On 31 March, the government-appointed Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published its Race Report, exploiting a quiet news day to ensure that its key finding – that there was no ‘institutional’ or structural racism in Britain – was emblazoned across the front pages of every national newspaper. On the same day, less than a mile away from Parliament, hundreds of school students staged a mass demonstration at Pimlico Academy. This is the latest protest aimed at exposing persistent issues of racism at their central London school, after students pulled down and set fire to the first Union Jack flag at the beginning of the academic year and have petitioned the headteacher and school board to no avail. Having been locked out of the sports ground where they wanted to hold their protest, they spent the morning in the playground, holding Black Lives Matter placards and shouting: ‘We want change!’.
The Race Report – reactionary and dangerous
The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities was set up in the summer of 2020 by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s libertarian policy adviser Munira Mirza in the wake of the explosion of anti-racist protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in the United States. These protests expressed a real outpouring of anger against racism in Britain: ‘The UK is not innocent’, read many placards. Mirza herself has a history of denying the existence of ‘institutionalised racism’, attacked what she called ‘a culture of grievance’ and even criticised Theresa May’s race audit as the ‘weaponisation of anti-racism’. The Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch was the minister responsible for the commission; during the height of the coronavirus crisis she denied that the shockingly high death rate among black and minority ethnic communities could be attributed in any way to ‘systemic racism’; the report’s authors include Dambisa Moyo, who sits on the board of Chevron and 3M, and has argued that aid to Africa fosters ‘dependency and corruption’ and should be phased out, and the educationalist Tony Sewell, who dismissed the BLM protests as ‘a lower middle class revolt’ and believes evidence of structural racism in Britain is flimsy. So, inevitably, the Commission found what it was set up to find: the mysterious absence of anything in Britain that could be construed as structural racism. Instead, its report argued, people should be ‘proud of the progress that had been made’. It patronised young people who had led the Black Lives Matter protests, warning against ‘bleak new theories of race that accentuate differences’ and an ‘increasingly strident form of anti-racism thinking that seeks to explain minority disadvantage through the prism of white discrimination’. It dismisses the idea that underlying and systemic health inequalities are to blame for the high Covid-19 death toll among BAME communities and says there are no health disparities (although maternal death, which is shockingly higher for black women than for white women, remains ‘a concern’). The British Medical Journal has comprehensively rubbished the report’s findings on health. The Report does concede that occupation and poor housing are connected to coronavirus mortality rates but refuses to connect them to racism in any way. That is because its narrative is to divorce ‘race’ and ‘class’ in a deliberate sop to the most reactionary trends among white working-class voters, rather than to explore the inextricable link between the two in an imperialist country like Britain.
The report suggests that education is a success story, highlighting how Indian, Pakistani and black African children outperform White (and black Caribbean) children at school – but glosses over the appalling rate of school exclusions for black Caribbean children (four times the rate of white children), simply saying it cannot be ‘reduced to structural racism’. Stop and search is described as a ‘critical tool for policing’ and not very racist at all – despite the fact that black people are nine times more likely to be stopped than white; during the last year of pandemic, 30% of all young black men in London were stopped and searched at some point. As has been pointed out by many critics, it glosses slavery, colonialism and empire and refuses to countenance any significant overhaul of the curriculum, on the premise of preventing ‘banning white authors’.
The report accepts, but does not dwell on, the fact that young people from minority ethnic communities are more likely to be living on persistently low wages, precariously employed or long-term unemployed. It does not mention at all the far greater impact the benefit cuts and tax changes of the last few years have had on the black community, or its overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, with the BAME community making up 14% of the population, but 27% of the prison population.
The stark inadequacies of this Report have been pointed out by politicians, NGOs, historians and campaigners. The point is of course that this was never seriously intended as a piece of research, but rather a major act of propaganda by the government. It is not only a shameful cover-up for the deep structural racial and class inequalities exposed so sharply by the coronavirus pandemic, nor simply a sop to reactionary white voters, but a calculated ideological offensive against the tide of anti-racist struggle expressed by the Black Lives Matter protests last year – it seeks to deny the experience of millions of young black and ethnic minority people in Britain who have had enough. That is why the events at Pimlico School are so important.
‘Pimlico Academy – run by racists – for profit’
Anger among students at Pimlico has been simmering for months. Some of it came after the decision taken by new head teacher Daniel Smith at the beginning of the school year in September 2020 to fly the Union Jack flag, a symbol of racism and imperialism, outside the school. The students’ response was prompt – the flag was torn down and burned in the grounds of the nearby, aptly named, Churchill estate. Pupils had started a petition in response to the academy’s strict new uniform policy, which stated that hairstyles that ‘block the views of others’ would not be permitted and hijabs should not be ‘too colourful’ and must be worn in a particular style – a clear attack on black and Muslim students. The school board also rewrote the curriculum to erase any proper discussion of Britain’s racist and imperial history and removed Black History month. When students asked to have assemblies about racism and BLM in September, they were told to form a club and talk about it among themselves. Allegations of sexual harassment and assault by students were also dismissed or ignored by the school.
On 31 March, students as young as 11 printed leaflets, put up posters and ignored threats from senior staff, to organise a protest in the school playground, graffitiing the outside of the school with slogans like ‘Ain’t no black in the Union Jack’ and ‘Pimlico Academy…run by racists…for profit’. At least 32 teachers are expected to resign at the end of the year in protest against the school, including the whole geography department and two-thirds of the senior leadership team, and the majority of teaching staff submitted a vote of no confidence in Smith. Pimlico Academy is run by Future Academies, set up by Caroline Nash and Lord John Nash – former minister for education, co-founder of private equity firm Sovereign Capital and ex-chairman of British Venture Capital Association, and both big Tory donors. So, like the students said, run by racists for profit.
After the walk-out and sit in (while the head teacher hid away inside the school, speed walking away from any student demanding answers), the students announced their demands had been met. The Union Jack has been removed, pending a review, and ‘current affairs’ – including Black Lives Matter – are to be included in the PHSE curriculum. The new uniform guidance is also being reviewed. Many parents are still calling for the head to resign and the staff will be voting on whether to go on strike in the week beginning April 19th.
These students’ school experience reflects some of the real ways the structural racism of the British state reveals itself daily for young black people. It is they who are part of the movement that is needed to see real change.
Cassandra Howarth, former Pimlico student
