The US police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 set off a series of protests which mobilised thousands of people in the space of a few days. In Britain massive protests took place, both in solidarity with those demonstrating in the US, and in opposition to state racism here. Although there were different trends within the protest movement, a recurrent theme was the connection between the legacy of British colonialism and slavery, current British imperialism and contemporary state racism. MACEO BROWNE and DESPINE DOHMAN report.
In the face of this sustained political challenge, the British government was forced to do something to look like it was attempting to address concerns. Of course, a racist state cannot just stand up and say it is racist. Instead it set up the ‘Commission on Ethnic and Racial Disparities’ – ostensibly to investigate and report on the issues, but in practice to cover up the basic fact that Britain is a racist and imperialist state. Its chair Tony Sewell was selected deliberately for this purpose – a black educational consultant, who had already written in Prospect Magazine in 2010 that evidence for institutional racism was ‘flimsy’, so could be counted on to deny state racism. Having been initiated to deny the existence of state racism the Commission did exactly as was intended.
As FRFI has always been clear, racism is the form which national oppression takes within the oppressor nation. It follows from imperialism’s division of the world into a handful of oppressor nations and the majority of oppressed nations. Racism is used to justify both plunder and dispossession by imperialism and the oppressed position which racialised minorities are forced into within the working class of the oppressor nations. In 2020 we argued that part of the reason for the mass mobilisation following the death of George Floyd was not just that state racism existed in Britain but that the crisis of capitalism was making it more severe. A decade of austerity, an increasingly openly reactionary ruling Conservative party, a police force and immigration system which was more explicitly targeting black and Asian people, and a Labour Party that was courting deeply racist sections of the British working class had all combined to intensify state racism.
Racist education
The main statistics guiding the report’s findings on racial disparity in education contain few surprises and the Commission’s own figures show that racial bias remains prevalent within educational settings. However, the Sewell Report’s introduction to these findings tries to paint an inspiring picture of minority children’s experiences of education. ‘The Journey of the Child’ lauds education as one of the greatest achievements of the ‘migrant experience’ and celebrates the social mobility of some ethnic groups who continue to outperform white working-class children.
Promoting the idea that socio-economic status is a greater barrier to success than race or ethnicity, the Commission found that ‘once this is controlled, all major ethnic groups perform better than White British pupils except for Black Caribbean [and Pakistani] pupils’. That minority groups are disproportionately more likely to be in poverty – and consequently have a lower socio-economic status – is deliberately glossed over. The report’s explanation for the continuing gap is ‘that minorities who have been long established in a country, particularly in a context of racial and socio-economic disadvantage, may be the least likely to be optimistic about the possibilities of social mobility and education to transform their lives’. In short, it claims that Black Caribbean and Pakistani children are more prone to failure because they are pessimistic and lack ambition, rather than because poor housing, food insecurity and irregular shifts affecting parents’ abilities to engage with their children’s development have an adverse effect on their education. What this report shows – but desperately avoids admitting – is that in an imperialist country race and class oppression cannot be separated.
White male students eligible for Free School Meals were least likely to access further education, with ethnic minorities appearing to do well accessing higher education. Yet, Black entrants were 1.7 times more likely to enrol in a ‘low tariff’ institution than their white counterparts and more likely to drop out, with non-continuation rates of 15.5% compared with a rate of 10.9% for white entrants. The trend continues after graduation with Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani graduates earning below the median earnings of £31,000 for white students.
Racist healthcare
The coronavirus pandemic highlighted clear inequalities in health outcomes and this was emphasised by the gross overrepresentation of minority healthcare workers who lost their lives during the pandemic. Black women to be four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Subconscious bias, socio-economic status and systemic racism are deadly barriers to health and wellbeing. However, the Sewell Report states that there exists a ‘complex interplay of socio-economic, behavioural, cultural and, in some cases, genetic risk factors, which lead to disparities’ – anything to avoid admitting that state racism has any role to play in these ‘disparities’.
Despite black people being four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than white people, the Commission claims to have found ‘no overwhelming evidence of racism in the treatment and diagnosis of mental health conditions’. Even when acknowledging a need for more research to ‘understand the interplay of different causes, and to understand the impact of issues such as mistrust of the health services’, Sewell again framed minorities as victims of their own imagination, citing fear that the system is racist as the reason many black people do not seek voluntary treatment.
Racist religion
Institutional racism in Britain extends far beyond the areas covered in the Sewell Report. An April 2021 BBC Panorama programme ‘Is the Church Racist?’ detailed racist incidents within the Church of England (CoE), including the denigration of all South Asians as liars and the editing of a picture of a black clergyman and calling him ‘Banana Man’. When victims were offered compensation, it was an insulting amount complete with a non-disclosure agreement. ‘Thou shalt not lie’ evidently means ‘thou shalt not speak lest thou should tell an uncomfortable truth’.
But what else should we expect from one of the ideological foundations of British imperialism? The CoE was founded in 1534 and quickly grew rich through the rosy dawn of the capitalist era of production. It was the self-proclaimed civilising message of Anglicanism which provided an ideological force for the genocide of Africans, all in the service of British imperialism.
The CoE is still wealthy, possessing, according to the Financial Times, assets of £11bn, including an £8.3bn investment fund. Having already helped British capitalism plunder the world, it now rests comfortably upon the super-profits of imperialism. For all it preaches about equality, the CoE cannot but help to live vampire-like off the blood of the peoples of oppressed nations.
Amnesty for racists
Human rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International, form a crucial part of the imperialist propaganda machine, functioning as auxiliary agencies to the state. The seemingly independent Amnesty reports into ‘human rights violations’ lay the groundwork on which so-called ‘humanitarian interventions’ can be justified. The role of Amnesty International and its ilk is to maintain the continued ideological and political subordination of nations in the oppressed world by imperialism; its role must therefore be racist, and is mirrored in the way it treats its own staff.
A Howlett Brown report into the Amnesty International Secretariat found clear evidence of it being an institutionally racist organisation. Instances ranged from outright racist harassment and use of slurs to the continued denigration of work output and opinions of racialised minority staff and those based in the underdeveloped world. The ease of mobility for predominantly white staff based in offices in imperialist nations to other places, compared to local staff based in oppressed nations, reflects the same division of mobility for all workers under imperialism, based on the racist border controls of imperialist nations.
Racist justice
As a replication of national oppression within an oppressor nation, racism is explicitly used as a tool with which to divide the working class. The British criminal justice system has perfected itself into a tool of political repression. The present-day tactics of random searches and detentions are similar to the tactics used in former colonial territories to prevent collective resistance; for the racist British ruling class, the enemy is inside the house.
Despite making up around 14% of the general population, 27% of the prison population in England and Wales are from a minority ethnic group. For those aged under 18 the figure is a staggering 51%.
In 2018 England and Wales (excluding London) figures show that 22% of all stop and searches were conducted on racialised minorities (63% in London). In the first three months of the coronavirus lockdown in 2020, 30% of black men aged 18-25 living in London were stopped by the Metropolitan Police. When challenged on this, Commissioner Cressida Dick responded that she was instructing her forces to ‘be alert’. Clearly alert means playing to the most racist prejudices of her officers and their training.
Immigration controls are a further weapon against black and migrant sections of the working class. So-called ‘foreign national offenders’ after having served their sentence are then subject to the extra punishments of immigration detention and probable deportation – a racist system of double punishment.
Outside the criminal justice system, the British state detains thousands of people who have committed no crime under immigration law. Detention can range from days to an indefinite period.
In a world divided between oppressor and oppressed nations, immigration controls in an imperialist country will necessarily be racist. Their purpose is to manage the flow of labour in the best interests of British capital. Immigration controls are used to force migrant labourers into insecure employment, with poor conditions and low pay to maintain profitability. The ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ condition attached to many entry conditions is used to discipline migrants and force them into work.
Immigration controls form a political tool for the ruling class – providing a convenient scapegoat to divert sections of the working class who are dissatisfied with poor quality provision of housing, healthcare and education away from blaming the true culprits in local and national government. This serves to divide the working class along narrow racial lines, thus weakening the basis for any insurgent political struggle across the working class.
Anti-imperialism is anti-racism
It is clear that Britain is a racist state and that this flows from the fact that Britain is an imperialist country. Anti-racists must build an anti-imperialist movement to defeat the economic and political imperatives which make racism and national oppression necessary. We must fight for socialism as the only alternative to the racist, environmentally destructive and anti-democratic imperialist system. Workers and oppressed of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains!
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 282 June/July 2021
