Brian Douglas, 1995.Joy Gardner, 1993.Leon Patterson, 1992.Christopher Alder, 1998.Roger Sylvester, 1999.Derek Bennett, 2001.Azelle Rodney, 2005.Mikey Powell, 2003.Ricky Bishop, 2001.Sean Rigg, 2009.Olaseni Lewis, 2010.Jimmy Mubenga, 2010.Mark Duggan, 2011.Smiley Culture, 2011.Kingsley Burrell, 2011.Jacob Michael, 2011.Leon Briggs, 2013.Julian Cole, 2013.Daniel Adewole, 2015.Jermaine Baker, 2015.Adrian Mcdonald, 2014.Sheku Bayoh, 2015.Dalian Atkinson, 2016.Mzee Mohammed, 2016.Nuno Cardoso, 2017.Rashan Charles, 2017.Sarah Reed, 2016.Edson Da Costa, 2017.Daren Cumberbatch, 2017.Trevor Smith, 2019.
These are the names of 30 Black men and women who have died—or, in Cole’s case, left paralysed and brain damaged—in the UK following contact with the police or law enforcement. These are the names that remind our community just how dangerous contact with the police can be.
I cannot remember where I was or what I was doing when the video of George Floyd’s murder flashed across my screen. I just remember a feeling of sheer dread washing over my body and a heaviness begin to set in my chest. I was tense. I was angry. I was tired. It was a feeling shared by so many Black people in the UK. We recognised the brutality and racism present as Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck until he took his last breath.
We recognised it because this disregard for our lives is pervasive in the UK too. Yet our protests have been met by incredulity, confusion, and disregard, as people and activists have taken to the streets to proclaim: “BLACK LIVES MATTER.”
For Black people, the reason for our protests could not be clearer. When someone who looks like us is murdered at the hands of law enforcement in the USA, we feel that pain—despite the ocean that separates us—because we too have borne the brunt of racist policing and criminalisation. We recognise the racist systems in place that led to the killing of George Floyd, because those systems exist in the UK.
To be Black in the UK is to constantly be walking on eggshells, reminded day in and day out of your otherness. To be Black in the UK is to be 40 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than your white counterparts. It is to be twice as likely to die in police custody and to be part of 3 per cent of the general population but make up 12 per cent of the prison population. So when we take to the streets and proclaim Black Lives Matter, it is also because, for us here in the UK, our lives have not mattered enough.
To be Black in this country is to feel real fear upon seeing Boris Johnson pledge to relax stop and search rules within 24 hours of being handed the keys to No. 10. It is to feel fear as the government plans to expand police powers and to arm more officers with tasers. By pressing ahead with these “tough on crime” measures—despite clear evidence that BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic), and specifically Black communities would feel the brunt of these oppressive policing tactics—the government has further subjected our communities to increasing levels of police interactions. They know that; they just don’t care about the impact this has on our lives.
Take the new coronavirus emergency legislation which made its way through parliament at breakneck speed. These new laws have led to Black, Asian and other minority ethnic people being 54 per cent more likely to be fined than their white counterparts in London. BAME people are also overrepresented in arrests made for alleged breaches of Covid-19 lockdown rules.
This is the backdrop against which protests occurred last week. We took to the streets because we recognised George Floyd’s plea for the officers to ease up because he could not breathe. We took to the streets because we were enraged that no charges would be brought against the man who reportedly spat at railway worker Belly Mujinga—who would later die from Covid-19—whereas the man who spat at police officers has been jailed. We took to the streets at a time when we had seen video, after video, after video of Black men targeted by police: searched, tasered and arrested. It’s why we celebrated when in Bristol, the statue of slaver Edward Colston was torn down and thrown into the harbour.
It comes as no surprise that rather than acknowledge and suggest steps to eradicate the systemic racism that blights policing and society at large in the UK, the home secretary Priti Patel reacted to the largely peaceful protests in London by speaking of “hooligans” and acts of “thuggery.” This echoed our very own prime minister, who tweeted that the protests were “subverted by thuggery”—a loaded stereotype considering that many protestors were black or other ethnic minorities.
This “thuggery” claim has been used to justify disproportionate use of force against black people. Indeed, it is now being used to justify the potentially unlawful behaviour police in riot gear used against Black Lives Matter Protestors in London. I didn’t see that level of force and policing in marches in support of the Me Too movement, refugee rights or against Trump. Patel’s assertion that “police brutality in the United States is no excuse for the violence against our brave police officers at home” is laughable considering police brutality against Black people in the UK is very much alive.
We march across the country because the legacy of slavery permeates the air, and is apparently still celebrated on our plinths. We organise because we know that in an era that has the double act of Johnson and Patel, it is more important than ever to know our rights. In an epoch where we are still criminalised, stereotyped as thugs and overpoliced, we take to the streets because we must resist the old system. Resistance is the only remedy to racism. And it begins now.
In response to the Black Lives Matter protests taking place across the UK, Zainab organised training for protesters to ensure that they knew their rights. You can watch the webinar here
