Policing Large Scale Disorder: Lessons from the disturbances of ...

Home Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev w73
20. However, accepting that institutional racism is a reality is not the end of the road, in terms of race
relations in the UK, far from it. The acceptance that institutions may unwittingly be perpetrating racism through
their policies, practices or procedures should have bought us to a crossroads in race relations. It should have
created an opportunity for us all to learn from each other.
21. It should have provided an opportunity for those in power, and those leading these institutions, to develop
a meaningful understanding of the impact of institutional racism on communities such as mine, in Tottenham
or Hackney, Lewisham, Lambeth, Enfield, Wood Green and all the other localities where rioting occurred in
August 2011.
22. Instead, the public sector has turned the legislative requirements into a bureaucratic tick box exercise,
and those groups whose experiences demanded such legislation have been terribly let down.
23. We seem reluctant to talk about the impact of institutional racism on black communities, because some
White people, especially those in authority, appear to feel uncomfortable talking about race on any level. And,
there are too many black community leaders who, in wanting to keep on the good side of those in power, seek
to placate their sensitivities by trying not to bring it up at all.
24. Unfortunately we cannot dismiss the impacts of the past this easily as it is what is fuelling the present.
If we continue to do so then we do this at our, and your, children’s peril.
25. For far too many people in authority the coining of the phrase “institutional racism” and the strengthening
of the Race Relations Act, was seen as being the panacea to institutional racism.
26. But, in seeking to adopt this approach the Government and public sector has sent out an almost subliminal
message to the black community that institutional racism is a victimless crime, which is all about processes
and not about people. For too many black people nothing could be further from the truth!
27. For my community institutional racism meant that thousands of black children were sent to Educationally
Sub Normal schools, ESN, without having any special needs. Numerous ILEA reports and the seminal Rampton
reports clearly confirm this to have been the case. As those writing the reports could not be ignored those in
authority responded by admitting that this was a shameful practice that should never be repeated in future.
This was great news for those coming into the education system but what did this mean for those who been
wrongly sent to ESN schools? Absolutely nothing!
28. People thought that such recognition, even in retrospect, would have a significant impact on the life
chances of the excluded child. That’s what we used to think, that’s why we “rebelled” against it. For us the
riots were never solely about policing. We now know that if you mess up the education of a few children, with
the right support they can develop other useful skills or be helped to catch up. But if you mess up the education
of thousands of kids from the same community, then, you mess up the future of that community for generations
to come.
29. Then there were the use of Stop and Search and the abuse of the Sus laws (see Lord Scarman’s report).
The Sus laws were eventually repealed, but once again as a society we chose not to examine the impact that
having young people criminalised, in such large numbers, would have had on the black community.
30. I cannot find the words to explain the anger and resentment that I felt at being arrested and criminalised
for a crime that I had not committed. But, I wasn’t the only one; there was an army of black kids out there,
who had also been through the same experiences.
31. Some, like me, have endured them all; that is exclusion, expulsion, and criminalisation. Imagine what
this could do to an individual, then multiply it a thousand times over to begin to have an understanding of the
impact it will have on any one community.
32. The full implications of this needs to be properly understood before we can speak of solutions, as the
residue of this impact still festers away, in some parts of our community, today, like an untreated sore. This is
the source of the poison that inflicts parts of the grass roots black community and, as a direct, or indirect,
consequence still infects our young ones today. I am not trying to say that all black people experienced this,
but enough of us did to make it an all too common occurrence. At its most basic it led to a deep rooted
cynicism and mistrust of some of the UK’s most symbolic institutions, eg schools, the police and the judiciary,
and a reluctance to engage with or to use them. Our sense of marginalisation was then further compounded
when these institutions made no attempt to address our concerns. Instead they chose to dismiss us as being
“hard to reach” when in reality we had made ourselves easy to ignore.
33. We tried our hardest to turn our backs on these institutions thinking that if we ignored them we could
somehow make them less relevant and therefore less likely to cause us pain. We were wrong as these institutions
are the very bedrock of any civilised society; we should have tried harder to change them.
34. It is critical that we understand this: the young people who took the streets in August 2011 didn’t start
this; they were born into it! They are the children and grand children of the “easy to ignore”, whether they be
black brown or white!
35. There is an additional layer that needs to be understood before we can move on to the current situation.
This is the issue of leadership. As a young child you look to your parents for guidance and leadership. Many