough,
but maybe something is better than nothing.
www.runnymedetrust.org
Director’s
Column
Runnymede director Rob Berkeley
considers the impact of cuts on the
pursuit of race equality

Spending cuts, but at what cost?

M We must see that our political

y mind is buzzing with ideas
and fresh perspectives on the
challenges of racial injustice,
having recently returned from leaders are subject to appropriate
the excellent CRONEM/Runnymede
conference, Living Together,
levels of scrutiny, so that all voices
The research, theoretical discussions,
and policy debates at the event were of a are heard
very high standard. We really appreciated
insistence that public spending must be cut, dictate rather than from the collective will
the luxury of taking time away from our
and cut now. The coalition hypothesises of the citizens.
desks to reflect and learn from academic
that the impact of the proposed cuts will be
researchers working at the leading-edge. A
mitigated by the citizen and civil society The back-to-front nature of the reforms
series of conference papers will be shared
taking greater responsibility and action - (finance rather than purpose) poses some
as podcasts on the Runnymede website over
the much-vaunted ‘Big Society’. Not many dangers for racial justice and other values
coming months. One stand-out moment
people are against civil society and citizens that we would hold central to success as
was the presentation given by American
playing a greater role, but there are still a society. It may well be cheaper to stop
public intellectual, Benjamin Barber. He
many questions about what shape these monitoring the actions of our police services
challenged the delegates to reframe the
new responsibilities will take (running to ensure that all citizens are treated fairly.
issues of racial justice and race relations
schools and colleges or co-payment for It may be more financially efficient to
in terms of the re-democratisation of our
certain health services?) and importantly, remove the rights of parents to appeal an
societies. For those seeking to ensure that
who will pay for them. Meanwhile there is exclusion from school. It may be expedient
race equality remains at the forefront of the
greater certainty about the scale and shape in the short term to abandon positive action
political agenda during this period of rapid
of future spending cuts. The financial initiatives to increase diversity in certain
political and public service reform, there
‘logic’ puts the Big Society at risk of being parts of industry. But in saving some money
may be some wisdom in the renewed focus.
merely a reaction to the cuts rather than now, what problems do we create in the
a reframing of the relationship between medium term? Greater disenfranchisement,
The coalition government has announced
citizen and state that may have been the exclusion, loss of creativity, social strife -
its plans to seek democratic reforms, but
government’s intention; the tail wagging when considered in this light, is the cost of
cuts too high to bear?

What shape will our new civic Yet none of these outcomes are inevitable
if, following Barber, we can ensure that all

responsibilites take in this Big in our society are democratically engaged.

We must see that our political leaders are
subject to appropriate levels of scrutiny,
Society and, importantly, who will so that all voices are heard in decision-
making about cuts in public spending and

pay for them? the marginalised, in particular, are enabled

to engage with and shape public services.
Big Society requires Big Democracy.
the dog. If we are not careful, the drive for
these constitutional innovations have
reforming the role of the state will derive * For more on public service reform, equality
been overshadowed by the government’s
purely from what the financial markets and cohesion visit 2020publicservicestrust.org

www.runnymedetrust.org summer 2010 / issue 362 | runnymede BULLETIN | 31

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