BLM: No Justice, No Peace

by Jo Morgan

 ‘We must plot, we must plan. We must strategize, organize and mobilize’.

Killer Mike responding to the murder of George Floyd

Image by Singlespeedfahrer (Wiki Commons)

The murder of black man George Floyd under the knee of a white police officer in America has sparked protests across the world, led by Black Lives Matter. But whilst thousands have taken to the streets in the UK to support the BLM protests, other people have felt confused by this outpouring of anger and solidarity.

Following the first wave of UK protests, Kemi Badenoch MP dismissed the anger of the BLM protestors by claiming that the ‘UK is one of the best places in the world to be a black person.’ Others have criticised the protesters for taking to the streets during lockdown. Some have objected to the tearing down of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol. Petitions for schools to ‘de-colonize the curriculum’ have sadly been met with accusations of ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘political correctness’.

So is the anger of the BLM protestors in the UK justified or not?

Many British people adopt the convenient delusion that racism is much more of an American problem and that Britain is characterised by its tolerance (think about all the sorts of things you ‘tolerate’ and you can see why BAME people might want more than this). This distancing technique sometimes helps us to ignore inequality in our own society and racism in our history. By focusing so much  on the transatlantic slave trade, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and police brutality in the US, we deny the reality of our past – the British empire in particular –  and obscure the need for action in our own British present.

Simeon Francis (killed in police custody in Torquay this year)

As well as being taught more about the history of racism in the US, our media focuses more on the present-day racism there too. We have all heard of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin, but have you heard of Chris Adler, Sean Rigg, Darren Cumberbatch, Rashan Charles, Edson Da Costa, Simeon Francis? The list of British BAME people who have died in custody is long. There are parts of the UK where people with dark skin are 17 times more likely to be stopped and searched than people with white skin. This daily lived experience matters.  Ethnic minorities are significantly more likely to receive prison sentences than white people, even when previous convictions are taken into account. Police brutality against BAME people is also a British problem. Although they are less than 3% of the population, black people account for 8% of the deaths in custody. Despite this, there has only been 1 prosecution of an individual for a black death in custody since 1969. 

When you watch the video of George Floyd being murdered, remember that black people die in police custody here too. 

When people deny the need for BLM protests in the UK they fail to recognize the urgent need for change here too. Some critics have focused their attention on the minority of protestors (many of whom were white) who unlawfully removed the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. This statue commemorated a man who built a fortune from stealing 84,000 Africans from their homes (including 12,000 children) and transporting them against their will to the Caribbean. Around 19,000 died en route (many thrown overboard while still alive, which was standard treatment of sick slaves); the remainder were sold into slavery. Arguments against the removal of the statue are many: the context of the time, his philanthropic good deeds, the ‘preservation of history by statue’ and so on. Why, these people have argued, could a peaceful debate not be had?

Toppling of the Colston statue (image: BBC)

The truth is – a balanced view is – that peaceful methods have been tried in Bristol and failed for years. Petitions have included requests that the statue be placed in a museum or that a plaque be added to explain the history. However, these were rejected, and members of the council felt that the mention of the 12,000 deaths of children was too distasteful, so that even a factual plaque was not approved.  So, it is not quite as simple as a peaceful debate versus vandalism.  Whilst councillors have debated the wording for years (with many wanting to emphasise Colston’s philanthropy), British people have had to accept this slave trader and mass murderer literally being placed on a pedestal, while also knowing that their taxes continued to pay the debt owed for compensating slave owners until 2015 (see details here)!There was a powerful symbolism, a poetic justice, to the fact that Edward Colston’s statue, in being hurled into the water, was treated in the same way he had treated thousands of sick and dying slaves during his brutal career.

Sometimes change does not happen the way you would like.  If you are more offended by the act of tearing down the statue than the racism it represents, or worry that it is the start of a slippery slope, then I am afraid you may be part of the problem.

Some white people have been keen to focus on and condemn this act of vandalism by drawing on the pacifist achievements of Martin Luther King.  But King himself argued that ‘a riot is the language of the unheard’. It is true that a small minority of BLM protestors allowed their anger to spill into disorder but the vast majority were peaceful and dignified.  Today, we do not condemn the suffragettes for using ‘extreme’ methods to achieve justice when their peaceful attempts went unheard. We do not dismiss the validity of their argument because a minority of their actions involved civil disobedience. It seems easier for some to dismiss the BLM protestors as a rabid mob than to listen to their message demanding respect and equality.

Thousands of furious far-right protestors have condemned the BLM protests and have taken to the streets themselves to ‘defend’ already-protected statues; a number of these individuals have been filmed shouting ‘We’re racist and we’re proud we are’, Sieg Heiling, throwing bottles, and urinating beside the memorial to a police constable.  It is safe to say that the members of Football Lads Alliance were, on balance, not as peaceful as the BLM.   These actions truly were deplorable, and yet so many of those who condemned the BLM protests remained strangely silent about the counter-protestors. So to emphasise  Britain as a tolerant place free from overt discrimination really does miss the point.

It is a curious thing to see so many people, led by the Prime Minister, spend so much time and energy passionately defending Winston Churchill’s statue when almost nobody has called for it to be removed. Likewise, outrage over the censorship of programmes like Little Britain provides a distraction, with the implication being that Black Lives Matter has ‘gone too far’.   But, if anything, their initial removal seemed to be commercial caution from the broadcasters, not BLM demands.

The BLM movement has implications for schools, of course. Calls for changes to schools’ curricula to enhance understanding of issues relating to race, including slavery and empire are designed to add to the curriculum, not take away from it. Such calls have been dismissed as ‘politically correct’ ‘virtue signalling’ attempts to rewrite history but what is being requested is the very opposite. We need to teach our children more, not less. It is important that, as British people, we resist biased exceptionalism by understanding and acknowledging events of global significance such as Churchill’s disdain for starving Bengali people during the Second World War or the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya after the war. We need to understand Britain’s role in facilitating slavery, not just abolishing it. We need to understand that colonialism was often underpinned by violence and brutality. Now is not the time to be defensive, now is the time to acknowledge those things, and try in the spirit of trust and openness to see where we might sensibly rebalance the curriculum. 

When you have never considered yourself as anything other than the norm, the default position, a BLM demand to fight racism might feel like an attack -  because you don’t ‘see race’ or ‘see colour’ or ‘see any racism’. But let’s reframe this instead as an opportunity. It is not enough to dismiss the concerns of BLM or to pay lip service to the movement whilst trying to undermine it.  It is time to listen to BAME voices and stop speaking over them or complaining about their tone. It is time to channel the righteous anger sparked by George Floyd’s death, and the deaths of British black people at the hands of the police, to really reflect on racism, and work for some meaningful and lasting change.