THE deputy mayor of Camden has warned that racism is not a historic issue and that people who deny that there is still institutional racism were “invalidating our experience”.

Labour councillor Sabrina Francis, currently the only black woman elected to Camden Council, told an all member meeting last night (Monday) that she hoped the current worldwide demonstrations would have a different outcome to previous protests against prejudice.

“I just have to be very clear that when there are comments about institutional racism not existing any more, but it’s unfortunate that black people might feel like it still does. That very much invalidates our experiences,” she said.

“Because if you look like me, this doesn’t feel like a historic situation. It feels very now. I mean, even the Metropolitan Police’s own statistics have shown that a quarter of fines for lockdown violations were handed to black people, yet we only make up 12 percent of the capital’s population.”

Cllr Francis added: “We’ve all talked about people being stopped and searched. And we know that that’s disproportionate. So none of this feels very historic to me.”

Camden has only ever had six black councillors in its history. In the wake of the Black Lives Matters protests which followed the death of George Floyd in the United States, the council passed a cross-party motion vowing to redouble its efforts to fight prejudice.

While the text of the motion was agreed in advance so that all parties would sign up to it, the speeches before the vote still saw angry comments on recent policies.

Cllr Francis cited the Windrush scandal as an example of how black people were still being made to feel unwelcome in the UK.

“We’ve had to watch our elders have the life that they built be ripped away from them and be sent back to the countries they sometimes haven’t even been in since they were children,” she said.

“Because the Home Office decided that after inviting us here, we didn’t belong. How can you help me feel like racism can ever be tackled in a country that burned our boarding passes after inviting us here, and then try to send us ‘home’?”

“The fact that they even believed that somewhere else was our home, regardless of how long we’ve been here, just makes you feel like you’ll never belong.”

She said: “This time it does feel a bit different. Like society is a tiny bit more ready to let us stand proud in our blackness.”