Sagal Abdi-Wali

• THE last few days have been harrowing to witness.

We continue to experience the devastating fallout of a deadly virus that has disproportionately taken BAME lives in our community and has brought to the fore the long-standing inequalities in health, education, housing, and criminal justice that our BAME, and particularly black, communities face here in the UK.

Now the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in the US, followed by the systemic oppression of voices calling for justice, has dealt a major blow for the fight against racism in the world. We have seen images and heard stories that are heart-breaking in their despair.

Pictures and videos from the US of police officers using brute force against peaceful protesters.

The explosion of understandable and long-held anger and anguish into rioting has been just as hard to watch, particularly as the president uses it as an excuse to live out wild populist and authoritarian fantasies.

We in the UK should not make the mistake of thinking that we are a country innocent of the kind of racism we are witnessing in the US. Ours is not a country free of the guilt or sin of institutionalised and systemic racism.

On Monday night our Conservative government decided to use the #BlackLivesMatter protests in the UK as a reason to delay the release of Public Health England’s report into Covid-19’s disproportionate impact on BAME communities.

Though the report has now been published, thanks to pressure from the Labour Party, it was an insult to patronise BAME communities in this way.

What does it say about us that a report that was supposed to give us an insight into the inequalities facing BAME communities and their disproportionate deaths at the hands of Covid-19, was deemed too inflammatory to release because BAME communities are currently protesting inequality and racism?

This is, of course, the government which oversaw the hostile environment and Windrush scandal, in which black Britons were ripped from their families and the only country they have ever called home and “sent back” to places they have no attachment to.

As well as being disproportionately impacted by Covid-19, evidence has shown that BAME communities are 54 per cent more likely to be fined and/or arrested under Covid-19-related regulations.

There have been numerous instances of police racially profiling innocent black men, such as Dwayne Francis, a school worker detained as he waited by his car for a post office to open on his way to work.

Police brutality towards black citizens in the UK has long been an issue and is now of increasing concern, with our own list of names of black people who have died or been severely injured while in police custody.

Rashan Charles. Olaseni Lewis. Sean Rigg. Daniel Adewole. Julian Cole. Sarah Reed. These are just a few.

We say their name.

We welcome in Camden that the Labour council is standing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and that our police chief superintendent Raj Kohli is engaging with our communities.

As the #BlackLives MatterUK protests continue in the middle of this pandemic where many are still in precarious health situations and unable to join in demonstrations, we’d like to take this opportunity to stand in solidarity with those protesting for black lives in Camden, the UK, the USA, and across the world.

“Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere” – Martin Luther King Jr. #Black#BlackLivesMatter, in solidarity

SAGAL ABDI-WALI
Chair, Holborn & St Pancras Constituency Labour Party

Sally Gimson (Vice-Chair, Holborn & St Pancras CLP)

Shah Miah (BAME officer, Holborn & St Pancras CLP)

Anjali Muhki (Women’s Officer, Holborn & St Pancras CLP & BAME Officer Somers Town & St Pancras Labour)

Georgia Kauffman (Secretary, Holborn & St Pancras CLP)

Ben Davies (LGBT Officer, Holborn & St Pancras CLP)

Edmund Frondigoun (Youth Officer, Holborn & St Pancras CLP)

Suber Abdikarim

Athian Akec

Cllr Awale Olad

Cllr Rishi Madlani

Cllr Sabrina Francis

Cllr Adam Harrison

Cllr Marcus Boyland

Cllr Jonathan Simpson

Cllr Danny Beales

Matt Cooper

Gabriel Irwin

Gill Black

Martin Plaut

Sue Chantrell

Grace Clark