Is the UK government really doing anything effective to help fight institutional racism? By Iola King-Alleyne

Following the death of Black American George Floyd on 25th May 2020, protests broke out across the world to call attention to the institutional racism and racial inequalities imprinted in our society. Of course, one of the main aims of the protest was to get the UK government to deeply look into racism in this country and evaluate how they can help to eradicate it with their policies.

Following the 2016 Black Lives Matter protests, the government did some work on racial inequality in 2017. Theresa May published the Race Disparity Audit, showing that there were inequalities between ethnicities regarding educational attainment, health, employment, and treatment by the police and courts. Also, in 2017 the Lammy Review found evidence of racial bias in the justice system in England and Wales and the McGregor-Smith Review found that people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds experienced higher rates of unemployment than their white counterparts. Furthermore, following the recent Windrush scandal, an independent review published in March found that the Home Office showed “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issue of race”.

From everything above, it is clear to see that the government were well aware of the severity of racial problems in our country, yet they never actually implemented solutions for them. So, that is exactly what people were finally expecting after the recent protests. Yet, unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, little action has been taken again.

Recently, Boris Johnson announced plans for a Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities in the government, which will further investigate all aspects of inequality in healthcare, education, the justice system, and many other sectors. This sounds awfully familiar to the reviews of 2017, and as the Labour party’s justice secretary said, the government needs to follow the recommendations from the last reviews, not launch more. In an interview with BBC radio 4, he stated “It feels like yet again in the U.K., we want figures, data, but we don’t want action”. The findings of the commission are expected to be published at the end of 2020, after which some solutions will hopefully come to light.

Regarding another issue highlighted by the protests, the fight to make black history a compulsory part of the curriculum, the government have yet again taken little action. In early June, a group fighting for this cause, called The Black Curriculum, sent a letter to the UK government asking to meet and discuss reforms to the syllabus. However, on June 25th they announced via Instagram (@theblackcurriculum) that the request to meet had been declined, with the government responding that the “national curriculum as a framework is broad, balanced and flexible, allowing schools to teach black history”. This is so disappointing because it is obvious that without being made compulsory, with clear and specific framework, schools are not encouraged to teach black history and really it all goes down to the school individually. There are so many problems that could occur from this, such as inconsistency across the country with a depth of understanding on black history, and varying attitudes towards the part that black people had in building the Britain that we live in today… just to name a couple.

However, something that the government has really been taking action on, is prosecuting people who damage memorials, following many acts of vandalism during both the Black Lives Matter protests and the far-right racist anti- Black Lives Matter protests in the past couple of weeks. To put it simply, the government wants to ensure that the people who committed these actions of vandalism against important British memorials can receive the maximum sentence of 10 years, regardless of the value of criminal damage, as previously anything with the value of criminal damage under £5,000 would only carry a maximum sentence of 3 months. This sentence carries so much injustice as it means that someone causing ‘harm’ to an inanimate object could get more time in jail than a person who has inflicted grievous bodily harm, violent disorder, theft, carrying knives, acid or offensive weapons, upskirting and causing death by careless driving, to name but a few. Despite this, stronger prosecution on causing damage to war memorials has been strongly backed by the Conservative party, saying that they will not “stand idly by as our democracy is dismantled in this way”.

The reason why I wanted to include the government’s current stand on the defamation of memorials was to show the imbalance between the work being done to get justice for inanimate objects and get justice for the black community. It’s clear that our current government do not know how to handle the cries for equality coming from the tons of protestors and Black Lives Matter supporters. But with the Conservatives in power until the next general election of 2024, will any progress on stamping out institutional racism actually be made?