Showing Solidarity with Anti-racism

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 10 June 2020.

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Photo of Pauline McNeill Pauline McNeill Labour

Black lives matter. I am pleased to stand in solidarity with all the parties this afternoon, and I thank the Presiding Officers for making that happen. We are all anti-racist, and we must stand up together and say so.

Among the line of buses and cars at the front of the church that was used for George Floyd’s funeral, Savant Moore shared the sentiment that he posted on Facebook in the aftermath of the killing. He said:

“It really took a global pandemic with no sports, no concerts, no vacations to get the world to sit down and have no choice but to watch what’s really happening to black people in America with zero distractions.”

The killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police has galvanised young people in particular to say, “Enough is enough”, when it comes to treatment of black people at the hands of the police in America. It has also drawn attention to the wider inequalities and structural racism that are faced by BME people throughout the world and in Scotland.

Scotland is not exceptional when it comes to racism. That is even more the case when we consider the lack of progress that we have made at every level of our society. I could give many quotations and figures that relate to underrepresentation of BME people in teaching, the civil service and the law at every level. That amounts to failure of our action plans, and we all have to accept that. As anti-racists, we must be clear that we fight against Islamophobia and antisemitism—against any form of racism whatsoever.

I work with women in Arab and Asian communities, who still face direct racist treatment. Women face stereotyping in the jobs market, and they put up with a great deal of criminality in the streets. Amina—The Muslim Women’s Resource Centre surveyed 101 Muslim women and found that 64 per cent said that they had experienced or witnessed Islamophobia. A lot of it is just to do with a person’s choice of headwear.

Five years on, we still await answers about the treatment of Sheku Bayoh, who died in custody. That has left a shadow over Police Scotland. I know that my colleague Claire Baker will speak to that. The family deserves answers, and I look forward to the report on the inquiry.

We are in a key moment in time, in which we have a reminder of the racists who exist and how organised they are. Football supporters and far-right extremists have vowed to counter Black Lives Matter protests and to keep vigils at war memorials and statues. Ken Marsh, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, has said that

“We have got the perfect storm ahead of us ... now that we have planned protests and agitators,” so we need to be live to the threats to our BME community and we need to organise against racists.

Scotland’s black and minority ethnic people have come together to publicly demand racial justice, and rightly so. The “Break the race ceiling” campaign was launched on Sunday night. I have just heard about it, but it is certainly a campaign that I would like to work with.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress’s black workers committee has done a great deal of work, and many people joined the Scottish Trades Union Congress and Black Lives Matter on Sunday night at their virtual rally. I am sure that those organisations would be the first to say that that can only be the beginning, rather than the end, of the politics around what we need to do and take action on.

On the amendments, I welcome what Christina McKelvie said about the Labour Party’s amendment and how important it is, but I also want to address the Government’s motion. We agree on the public health message about gatherings. We are keen to support the Green Party’s amendment, because its call on the United Kingdom Government to

“suspend all export licences for tear gas, rubber bullets and riot gear” to the United States is vital. There is no doubt in my mind that those types of equipment are used against black people in America, so I am pleased to support that part of the Greens’ amendment.

We cannot erase our past, but we have a chance to change our future by recognising the truth of our history. Many constituents have written to me calling for Scotland’s role in colonialism and slavery to be taught more prominently in schools. That is definitely worthy of consideration. The history of African, Caribbean and Asian people and their contributions to Scottish history is often forgotten or relegated to a bit part. We want the opportunity to promote an inclusive history of Scotland.

A recent report from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended that Scotland’s school curriculum should contain

“a balanced account of the history of the British Empire and colonialism, including slavery and other grave human rights violations.”

It is time to act on that.

As Christina McKelvie said, the role that was played by Scots in the slave trade has only recently been recognised. Scots were in the past known for their cruelty, and were in high demand to run plantations, where the average survival rate for enslaved people was three to five years. We cannot extinguish our past, but we must recognise it. We must join together and make decisions together about how we will recognise our past, going forward.

I will conclude by addressing the Labour Party’s amendment. Figures that were published by the Office for National Statistics last month found that black people are more than four times more likely than white people of the same age to die from Covid-19. That is why the Scottish Government’s announcement this week that it will establish a group to study the effects of the virus on minority ethnic communities is so crucial.

I am afraid that, in England and Wales, they got it wrong. The UK Government chose not to publish Professor Fenton’s section of the report on BME communities. He had engaged with 4,000 people from BME communities in his research. He made the important point—which Neil Findlay raised in an intervention—that social and economic deprivation plays a very important part in the risk that BME communities face from Covid-19. We do not know that that will be the conclusion of the Scottish Government’s study; we will not be surprised if it is a partial conclusion, but we must have the answers in order that we can save and protect the BME community from that horrible virus.

Let this be a watershed moment and let the debate not be merely a gesture. Let us all act together. Black lives matter.

I move amendment S5M-22004.1, to insert at end:

“; welcomes the establishment of the Scottish Government expert advisory group on COVID-19 and the impact on ethnic minority communities, and calls for action now to best support black and minority ethnic (BAME) workers and their families as the health and economic crisis unfolds and for the collection of detailed data through Public Health Scotland on the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups, to assist in identifying the reasons for differential impacts”.