Activists call on Labour leadership to set up anti-racism roundtable

Activists from the left of the party have called on the leadership to set up a roundtable discussion hosted by deputy leader Angela Rayner on racism within Labour.

The letter sent to the party leadership and its ruling body comes from campaign groups, including Labour Against Racism And Fascism (LARAF) and Socialists of Colour, and individual activists.

The campaigners want to share their views following the leaked internal report on Labour’s handling of complaints, and argue that BAME communities have been “alienated from the party’s structures, policies and public discourse”.

They raise concerns over the many 2014 Labour abstentions on the Immigration Act 2014 – a vote that saw only a handful of Labour MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, vote against the hostile environment measures.

The activists also criticise Keir Starmer’s recent statement on the Kashmiri conflict, which said it was a “bilateral issue for India and Pakistan”, for showing “disdain for party procedure, the membership and the people of Kashmir”.

The letter claims that Labour has a “colonial past” that “needs to be urgently addressed”, and concludes that it will otherwise be confronted with an “electoral cost”.

The meeting requested by the activists would, they say, “lay the groundwork for a comprehensive and long-delayed redressing of Labour’s involvement in racist and colonial injustices”.

LARAF was launched last year at a meeting in Cable Street, east London, joined by “nearly 100 trade unionists, CLP representatives and a number of councillors” according to Natasha Josette and Artin Giles.

Its latest move has been made with Socialists of Colour, a new collective that includes former NEC candidate Jermain Jackman, who said: “The days for mere words is over and it’s high time we begin to act.

“That’s why I’m joining the call for leadership to actively engage with its ethnic minority members, to hear our concerns and then to act, so that together we can shape a better party.”

Below is the full text of the statement and its signatories.

Dear Labour Party leadership,

CC: Labour Party NEC

We are writing as BAME and migrant organisers, Labour Party members, Members of Parliament and community organisations to raise with you a number of urgent and important questions related to the recently leaked Labour Party report: “The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014 – 2019” and the party’s subsequent response.

Whilst the report’s contents were shocking, to many of us they will not have been surprising. BAME and migrant communities, together with anti-racists and internationalists, have long been alienated from the party’s structures, policies and public discourse. Very often, we find that basic principles of anti-racism and progressive internationalism, and those of us espousing them, are not represented in party policy and are often made unwelcome in the party.

There are a number of structural reasons for this. The party currently does not collaborate, support or work with the many BAME and migrant groups within the party who work tirelessly to encourage their communities to engage with and vote for the party. Our BAME structures have long been inadequate and poorly resourced, reforms subject to delays and consequently the new structures leave many sceptical. BAME and migrant communities feel taken advantage of, mistrustful of party structures, and increasingly resentful towards the party.

This silencing of many BAME members has resulted in the invisibility of our communities and in the party taking positions which are contrary to very basic questions of justice. For example, in 2014 Labour MPs abstained on the hostile environment vote that criminalises our communities. It led directly to the Windrush crisis which continues to destroy so many lives. More recently, the party has undermined the democratic decision taken at party conference to stand in solidarity with the people of Kashmir, thus emphasising disdain for party procedure, the membership and for the people of Kashmir currently living under a brutal military occupation, media and internet blackout and human rights abuses.

For us, policies around Windrush and Kashmir are not optional extras, but fundamental issues of justice. Labour’s indication of the disposability of BAME communities and migrants, as well as a disregard for those calling for a just foreign policy suggests a commitment to the continuation of Labour’s colonial legacy. Labour’s colonial past, including the role the party has played in advancing racism at home and British imperialism abroad, continues to define how it orientates itself politically, and needs to be urgently addressed in the party, in order to end these practices.

There has been, and continues to be, an electoral cost to such decisions. Under previous Labour governments, the party lost the votes of millions of committed internationalists and BAME communities due to regressive domestic policies and Labour’s initiation of Britain’s invasion, destruction and occupation of Iraq. Many left the party, others vowed never to vote for Labour again. We lost more than two million votes this way between 2001 and 2010, leaving a long shadow that continues to make many in our communities reluctant to vote for the party, with most choosing not to vote at all. We have already seen this disengagement re-emerging with a letter from over 100 mosques committing to not vote for Labour as long as the current leadership maintains its unprincipled position on Kashmir.

It is against this backdrop that we received the latest revelations regarding senior management behaviour in the party. We are profoundly concerned regarding both the response and the tenor of the public debate regarding the leaked report, as well as the proposed solution to undertake a very limited Inquiry conducted by individuals who lack the credibility to bring it to a just conclusion. Without correcting this, many communities will see no truth in Labour’s claim of being an anti-racist party, damaging trust even further.

We all want Labour to succeed and produce a society which delivers justice, equality and an ethical foreign policy. We urgently request that the chair of the party, Angela Rayner MP, meet with us at a roundtable to address the concerns around the report and the demands which we and many members have, including those issued by the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs.

This meeting would lay the groundwork for a comprehensive and long-delayed redressing of Labour’s involvement in racist and colonial injustices.

Yours sincerely,

Labour Against Racism And Fascism
Socialists of Colour
South Asia Solidarity Group
Arab Labour Group
Tamil Socialist Collective

Suresh Grover, director of The Monitoring Group
Amrit Wilson, South Asia Solidarity Group
Ashok Kumar, lecturer of Political Economy
Dr Maryyum Mehmood, academic researcher
Dr John Narayan, King’s College London
Salma Yaqoob
Dr. Robert Faure Walker
Dr. Fatima Rajina
Faiza Mahmood, BAME officer, London Young Labour
Neha Shah, Oxford University DPhil Researcher
Elif Sarican, Kurdish Women’s Movement
Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper, University of Greenwich
Zita Holbourne, national chair BARAC UK
Madura Rasaratnam, lecturer in Comparative Politics
Daniel Kebede, senior vice-president (elect), National Education Union

This article was amended on June 17th to correct the list of signatories.