Labour announces Black History Month organising sessions and rally

Marsha de Cordova has announced events for Black History Month including organising sessions with members from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background and a mass online rally at the end of October.

In an email to the membership this morning, the Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary invited party members to sign up for the online events and declared: “Together, we will show that Black Lives Matter.”

The message comes after Keir Starmer this morning called for schoolchildren in the UK to be taught more about the country’s Black history to help them reach a “full understanding of the struggle for equality”.

De Cordova told members the “incredible show of global solidarity in the form of the Black Lives Matter protests this summer has put the spotlight on demands for fundamental change”.

She noted that Black History Month is a “powerful opportunity to show solidarity and champion great achievements, as well as to put forward Labour’s vision and demands for changes that extend beyond just a single month”.

The email set out how the party will hold two organising sessions, open to BAME members: one on “building relationships in our community” and another focused on “listening to issues in our community”.

These events will be followed later in the month by a mass rally, taking place online on the evening of October 29th. De Cordova has encouraged people to sign up, urging members to “take a stand with us and demand change”.

The call to party members follows a video message released by the Labour Party earlier today, in which Keir Starmer made the case that Black history “should not be just one month – it should be a proper part of the curriculum”.

He said: “Black history should be part of the curriculum because I think it’s really important for young people to learn and understand, in a balanced way, about Britain’s past and how our modern society came to be shaped and formed.”

De Cordova appeared alongside the Labour leader and highlighted recommendations made in the MacPherson review on the need for a curriculum reflecting the diversity of society, as well as those made in the Windrush review.

She called for a review of the curriculum “to ensure that Black History is taught as part of British History”, while Starmer promised that the eradication of structural racism would be a “defining cause for the next Labour government”.