So today, we're looking at the question of Black Lives Matter, the historical context of Britain.
And let me introduce the panel to you.
We have Professor Olivet Ortel, a professor of the history of slavery at Bristol University and vice president of the Royal Historical Society.
And she's also chair of Bristol's Race Equality Commission.
So welcome, Professor Hoteling and also Professor Hakim Adès, who is professor of history of Africa and the African Diaspora at Chichester University.
And so now I'm going to hand over to Professor Nyanya and mature of awesome college for what I hope will be an excellent debate.
I hope you have a good evening. OK.
So thank you, Tim. In the literal word, as I said, I couldn't be here today, but it's absolutely wonderful to have the two of you.
Thank you so much for being here.
I'd also like to add really quickly times that we've seen welfare groups, especially for hard demand, a man we've actually organised this.
And this is part of many endeavours within our college, which is a very international graduate college,
to actually really consider Black History Month very seriously.
And I'm very grateful to them for actually organising this entire event.
So should I hand over to you, Professor? To begin, perhaps.
Thank you so much. Thank you for the welcome. I'm going to try to share my screen.
So let's see how that works. See the screen and not me?
Yes. OK. So what I'm gonna do is just to present a historical outline as best I can in twenty five minutes or thereabouts.
And. It's difficult to know where to start because the history of.
The struggle for. The.
Recognition that all lives matter and the Black Lives Matter, no less than any other life, has a very, very long history in Britain.
I'm going to start in the late. 18TH century with a lot of work on, you will hopefully be familiar with who was one of those who.
Both wrote about the problem of the issue of Black Lives Matter, as it manifested itself at that time,
because of that time, the main question was about human trafficking and enslavement.
Not just in the colonies, but in Britain itself. When he was one of those who organised at that time both to free his colleagues,
his compatriots from enslavement, but also organised more broadly against human trafficking.
And you could say in defence of the rights of Africans and indeed in defence of the rights of all,
when I'm going to come back and maybe say something more about him, then bit later.
But I think the main point I wanted to make is that the assault on black lives,
we can see existing in that time in the 18th century when Britain was the world's
leading human trafficker and the business of Britain was human trafficking.
And so many of the problems that we face today, we can see originating in that period, in fact, even before that period.
So because of time, I'm beginning my survey in the late 18th century.
OK, so I'm going to move on to the 20th century to make things easier.
And one of the characteristics of this struggle to defend the rights of all,
to defend the rights of Africans and those of African descent in particular.
In opposition to slavery, colonialism, all forms of racism and Eurocentrism,
we can see kind of ushering in the 20th century because in 1897 the African Association was formed in London,
is generally thought of as being led by this gentleman, Henry Celesta Williams.
It was actually initiated and inspired by an African woman called Alice Kin Locke.
But it was concerned with the rights of Africans in Britain as well as globally.
And was the we can say that the movement which or the organisation which ushered in.
The modern Pan Africanism.
So this concern, as I said, with the rights of Africans opposing racism, has an extremely long history, which we can go into in more detail later.
One of the problems which existed in the early 20th century was that.
Perhaps just as today, there were various forms of racism which existed,
some of them related to the fact that Britain was the world's leading colonial power.
That Africans, those in the Caribbean, as well as those in Asia, were considered lesser human beings,
incapable of governing themselves and with other inferior characteristics compared to Europeans.
So we can say that racism was a state organised institution, if we like.
And from the period even before the First World War.
But secondly, certainly after the Second World War, the state,
the racist governments that they introduced legislation to give sanction to that racism, to make racism official.
Of course, there were other actors, other players in developing that racism, which kind of became endemic to British society,
and in this early period, we find that some trade union leaders, particularly what became the National Union of Seamen,
also had a policy which openly discriminated against some workers, particularly those workers from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia,
and that the combination of these different forms of racism contributed to the riots,
which broke out in 1919 in about nine towns and cities throughout Britain.
You can see pictures, the riots in Cardiff, but there were also similar disturbances in London,
in Manchester, in Liverpool and Glasgow, in the hole and in other places.
So this was a you can say a state led racism.
But as I say, with other key organised institutions and sign involved that this form of racism continued throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
In fact, laws were introduced like the coloured alien Seamans order, which was introduced in 1925, the British Shipping Assistance Act,
which was introduced in 1935, which openly discriminated against what today would be called people of colour.
So one of the consequences of that was that those who were here had to organise
themselves and numerous organisations developed in the 1920s and 1930s.
And I'm just going to mention one of the League of Coloured Peoples,
which was specifically set up in 1931 to deal with the problems of racism, which operated at that time.
Of course, the discrimination against seafarers and workers was just one form because in this period in Britain, racism was legal.
That is to say, it wasn't illegal. There was something called the colour bar, which meant that people of colour, people of African, Caribbean,
Asian heritage could be and were prevented from getting accommodation, having rooms in hotels, being served in pubs.
There was discrimination in the army, in employment and essentially in all walks of life in Britain.
So organisations like the League of Coloured Peoples were established to fight against these many forms of racism,
as well as to take up the other problems of the day, such as colonial rule and so on.
Well, if we go to the 1940s and I'm just kicking isolated incidents to illustrate this history,
even during the war, the war, Second World War ostensibly fought against fascism,
the ideologies of racism and so on, we find the Colaba operating in the armed services and in the auxiliary services like the land army.
And this is a very famous case from those years in 1943 of a woman called Amelia King, who was actually born in East London,
whose brother and father were in the Merchant Navy, but she was barred from joining the land army.
And it became a kind, of course, celeb of that period.
The post here also mentions another well-known case at that time, the famous cricketer and colonial office employ Larry Constantine,
who was also barred from a hotel in central London at that time.
So even during the war. These problems existed.
And I'm just giving a snapshot. Because you could write a whole book on racism and the struggle against it during the period of the Second World War.
Well, after the war, we have the. Famous Pan African Congress held in 1945 when it was just one of the.
Organised forms of opposition to the colour bar.
In fact, the opening opening session of that Congress was devoted to the problem of the colour bar in Britain.
And of course, there were numerous organisations involved in organising that Congress that all had their own experience of racism.
The question of the rights of black people in Britain.
And brought back to the Congress, a friend obviously spoke about it and tried to deal with it in numerous other ways outside the Congress.
Then if we move on to nineteen forty eight, which is usually spoken of of the time of the arrival of the Windrush,
and without going into this in great detail,
because people probably know the story fairly well by now, the arrival of the Windrush was greeted by government circles with some alarm.
Clearly, those who came from the Caribbean in this period, some of whom were ex servicemen, were not invited to come.
And the governments, the colonial office, the other government departments did everything they could to prevent the Windrush arriving, if you like.
They hoped they hoped that they could persuade it to go elsewhere.
They made various plans to make those who'd come unwelcome and make it difficult for them to prevent others from coming and so on.
So if you like, this hostile environment, which we're familiar with today,
existed in the 1940s when in fact existed in the 1920s, 1930s and even before.
So it it's nothing new. And here we actually see a picture of the arrival was being told various things about, you know,
life is not going to be simple here in Britain, then you'd be much better advised to go home.
And so which again, we can go into later if people want to know more.
Well, 1948 is interesting. I haven't got photos of everything that happened.
But 1948 was also the occasion for a major, as it was called, the race riot, a major racist attack which took place in Liverpool during that period.
It's also the time when there was a breach in the colour bar.
This is a guy code known as Dick Turpin.
He's one of three box boxing brothers, and he was the first black British fighter to compete for a British title.
And that was in 1948. Before that time, no person who was not a pure European descent could fight for a British title.
So the colour bar in boxing was breached in 1948 and other areas of society continued for many years.
Well, in this period of migration, there were, of course, numerous problems, I mentioned the colour, bar and employment.
In accommodation and so on, and so in this period, too,
we find organisations emerging to combat it and this is one of them which was based in Birmingham, the Afro Caribbean organisation.
It was led by the gentleman on the right, a man called Henry Gunter,
who's a communist who based himself in Birmingham and campaigned for many years to break down all the discrimination that existed at that time.
Well, again, if we go to the late 1950s, of course, we have the period again of these organised racist attacks with Notting Hill.
And in nineteen fifty nine of the murder of Kelso Cochran, again, we see here, this is a demonstration in Downing Street.
People organise themselves, of course, in Notting Hill in 1958.
People fought back. They formed organisations of various kinds.
That was also the case in 1959. And a whole range of organisations were set up.
Various measures were taken by people, including the organisation, The First Caribbean Carnival by Claudia Jones in that year.
So this history of fighting back and organising against the various manifestations of racism and discrimination, again, has a very long history.
And then if we go forward to 1962, we have the first post-war Immigration Act, which was a again, an openly racist act,
which in a way exacerbated the problems facing those of African, Caribbean and salvation dissent in Britain.
And you could say the latest Windrush scandal is linked to the introduction of these immigration action, 1962 onwards.
Then, of course, there's the later acts 68 ACT 71 Act, which again, one could go into, but they were openly racist.
They kind of go socco to those who were demanding keep Britain white.
They gave added powers to the government to deport people.
They encouraged the, what we can say, racist and biased activities of the police and so on, which again, we could go into in much more detail.
This demonstration is led by Claudia Jones, who you see on the left of this picture here in London.
Well, I'm moving on quickly to the seventies and the Oval four is now quite a celebrated campaign.
This is from 1972. And it was very,
very typical of that period when there was an openly racist campaign in the press and media about what we referred to as black markers,
meaning street criminals. And this allowed the police to arrest people with impunity.
And in fact, nine, to arrest people, just to beat people up. And they are for was a celebrated case of that time when these four young men were
attacked by the police who were in plain clothes as they came out of oboH Tube station.
They defended themselves. As you see, some of them received long jail sentences or two years is long enough.
One of those gentlemen is. And they were so a defence campaign was organised by organisations like the Black Liberation Front,
which was established in the early 1970s to take up.
Again, these questions of racism of black lives, matter of colonial questions and salt, which are all interrelated.
Here's Winston. This picture was taken a couple of years ago.
If you remember last year's crash,
you'll know that he finally got his conviction overturned after nearly 50 years of being having a criminal record of spending time in prison.
The conviction was totally quashed because it was established that the police were corrupt and
particularly the particular police officer who led the attack and who fabricated evidence and so on.
And in fact, this policeman was so corrupt that he actually ended up in prison himself.
Anyway, that's another story.
So Winston fought with others for nearly 50 years to clear his name and clear the name of the other, his three friends who were also involved.
Well, then, if we move on to the nineteen eighties, I mean, this is actually a demonstration.
I was there. I don't think you can see me in this photo, but I was there. This is from 1981.
From March 1981. And this is the famous Black People's Day of Action,
which was organised at that time in response to the new CROSSFIRE, where 13 young people were killed in a.
Suspicious fire. And the suspicion at the time was that a house had been firebombed and they were killed and so on.
The key thing about it is that, I mean, today would be a kind of national news and there'd be letters of condolence and all that come in that period.
Nothing was said. There was no official response.
There was no government response. There was no response from the queen.
And so so this demonstration, as though it was about the 13 young people, was a wider.
Kind of demonstration and campaign against racism. In defence of black lives and so on, as it as it existed at that time, and of course,
there were lots of things going on at that time, which I don't have time to talk about now.
But it was a very, very important demonstration and again, illustrates the history of this movement,
if you like, and the importance of people organising themselves.
Well, later this week, we can move on to. The nineteen eighties is nineteen eighty five, Terry Gross, who was shot by the police there,
they were in fact the number of cases during this period she was paralysed for life.
And this shooting led to her early death or premature death.
If we move on to the early 1990s, 1993, Joy Gardner, who was arrested by police immigration, a figure Ficke officials and killed by being gagged.
And though she said she couldn't breathe, she. They allowed her to die and it became again, a very important case in this time, the early 1990s.
Then if we go on again in the same year. We have the perhaps very well known murder of Stephen Lawrence.
But the key thing here is not just the. Those who were openly organised as racists carried out this murder.
But it was the fact that the police were incapable of doing anything about it or bringing anyone to justice.
Not only that, but the police actually spied on the family and had their agents infiltrating the family and its circles and so on.
Several. This case eventually led to the MacPherson report some years later, which, as you may recall,
gave state sanction to the idea of institutionalised racism and said that the Metropolitan Police were institutionally racist.
Some people see that as a landmark, but as everyone will be aware, it hasn't really made any difference.
Well, they're moving on to more recent times, as close to twenty ten.
And this is my friend and son, AJ Taylor, on the right, Sunshiny Lewis on the left, who was killed by police in hospital in 2010.
Again, it's one of many murders by the police, by the states in this country which has gone.
It has not been dealt with. No one is being brought to book.
He admitted himself to hospital, suffering from anxiety, some emotional problems or mental problems.
The police were called and they killed him. In less 10 years ago, a member of the funeral service, if it was only yesterday.
But as I say, Shenae is just one of many, many, many people who've been killed.
Police custody and.
You know, I have to say, great respect to Angie, who's continued to campaign.
Most recently, obviously, in the recent upsurge of events, was on television talking about.
Well, it happened with great courage.
Well, then we come to the exposure of the Windrush scandal following yet another immigration 2014 at the 2014 and 2016 acts,
which again were openly racist. And of course, at the same time, there was the development of what?
Theresa May is home secretary, called Hostile Environment. As I tried to demonstrate this hostile environment wasn't a new thing, but it was.
Developed in such a way as to target particular.
Particular types of citizens, if you like. And with the results that we're well aware of.
Again, I think what's important about this is the fact that it states organised this organised by the Home Office.
It's not it's not as if it was negligence or a mistake was made.
This was a, you know, organised policy to target certain types of citizens and with the results that we're all aware of.
And then to bring us right up to date again, we have.
The. Most recent upsurge, the Black Lives Matter upsurge, which as everybody knows, has had, if you like,
is a reflection of multiple concerns, the way the police act with impunity, the way government acts with impunity, the fact that.
There's the glorification of racism, the glorification of those who carried out crimes against humanity of various kinds,
including human trafficking and so on. And as you will have seen in the news in the last two weeks, in spite of this great upsurge,
the government is and its supporters are now pushing back on all these questions,
whether it's questions of of statues and the glorification of criminals, whether it's what is taught in schools.
There is a kind of major offensive or maybe counter offensive is the right word.
So we have a very, very long history of these problems, these concerns, and we have a very long history of people.
Organising against them. People expressing their views very forcibly, of which the toppling of the statue is a very good example.
And I think. If you like, that is the way forward to go back to Equiano in the 18th century.
One of the characteristics that we all know is. Colleagues was that they organise themselves.
They didn't just organise themselves as Africans,
they organise themselves alongside everybody else who was struggling for for change and for the rights of all human beings.
And I think that is a characteristic also of the BLM movement this this year that from Land's End to John Groats,
people have voiced their concerns and so on.
What all of these things demonstrate is that we live in a society which, although it proclaims itself democratic.
None of us have decision making powers. And it makes us or should make us realise that to deal with these problems of racism, of Eurocentrism, of.
Problems of education problems,
all the myriad problems which have been expressed this year in question of decision making, of who makes the decisions,
what decisions are made and in whose interests these decisions are made, plays a very, very or seems a very, very central position.
So for me. Discussion of how.
That decision making system can be changed.
It is key to dealing with all of these problems related to Black Lives Matter, racism, Eurocentrism and so.
I think my 30 minutes is up, so I'm going to stop there.
Thank you so much, sir. That was brilliant. This was a fantastic sort of to a, you know, really quick history of Black Lives Matter.
Thank you so much. I think we'll have some questions, but I can be in contact.
So, Professor. I head over to you. Please. Thank you.
I Keane's presentation leads me very nicely.
It's not the work that leads me to the present present matter.
I'm not going to share my screen,
but I prepared a text just for myself because I'm getting old and I have a hard time organising my foot if it's not written.
And so it's just for me. I just. Well, well.
And thank you for inviting me.
And it is a privilege for me to share this platform with Kim because he has been working on these questions for a very, very long time.
And, you know, the question of education is key to what I'm going to talk about, really.
I don't want to give an overview about the U.S. because, you know, you can find information quite easily.
I'm more interested in what is happening within risk British institutions.
They really are struggling to acknowledge this stark racial inequalities that are endemic in our society.
And so I'm going to move from the individual, the personal, the local, the national.
And I would like to start by talking a bit about the nature of the work I was hired to do at the University of Bristol in January.
So I was appointed to look at the links the University of Bristol has with the slave trade and slavery.
And the university was set up after the abolition of slavery, the abolition 1833.
But a number of buildings are named after people who are involved in the slave trade,
and some of them financially supported University College that later became University of Bristol in 1939.
So the most well-known of these buildings is the Wil's Memorial Built Memorials Building,
and that building was donated by the family of the Wills family to the university.
I don't want to dwell on slave traders, but just for for for your information, the Wales family made their fortune through tobacco.
They're coming from North America. Therefore, through products and commodities produced by enslaved people.
So it's not so much about the wills that I'm interested to talk about tonight.
It's to do with the context of my appointment.
So prior to my arrival in the city, the city of Bristol has really been at war with itself over the questions of the legacies of the past.
But more importantly in that is often put, you know, put at the back of discussions over the place of minority ethnic people,
in particular people of African descent in places of power or rather the absence, their absence in positions of influence in the city.
In 2016, Martin Reese, who's of dual heritage, became the mayor of Bristol in 2013.
You have Clearlake, who became lords, may have restored the first black woman to become lord mayor of Bristol.
She identifies us as a black person.
So Bristol, however, you know, these are just a few dots here and there because Bristol has been and is still the most segregated,
one of the most segregated cities in the country. Numerous reports written about it for any meat dress.
One, it is one of them. So when we talk about segregation, we talk about racial graphically.
It's true. We talk about racial segregation and fair distribution of wealth.
And they really go together as we know. So we know that racial inequality has an impact on social mobility and on education.
And speaking about education. Just to give you an idea.
In twenty eighteen out of the 1300 enforces forty six teachers in the city, only 26 of them were black.
Wrestling is by no means unique example. It is, however, interesting to look at it because it is your typical, vibrant,
wonderfully diverse city that has a reputation of being at the forefront of liberal ideas and an arts.
Art, of course, after all, you know, the iconic band Massive Attack and the graffiti artists Banksia, all children of Bristol.
Well, the core of these inequalities, though,
in Bristol and in the rest of the country are forms of all forms of various racism, and I talk about racisms.
These are reproduced and could be treated in all walks of life.
Worst of all, that history and the legacy of the past, racism is one of them is not taught in school at all.
In fact, there is resistance, as we have seen on the news recently.
But it's not a recent phenomena. Actually, resistance to link past and present.
People like to isolate the statue was removed because, of course, then but nothing else looks at around the specific contacts.
There's also this belief that you can sell the idea of multicultural or culturally diversity without acknowledging that there is racism.
In other words, you can't be culturally diverse and be racist. Well, yes, one can be just that.
And it's it's really what has been happening in the country.
And you see, because we can't acknowledge these things, racism has been mutating and and hiding behind or living within several institutions.
So let's remember how just just, you know, just to bring some some memories to the surface.
Let's remember how. People felt many people felt when artists they've released this song.
Black is beautiful, just black. Black is beautiful. Why do we still need to have or to use the motor?
That was vastly used by the civil rights movement during the civil rights movement in 21st century Britain.
Why do we still think that people. Why do we actually see people having a knee jerk reaction when you say Black Lives Matter?
Even after the execution, the film execution, the lynching of a man.
Even after the killing of black people in various areas.
Another example, the country luncheon to melt down when rap artist storms, you said that Britain was a racist country.
What does it mean? It doesn't mean that each one of you sitting there listening, going on about your life, trying to make things better is a racist.
But it does mean, though, is that racism is systemic, institutionalised,
as Kim just showed, and has been for a very long time, protected within institutions.
And let's not make let's make no mistake, it's not a faceless risk them it's not faceless, institutionalised racism.
It's not faceless. It is about processes such as the functioning making procedures of hiring committee in of high hiring
committees and individuals with some power who are still upholding or protecting those who are racists.
It's not you know, this is very important because it is actually enough to delay and destroy the work that some of you are trying to do.
We all have heard this term. Oh, it's just a few bad apples.
But then again, if we do not challenge question those who are discriminating, then one is an accomplice.
We all become accomplice. All familiar as well with a phrase, silence gives consent, aren't we?
So I'm really I really can't bear the idea that one can just.
Face this in instances of racism,
you hear about them and not do anything and just shake one's head and and silently disapprove because one becomes an accomplice.
That is why we need to challenge institutions not just on what they are doing to stop racism, but actually look at what they're presenting as results.
What our results, what a successful fight against racism looks like within institutions.
What are they promoting? One of the key points, of course, is the workforce.
Saying we're doing good is not enough hiring people of African descent, of Asian descent at all levels within these institutions.
For me, it's one of the many, you know, steps towards fighting racism.
I talked about institutions that we go into the nasty details.
I want to start with an incident that happened back on the twenty set back in December last year, 22nd of December, to be precise,
in that made the news and the news picked it up more recently, but that that incident had been circulating online social media for months.
But News Night and BBC News picked it up yesterday.
One night on the 22nd of December, twenty four twenty nineteen three British Somali women had gone out for a night out.
They came back close to the flat of one of them.
They went to a corner shop to buy some snacks and they were verbally abused by two white women when they tried to leave.
They were attacked, beaten unconscious, dragged on the floor and so on.
The attack was referred to to the police, of course. And the problem is that they did not enquire into.
They did not try to have the CCTV footage at the time.
And by the time they did, the attack had been the recording had been erased with new recordings as as as is usually the case.
So the file was closed. In April this year,
and now the victims have been accusing the police of discriminating discrimination because the way the police questioned them raise serious questions,
actually. But they only reopened the dossier, if you would.
Just after the News Nights programme. And the Met has apologised for the way the whole thing was conducted and for neglect.
Apologies, of course, are not enough. Why am I telling you this story?
It is classified as a racist incident, a hate crime, and incidents are often seen as anecdotal.
But this one, like many others, is endemic. It reveals processes of violence, of course, and erasure, erasure of black pain or attempt to suppress it.
But it's also about institutionalised racism. It is what institutionalised racism looks like.
It's not faceless. Many of you may think that this is just not another unfortunate example.
I want to put a few things into perspective. Through figures for you. So these figures are coming from the UK government Web site.
So between April 2018 and March 2019, there were six thousand seven hundred.
Forty six. Six hundred and seventy six hundred thousand roughly.
People arrested. Black people were and still are three times more likely to be arrested than white people.
They were 30 to arrest. OK, just just let's look at the figures now closely.
There were thirty two arrests for every 1000 black people.
And 10 arrests for every 1000 white people.
Another one, black men are more likely three times likely to be arrested, three times more likely to be arrested three times over.
White people, white men. So another figure, 60 arrests for every 1000 black men and 17 arrests for every 1000 white men.
The conclusions could be. Well, it means and I have heard that before.
It means that black people are offending more. But I'm going to put another figure to you at the end of March twenty nineteen.
And the figures haven't changed much since ninety three point one percent of police officers were from white ethnic group.
93 percent. Now, does it mean that if you can cleanly change the police force ethnicity, they will be less racism?
They might be. But let's also remember that minority ethnic people can become the hand of a white supremacist institution.
So how do we change this state of affairs? Training in diversity, Ernie, is not enough.
We know that, in other words, inviting black people to salk's the police ring.
Black History Month will end racism. Some people have put forward the idea of abolishing the police in the US.
I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about this. For Britain, diversifying the workforce, in my view from top to bottom is essential.
Teaching the histories of the past, not just the small to a small number, but including them.
These stories of resilience, liberation that Hakim has been presenting you collaboration's into the curricula is essential.
Engaging with a history of activism is, I think, a good way, a wonderful way, actually,
to showcase collaboration between people from various backgrounds, but also demonstrate what is possible when working together.
It's not just about the police. Paris areas need urgent attention.
The ME review, for example, has recommendations and those recommendations were not followed.
It's only last week or two weeks ago. It's only two weeks ago.
I think that I found out when when David Lady came to Bristol that it's only
Bristol is the only city that actually is implementing the recommendation.
And the Lamma review was not was about the criminal justice system.
If not, it was not just that there was an overrepresentation of black men in prisons was also about the anomalies of sentencing,
the lack of data collect to the collections on ethnicity and religion,
the fact that many young offenders had been groomed at a very young age and were at the mercy of criminal gangs,
poverty and fear played a part in those grooming processes.
There was another thing that was interesting and still interesting is that white collar criminals were not more likely,
much more likely to get away with their activities. And those activities are the ones that have led to the rise of black guns in the country.
I could go on and on about many other institutions. We have the data.
We have solid research done for many decades. What we don't see is the changes being made, because at the core of this, it's about a minority.
People of African descent, for example, who are the most affected.
So you see, the mindset that I see is not in keeping the status quo.
As for me, is another form of racism. Racism is on expectorant, you know, finally for now, because there's so much more that needs to be done.
I think remembering that it is, of course, about class economic power.
It is, of course, about heritage, people of African descent, for example.
But it's also about gender and sexuality, sexual orientation. Black, disabled, LGBTQ communities are even more affected and discriminated against.
So when fighting for equality, let's remember that liberation can only achieve if we all achieve it.
And if we all have a fair chance at what is open to the to the majority group in this country.
Thank you. So much for that.
That was really fantastic. I really like the way you sort of began with this micro history of Bristol and then moved it to a much wider concerns.
I certainly I can see that there are already some sort of questions coming in, but perhaps be sort of open it up to everybody.
If I could just ask this question, would something that sort of struck me in both your talks.
You know, we were talking about the prevalence of institutional racism and you both talked about what happens when you move.
You mentioned that from the event, you know, a certain age or how that created this huge ruckus just because we stated a fact.
Grantly. Professor, you sort of mentioned how that particular report that came up, which said of the murder of Stephen Lawrence,
that at least an institutional basis, that the naming of that is important.
But you also sort of said, but justice hasn't made any difference because we could see the continuation of the same kinds of institutional principles.
I guess the question in a way which I think is quite important to this whole
discussion I've spent on Black History Month is exactly as both of you said,
we know that there is deep racism in the UK unions that have made the companies go all the time and have this, because speaking up,
you know, we have these horrific events of Mauduit with all sorts of violence, the statistics that you just read about.
We have we have the battuta. But still, I guess the question is, why is that?
Why is this sort of hesitation to publicly acknowledge justice?
Because it is against racism in Britain. And secondly, what are the limits of even naming something as racist or pointing out the fact that,
for instance, the university is institutionally racist or the police as a structural institution even exist?
I came to me. I.
I try to understand the question. What are the limitations of calling something racist?
I think my question. OK. So I think my question to me is, is something something you said as an aside?
It says that the question is that why?
Why is there still a reluctance, despite the prevalence presence of.
It does. And stories and histories and events in the wider public discourse and pretend to accept the fact that that is a huge
prevalence of racism and that something like institutional racism that we encounter in our everyday institutions,
whether it is, you know, the health services, other universities are police state in a way, it's institution 86.
So why is that this reluctance to more publicly acknowledge it outside discussions like, say, the one we have in jail?
And secondly, following on from that, what are the limits of being able to mean something or an institution as institutionally racist?
You know, you said that that isn't enough, and I'd like to know more of that.
Well, I think I would say the first thing is I'm not sure that your first assertion or premise is correct.
You know that the O thing about the Black Lives Matter movement here is it shows the kind
of depth of public opposition to racism from literally from John O'Groats to Land's End.
You know, people were protesting in places where there aren't even places, you know, where they're like free people.
They were pro. I would tell them we're protesting. So in general, people in Britain are opposed to racism.
There's no doubt about that. But the powers that be are not.
And, you know, if we look at the recent events that I mentioned, the debates in parliament,
etc cetera, everything is done to claim that there isn't any racism,
that there is no problem, etc., etc. all that and this is, you know, historically also being the case.
You can pick an example when you go back to, you know, Kelso Caulkins murder in 1959, the police said it wasn't racist.
And in that in that time, there wasn't even such a thing, an accepted concept, almost racism.
So the difference between people's experience and what is widely known to exist and the powers that be,
but refused to accept that these things exist and that's used to do anything meaningful about it.
And I mean, that relates to the kind of society that we live in, which doesn't favour the majority of people and interests.
It doesn't matter whether it's cosied or it's racism or it's the inequalities of wealth.
Oh, it's kids having food to eat. The powers that be are not interested.
They're not interested in kids eating out. They're going to be interested in racism.
That's not going to be. And so if we go back far enough, we say that it's the powers that be which are the main source of this racism.
It's governments have passed immigration laws. It's governments which organised the police.
It's governments which say that some people don't have British citizenship and we're going to deport them.
It's governments which preside over colonial systems which are racist.
It's governments which organised human trafficking on a global scale.
And those governments represent certain interests who benefit from those activities and those actions.
And those interests also have, you could say, gain some benefit or even from racism itself and from the divisions which it creates in society,
and also from the fact that some people the right. So some people are denied.
And therefore, the rights of all are more easily denied.
So we live in that kind of society which doesn't favour our interests, the interests of the majority of people.
So, you know, the answer is very simple.
If one looks at it in that sense, you know, we need a different kind of society and we need different institutions and different types of governance,
if you like, which reflects the interests of the majority.
People, because that is when these things are going to be dealt with and it wouldn't matter what problem we looked at.
You know, we that would be the solution to it.
I don't know how for how many years people have been talking about the police going back to nineteen, nineteen at least, if not beyond.
People have been saying there's a problem initially that people listen.
Governments said, no, there isn't any problem. The police are wonderful. Then after about 70 years, I said, well, hang on, there's a few bad apples.
Then they after another. Then they said, OK, well, there's this institutional racism.
But it doesn't make any difference because as the the example that elevates just given the police act in the same way.
When Stephen Lawrence case, he acted in the same way in Shanae Lewis's case, acted the same way, they are the source of the problem.
That's not as individual human beings. They might be wonderful, but as a force, as an institution, they operate in certain ways.
And that way in which they've operated hasn't changed.
So the question is how to deal with that problem.
And of course, people protest and organise themselves. As I've shown throughout history.
And that's extremely important. But it only becomes really, really input when you can actually change things.
So that, as I said, the decision making power is in a different place.
Decisions are made by the majority of us.
We have a police force which represents a majority of us. You have a government which represents a majority of us in those circumstances.
Then it has the possibility of of meaningful change.
I think history shows that without. But, of course, change is possible.
There are these differences where we don't live in the 1960s anymore or even the 1990s anymore.
But the essence of the problems of, say, the inequalities which exist are essentially the same.
And in terms of economic inequalities, they're actually growing wider. Britain is more unequal now than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
So for me, that's a very is a very, very key question.
I want to be I'm an educated person. I want to be able to make decisions about the society I live in at the moment.
I don't have that ability. And so I'm in a position of.
Yes, protested, organising, whatever. OK.
No, I don't want to be doing that for the rest of my life. So having that decision making power in our hands to me is absolutely key consideration.
Thank you. So tonight, did you want to.
And I, I would I would add that.
I agree with our claim that majority of people. People are not, you know, racist.
It's not the vast majority of them. But the vast majority of people don't take things into into their own hands.
They chose. And then we go back to what he just said.
They chose to elect people who will go to talk for them so they don't have to think about certain issues.
And then they elect people who have the most vocal, the most.
This and that, but who actually are removing power from them.
And this is the tragedy of this.
This is what makes me the most angry, is the fact it you know, we're talking about poverty, deep, deep seated poverty that is growing.
And yet people have voted for governments on and on who will implement measures that make them poorer.
And I can't I can't accept that. But I also have a degree of, you know, there's some hope for me.
The hope is to see many, many. I keep saying this because it's true.
But then again, I'm I'm I'm a teacher. So perhaps the the students are not representing the vast majority of the world's, but society.
But students this generation. Twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty people are incredible.
Twenty, twenty people just question everything. They question me and my methods of fighting.
They question me of my demonstration. They question people before us.
They don't. I don't necessarily agree with what how they do things.
But many of them are not ready to accept what has been in place so far.
So, yes, I have hope in that sense, I think. Great.
Thank you, I can see you getting quite a few questions, so I don't know if you saw the one which has just popped up on the screen from Alex.
Dean was asking, why do governments and wounded in and allowed to continue despite institutional racism?
Why? But people. That's exactly what I just said. People when they vote for those who vote when they vote.
It seems that the most the most incredible fallacy is that the the manifest are the manifesto in the campaign.
I've seen and I've seen that during the Brexit debate. But I also see that during election,
people are so desperate to listen to to whatever fantasy they're being promised
that they don't actually look at the details when some government tells you that,
you know, it's the immigrants fault. I mean, we've been there.
Surely that should be a clear warning sign that they're not addressing the menace.
You know, that not the many should be there, not addressing other issues.
The issue of poverty when the deflecting constantly. This is these are signs that and yet people are voting for the fruitful for them.
So I think a political literacy perhaps for me.
Is it. It's key. It doesn't mean that, you know, once you have physical literacy, you're less racist.
But at least you know what you're voting for. You know that it's not just about racism.
It's about your own rights as a citizen. That would be kind of diminished.
And the question that mattered to you, that will be won't be looked at.
Yeah. Sandy, do you have any thoughts on why?
Well, I think the difficulty is that, you know, you have we have a political system where you don't have any choice.
That's the problem. The content of the of the system is that you're presented with.
You can either be shot or you can be hanged. Which would you rather be?
Some people vote to be a vote to be shot. Some people would be.
So this is the problem that we have a political system, which, in fact, most people nobody's voted for the political system.
That's the first thing to say. Secondly, many people don't vote.
And the majority of people definitely don't vote for the government, whichever government is.
And so this is a problem.
We don't have a political system which, again, represents our interests.
It's in fact, if you look at the history of the political system, it wasn't designed to represent our interests.
It was instituted a time when people didn't even have the votes.
So that is a problem. It's not Democratic.
It presents an illusion of so-called representative democracy, but it doesn't give us any decision making power.
So you can vote as much as you like. It doesn't really make any difference.
So I think that's that's really the issue. It's not so much the people vote or don't vote, but that the powers that be are still the powers that be.
And in fact, whichever governments in power, more or less the same thing, same things occur in the 1960s.
Just to give an example, the there was a conservative government that introduced the 1962 Immigration Act,
Labour Party, while it was in opposition, said it was going to repeal it as soon as the Labour Party came to power.
They introduced a new immigration act, which was even more racist than the previous one.
I could go through all that history, which people probably know from their own experience.
So voting for one of these parties doesn't solve any of these problems.
It doesn't narrow the gap between the haves and the have nots. It doesn't deal with the racism.
It doesn't do with Britain interfering in other countries or whatever.
These are not and they're not going to deal with these issues. That remains a question of who has the power in the country.
And people might disagree about who they think has power. One thing we can all agree on.
We don't have an ivory. We don't have any power in that in the political system as it exists to make decisions.
And that's what needs to change. Senator Kay, this question from Farhad, how do you want to just ask?
You can sort of jump up and off again. Yeah. You're a you're not immune to it.
Sorry. I think he's going to a new job, so we can't hear you.
Oh. Hello.
Hi. Hi. Can you hear me now? Yes. Thank you.
This is so interesting. I learnt a lot and lots to think about the question that was popping in my mind about races and institutional racism.
The difference between that and the fact that most people are not racist, as you've been pointing out.
But it's more about systemic that where institutions are set up.
One of my previous colleges in Cambridge there hired a professor, not a professor,
actually a research associate who published many articles sometimes and open source journals,
sometimes in conferences, which took data and in a pseudo scientific way discussed,
you know, intelligence and how there are race based population differences, intelligence.
And also a lot of statements about statistically, there are more coloured people are Muslims is going to be more crime in an area.
So how do we, first of all, develop the skills to understand, understand when data is being manipulated,
when science is being manipulated, and when the media and all over the difference between truth and misinformation is very, very.
How do we appraise the difference between the data we use racism and how do we challenge it?
I, I would start by saying that this idea of science and intelligence is so long.
It's a long history has a long history.
So learning about the history, you would understand that this is just a continuation of a no discussion that has gone nowhere.
So the new data,
the new thing and the new research and the publication is just it's a lot of noise on a topic that is linked to ideology and white supremacy.
And I keep thinking that every time I've seen that, I think I know who it is you talk about every time I see that.
I keep being appalled by the poor level of it is just poor.
It's not manipulation of data. It's it's it's lacks rigour.
And it's just so offensively. Mediocre that I keep being so astonished that people would listen to these people.
So, again, I think it's it when you're in position of power, when you do that and you're in a non Russell group somewhere in that, say,
w w Wale's, you are more you're less likely to be listened to than when you're in Cambridge and you're talking a lot of nonsense.
So it's a bit it's about position of power. And yeah, anyway, you can be if you're at the top ish or so-called the top and you have a platform.
People will listen to you. And no matter what you say, it will come out as something valuable when actually it isn't.
And in my own say so. Yeah. Mediocrity just gets me sorry.
And if we look at history back in the day, I remember in the seventies, students wouldn't allow such people to write this nonsense.
People I think it was around and I think even the National Union of Students denied him a platform.
He was being promoted at the time. And these people are promoted every now and again.
And there was such a protest from students that these people disappeared.
Nobody's heard of icing today, which is a good thing. So, as Oliver says, people have been making these assertions for hundreds of years.
You know, I started out with that carry on, and that's what I agree on.
I was writing about one of the reasons why he wrote this book, to show that Africans were, you know, no different from Europeans.
And so anyway, so they they seem to be having.
Even a discussion, as Oliver says, this is a waste of time. Who wants to even discuss it?
It's just somebody you find unfortunate is no longer on paper, because in the old days, you could rip it up and throw it into bed.
Whereas now those is fully circulating on the Internet or something. But people should protest.
About these things, you know, after the Second World War, all kinds of laws were passed against these kinds of things because people are just
given their lives and their millions fighting a war against these kind of people.
And today, here we are at Oxford. And people want to discuss it.
Why do we want to discuss it? This is just nonsense. As I say, people are given their lives to reduce that this nonsense.
Yes, absolutely. They the questions.
I can't see any in the chat. But does anybody else want to sort of jump up?
And join in. Yes, please. Yes. We can see you because it's connected.
So question pop up and then it disappeared. OK.
How do you account for BLM in context of the political black,
which literally included them on bikes as a category which emerged in the 70s and 80s in the UK?
Should we wait to see what the Marine throws a vote to ask the question?
Kim, did you see it? I saw it. Yeah. Did you not see it?
Something about political black. Yes, it is again, it's there again.
What are you gonna put them in context with a political black as a category which imagine 70s or 80s looking to connect us to a Marine through.
Yeah. Do either of you want to take the question, because I think the Connexions might help me.
This is more your area here.
But I'm going to I'm going to have Ash, that's it, because I just I just fell but political back in the 70s, 80s had its night.
And it's diverse, it's staff people, they you know, people are challenging certain things and they are linked.
For example, the term Baime is being challenged because it doesn't represent the full experience and history of,
let's say, people of African descent on grouping them into baime is not accepted.
So political black is is even larger in terms of grouping and and adding people to the fight.
It did have a serve the purpose of bringing people together.
But I think, you know, now it is it doesn't it really isn't to me.
It's not it's not appropriate. Black Lives Matter was born out of the lynching, the execution of people of African descent, black people.
So this is why it focus on black lives as such.
Even if even if as I have seen in of Insha, Black Lives Matter is many made of white people.
But, you know, this is the beauty of it, is that they are interpreting what it means that black lives matter.
I think that the questioner is right.
In the 70s, in fact, in the 60s, there were a number of organisations or coalitions formed between people of Caribbean origin,
African origin, Asian origin and, of course, others.
And in that sense, the struggle against racism, even going back to the 18th century is the struggle.
Is everybody's struggle. It is not one section of the population, the struggles against racism.
Racism is an attack on everybody and everybody's rights and should be opposed by everybody.
Obviously, the terms that people use to describe people of African origin or Caribbean audio or Asian organised changed over time.
You know, in the 1940s, people were called Colonial's and people were called Collard's.
And then this were like this is almost the equivalent of buying today.
It's a kind of catchall expression, meaning nonwhites.
Since apartheid, people used to say. So obviously people people kind of object to these these kinds of terms.
And people always want self definition, which is, you know, as things should be, however.
And as of it says, Black Lives Matter arose in very particular circumstance in the US and then it developed globally, including here and so on.
But of course, that doesn't mean that it is.
All of the struggle against racism is exclusive or excludes anybody, you know.
As I say, it's important that everybody is united in that fight, whether people are Asian or whatever.
So this is just a historic moment when particular issues are being aired and
that the issues which have come up are things about Eurocentrism and education,
which again affects everybody.
Nobody should be excluded from history, for example, or from any study of human life, human society, human history and so on.
Nobody should be subject. Nobody's life should be thought of as being less important than anybody else's life.
That's the essence of this movement, I think. And it's so I say manifested itself in a particular way.
But as far as I can say, it does, it's not excluding anybody.
What is important is, particularly in the areas of education that we put in all areas,
we fight for everybody's rights because because these rights are interconnected.
And I started off with talking about Equiano. It was also a member of the London corresponding society, which based itself on that principle,
that if you fight for the rights of Africans, then you should also fight for the rights of working people in Britain.
If you fight for the rights of working people in Britain, you should also fight for the rights of Africans.
So you fight for the rights of everybody, the rights of all.
So I think that's that's extremely important. And, you know, no one.
Everybody should. Everyone should fight. Everybody should struggle over these things.
That's the crucial thing, I think.
I'm too and this is an interesting question from YouTube, which for Harvest put up in the in the group chat, I think.
And the question from YouTube is, do you think BLM and the Dukey should look different and have different aims than BLM in the United States?
So we don't know who this person is. It's as you know, this is being streamed live on YouTube as well.
So, I mean, it's a really interesting question on BLM.
Yes. I think it's already different in depth.
You know, it has different different histories, experiences and different different approach.
So, you know. What is interesting to me is to see how Black Lives Matter is being interpreted
and and is being supported or is supporting various moves across Europe,
because in France, it's it has another ring to it.
Another experience that the call is the fight against racial inequality and the fight
against racism and fight against white supremacy of fight against social inequality as well.
These are the cool, but ultimately the experience of vich group or each community completely shapes that shirt, shapes that movement.
I read, I think, was it two days ago? The Black Lives Matter UK was changing its name.
So already we're seeing a shift. In many ways in the approach.
Yes, I think that's right. I mean, what are the aims of Black Lives Matter?
It's not as if it has its codified. So there's one.
Even one organisation there is as Olivet says, there is a move to establish an organisation, but for very particular purposes.
I understand some of which are financial. But it's everybody is shaping this movement.
And the studies that it's taken have been against racism, against Eurocentrism of education,
against the glorification of human trafficking and colonialism, racism and so on.
So who wouldn't who wouldn't support that? Only a government.
Doesn't support it. Sadly, yes.
Well, not unexpectedly.
Not unexpectedly. Surprisingly. And a have us again.
And I think this is specifically directed to you because I think he might be.
You think I can be a bit more about the context of the new CROSSFIRE affair that you mentioned.
And one wants to know, how was it related to race? OK.
Well, the new crossfire occurred in the beginning of 1981.
It was a party. A new cross, a birthday party of young people I can't remember like teenagers.
And it was a you know, it was a house party and so on. So a fire started.
Excuse me, the allegation at the time was it was a petrol bomb.
That was never established, but there was a history in that period of petrol bombing of houses,
that was a kind of activity that the fascists carried out a petrol bomb, houses, a petrol bomb, mosques, a petrol bomb, shops.
And so. So that was the allegation. And in that fire, however, it started.
13 young people, I think almost all of them, if not all of them of Caribbean heritage, mainly teenagers, died in that fire.
The issue about it was what was the response of the powers that be?
So the police the basic police approach essentially was that there was no evidence that it was a racist attack.
Firstly and secondly, to question those people who had been at that party as if they had been responsible.
And so. So that creates a lot of anger and resentment.
The people who were essentially the victims. Of that terrible tragedy.
One of the enormous tragedy we're being dealt with in that way.
The second thing and perhaps more telling about that period was there was no official response to those 13 young people being killed.
I mean, it was like a national tragedy. Normally, if it happened today, you would expect the prime minister would make a statement.
The queen would send a letter of condolence to the family. You know, there would be enough that at least some official response to it.
In 1981, there was nothing there was no official response.
What made it worse was that I think some weeks later, as far as I can remember, there was a fire in Dublin.
Well, again, I can't quite remember now. People were injured and killed.
The queen sent a letter. Of condolences to Ireland's.
Which people don't know is not part of Britain anymore. It's a foreign country.
But in London. Nothing was said, so it created like outrage, both because people thought it was a racist attack that the police weren't dealing with.
This is a time when police didn't even necessarily accept the racist attacks occurred.
So that wasn't particularly unusual. But people were outraged about that.
Secondly, the fact that the powers that be completely ignored, it created, as I say, outrage.
And so there was this mass demonstration which was unprecedented in that period of people not demanding necessarily, but protesting.
And that's the things that people shouted, 13 dead and nothing said.
And, you know, people demanded justice in the general sense of that tub, not anything.
So it was a protest which came out of that particular incident, that tragic incident.
But also the whole decade before, if you like, in the 1970s of what had gone on, how people have been treated in this country,
the racism of the police, the racism of the powers that be, the what the wages people, young people were treated.
I mentioned the example of. The Oval for.
That was typical, being beaten up.
Attacked and beaten up by the police was not unusual. It was not unusual because there was a campaign.
In the press, young black men are muggers or street criminals.
Therefore, the police should go out and arrest them. And that's what happened.
If you walk along the street, the police would stop just like you have.
Stop and search. Now, in those days, you had this whole idea of mugging.
You had the police had special units, a special patrol group that went around arresting people.
Anyone could go through all of these incidents.
And, of course, there was racism and education and other employment and all kinds of other problems at that type.
But racism wasn't, except it wasn't it wasn't recognised, wasn't acknowledged by the state, by the powers that be.
So the new cross demonstration of Black People's Day of Action grew out of a specific incident, but it reflected much wider problems.
And in fact, only a few weeks after that, the uprising occurred in Brixton, literally a few weeks after.
So, again, which was a response to a police, essentially a police attack on the people of Brixton.
So those were those times when these uprisings occurred.
Not just in London, but in other cities in Liverpool and Manchester, in Bristol, in Bristol.
I remember going to Paris to actually at that time of the uprising. Nineteen eighty.
So there's were the times that we went through.
Back in day. And anyway, hopefully that explains a bit about what was going on.
Thank you. That makes it much clearer on this, professor. And I wants to add something to this.
We have raised hands and someone's going to put them on stage.
I think we have nicely done. Thank you so much, Professor Kim and Professor.
I'm really grateful for the things that you shared today.
I just wanted to ask a question about how we can encourage more black young people to become teachers.
I know Professor Olivet was talking a lot about employment at all stages and so forth.
But then again, in the sense where, you know, sometimes their experiences at school might be quite challenging.
How do we encourage young black people to take the step into the education field?
Good question. Thank you. I'm wonder. So I'm going to take the example of Bristol simply because some things are happening not just in Bristol,
but in many cities where we found that at a very young age, we can start influencing the way the curriculum influence the curriculum at a local level.
There are initiatives. One of them is called One Bristol Curriculum, because the mayor and again, it comes to the top,
the mayor has decided that we're going to have a one city approach, which means it's racism.
He's acknowledges that racism is present throughout various institutions across the city.
So it can't be just the education in a silo, but also mental health, but also the police.
But also. And what what has been decided. Well, with many other institutions is that you look at the way the curriculum, its shape.
But at the same time, you put in place practical measures to more or less force institutions in the academy to hire black teachers,
because that's the only way you're going to change curriculum and encourage young people to to consider.
Because we know that many of us, you know, most of us actually, we function also for for role models.
You become this say you become you're most likely to become the person you see in front of you.
So more black teachers, more likely to encourage kids to consider education.
But at the present time, for me, I don't believe in encouraging because we're past.
A goodwill, it has to be something that for certain institutions that hold them accountable to do, to make meaningful changes.
Otherwise, they won't do it because it's comfortable not to say it means basically at university, for example, level.
How many black and minority ethnic teacher training programmes or rather in your cohort, how many of them are of minority ethnic groups?
What are you doing to actually integrate people living, for example,
in Bristol who never go to the big University of Bristol but elsewhere to become teachers?
What is it that? What are the measures? Well, I mean by what are the measures?
It also means what kind of bursaries? Scholarship to put into place specifically for them.
So it has to be in. We have to go into details. So in other words, just expecting them to change is not going to happen.
Holding them to pressure accountable. That's for me. The only way it really.
Absolutely the right thing. I think it's a very good question.
It's a very in a way, it's a very difficult question to answer, because I say that as a failed teacher.
As I started off my career trying to become a school teacher. And I failed.
I didn't succeed. I had to become a professor instead as a substitute.
Were very difficult to become a teacher. So it's still very difficult to become a teacher.
And I don't know. About teachers in general, but just looking at history teachers, which we did some work on.
We found that. That's why we started.
The History Matters group in. It was 2014 because there was a headline in the.
Times Educational Supplement the previous year had only been three black people who'd become were training to be history teachers.
Then we did some investigation, we found that out of sixteen thousand plus history teachers in the country,
only two hundred and twenty something was of African Caribbean heritage.
So why is that? So when we looked into why that might be where you found it,
actually there not very many people actually studying history at University of African and Caribbean backgrounds.
And why is that? Well, we looked and we found that at school.
Not many people do. Even GCSE and those who do GCSE and get good grades.
Not very many go on and do a little history. And those who do, they were history and get good grades.
Not very many go on to the universe. So why is that?
So we held a whole conference, which I and Olivant and others organised, and to look for the answers.
And anyway, there are many answers. But the main answer is the problem of the light eurocentrism of the curriculum.
That young people are actually put off studying history because they say it doesn't.
It doesn't talk about people like them. And so they don't study it.
And so they don't go to university to study. So they don't become teachers. And so the cycle is just continues to continue.
So how to break that cycle is May. It is difficult and it needs to be done on multiple levels.
We started the Young Historians Project to encourage young people of African and
Caribbean heritage to engage with history to produce their own documentary,
Zero, which has been very, very successful. But that's just one initiative.
You know, as Oliver says, there's the question of what is taught in schools.
There's a question of what is examined. You know,
now we've managed to get an exam which deals with the whole question of
migration and the characteristics of Britain in history that took us many years.
Changing the curriculum, going to where we started that I was involved that like 30 years ago.
This book talking about it now. So that shows how difficult it is to change the curriculum, to change the textbooks,
to change the exams, to change not only who is taught in teacher training, but why they taught.
Because the problem is just in history, that people thought all kinds of funny things in teacher training colleges,
and so then they teach those funny things.
So breaking that cycle has to be done on multiple levels, in multiple ways and more in all kinds of institutions.
And I guess the key thing is not to accept the status quo. The status quo is.
Wrong doesn't favour our interests, and we have to find all the ways of changing it.
And again, to come back to my original point, the key thing is who are the decision makers?
Who decides what is going to be told? Who decides what kind of education system there is?
Who decides how it's funded? Who decides all these things about education in general in this country?
And it's not us. It's people like Michael Gove.
Remember him? I could go see one that have a history curriculum, which is only white men of property.
They're the only people in history. So if you have such people, how do we solve this problem with these kind of people around?
We only by getting rid of a system which allows such people to be decision makers.
Can we really? Of course, one has to struggle on all these fronts.
But in the end, it comes down to how do we become decision makers?
As with everything. Thank you for that.
So we have another person who is was the hand up and four others just to put them all on.
On the screen. It's Mahboob alone.
Hi, I'm Maribel. I'm the B.M. E rep in Wolfson.
And I just wanted to say thank you so much. This was very interesting and I think everybody has enjoyed it quite a lot.
We had a smaller panel discussion last week with three interesting people.
All of them somehow involved in supporting the black community in the UK.
And one of them was Simpy, where she's a leader of the Rhodes Must Fall movement here in Oxford.
And so I asked her why it is so hard in a university or an environment like Wolfson where you can feel the positive energy and the longing for change.
Was it still so hard to see changes and why does it take so long or you know?
And she said that it's also a part of these big institutions like the university,
that we have quite a fast turnover rate in terms of, you know, students that want to be active.
For example, people are doing a master's, maybe one to two years. People are doing postgraduate studies, maybe a little longer.
But I thought it seemed reasonable to me that this is a problem for, you know, us getting involved then, you know, leaving again.
And what are we leaving behind?
So when you said when you talked about the history of protests, I was also thinking if it's not being taught in school, what has already happened?
It's really hard for me, you know, to know and to understand where we're at at the moment.
So my question is basically, what can we do to ensure that everything that has been done,
all the hard work that has when has gone into protest and, you know.
The movement. How can we ensure that it's not lost?
Once we leave the stage again? Moving on to something else.
Well, it's like they pleased to meet you. I think the key thing is not to move on to something else.
But to keep struggling for what you're struggling for.
You know, if you're struggling for for example, for a change in the education system, you shouldn't stop struggling for it when you leave Oxford.
You should keep struggling for it. I'm not at Oxford past a group.
I have been for, like, wherever Loma is 40 years or something.
So you have to keep you know, you have to keep going.
And I mean, the other key thing is to be organised and to create organisations or mechanisms which carry on that struggle in different ways.
Well, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be Oxford based.
They can be Britain based. I think that's that's very important.
So people may come or go, but the organisation, the mechanism, whatever it is,
keeps going and keeps fighting and that's different conditions and so on.
And then there's also the question of what one is fighting for and to be clear of what your objectives are.
And the fact that, in my view, fighting changes in education or whatever are linked to these other struggles and other changes that we require,
which is all about decision making power, lack of decision making power.
So this disempowerment need to empower ourselves.
So I think anyway, to have a clear focus and to keep.
People, you know, because if you give up and you don't achieve anything, get it going.
Then you build and you involve other people all the time.
Then there's great, great possibilities of changing things.
But the key is the struggle. Frederick Douglass said that there's no struggle.
There's no progress. He was definitely right.
So keep at it. I would like to add to this because that that made me smile over the way simply for two reasons.
The first one is the historian is where you need to documented.
You need to make the, you know, the struggle available to people. And so I came talks about an organisation.
This is the place where you do that. That's a very good place where you keep the young kind of recruits active and informed.
And the second point is that it relates directly to my position,
because just a couple of as soon as I was appointed the university, kind of two months later,
a whole bunch of students demanded to two senior management that they explain the reasons,
the you know, the work kind of work I was going to do and all that.
Now, these students have been at the forefront of the fight,
demanding to have somebody demanding to have somebody like me who would actually take on that research.
So it's true that, you know, activism staff, but mostly student activism, then the universities decides to set up a post.
Now, behind me, two months later, students are demanding that they make things clear and public.
What am I going to do so that we start on a good base curve?
It happens. We decided to do something. September couldn't do it in September.
You know what? Just a few days ago, students demanded that university did what they did.
You know what they promised to do, which is which is to to organise that big thing.
So end of November,
we'll have a big which is becoming bigger and bigger because it's going to be across the city public debate about my role within that research.
But, you know, what is interesting is that none of the students who wrote to the vice chancellor at the university anymore,
these are students from three years ago. So they did not just stop because they were stopping at the university.
They kept at it. It's extraordinary that this is how it should be.
Right. I think the other thing, just that which I kind of forgot about the question, of course, the.
We historians, we have also a great responsibility to present this history.
There was a question earlier which relates to the whole question of this information and what the question was.
But anyway, there's no doubt that there is a massive black state organised effort, not only the states,
but other states as well, to spread this information about everything and actually to spread this information about history.
You know, I was alone.
Tell me about the number. The minister spoke the other day,
said that the history of a history of whenever she said this to a black people in Britain is not a history of police racism or something, isn't it?
It isn't only the history of police racism, but if you if you remove the history of police racism, it would be a very odd history.
So, you know, we have to tell the truth about the past, which is the struggles, but is also the crimes committed and without kind of fear or favour.
That's very, very important. So, yes.
Document everything to present history and to present the lessons of history so that we can all learn those lessons as well.
But that's, of course, it's only the responsibility of stories.
But all of us, too, especially in this kind of setting,
the kind of struggle for enlightenment and against obscurantism and disinformation and all these things
which are having a comeback because we heard earlier of what kind of nonsense is going to come back.
So we. One has to struggle against that for enlightenment or, you know, a all round presentation of things.
That's Van Pelt. Thank you.
I think just one last question to get from you, too, if that's okay.
It actually efforts to something that I certainly mentioned didn't talk.
Someone like Steve Jones has asked whether he can pick up this one station on the Boenish and the police in the United States asking.
I wonder if either of you could speak a bit about this and your opinions on it.
If something if this is something that we should be calling for in the United Kingdom as well.
I'm going to ask you the question. I said I would be interested in having your views on that.
And I it's it's I think an.
I'm trying to get my thought to you. I know people in the States who feel strongly about it about this because they consider
that some of them at least consider that the police has been the hand of white
supremacist institution and government and the police can never completely be for the
people and protecting the people simply because it was set up in a very specific context,
the context of oppression, context of repression.
And therefore, it's not, you know, when when they're carrying out those killings or when they're getting away with doing things we can't expect.
We can't expect them to do anything different because this is what they were set up to do.
I'm kind of fully representing some of these views, but for some of them, this is what this is the main the main point.
Should we wish that for Britain? I don't know the answer to this.
I really don't know the answer to this, because I still believe that there should be somewhere,
somehow, maybe not call the police force, whatever you call it.
There should be people who are protecting who are there to protect us, not to kill us.
You know, paying taxes for them to protect us.
And they're killing us. And for me, I can't.
I can never reconcile with this that my money is being used for my hard earned money is being used for that.
So, yeah, I don't have a definite answer on how to proceed.
But it's something I feel strongly about.
Yeah, I mean, I think that in the US, it's a particular demand linked to the way police are funded at state level and city level,
and so which is a bit a bit different in this country. But I think.
If you eat, if I can say this, I think the principle behind it or the logic of it is that the police must be answerable to the
people and must and the people must have some say in how the police operate and what will happen,
how they're funded. No, this kind of thing. So, again, it relates to this question of empowerment, of decision making power and who has it.
And I think in this country, obviously, it's not just a question of the police, just one aspect of the state apparatus.
If I could use that expression. You know, there's a whole judicial system.
For example, there's the laws which have passed which are openly racist and, you know,
discriminate against people who are declared immigrants or falsely declared
immigrants or full or presented as second class citizens or whatever it is.
So there's a whole apparatus of which operates in this country which would need to be you could say it needs to be changed.
And what we're really envisaging is a completely different society where where people
have a different role in decision making and governance and empowerment and so on.
Therefore, you'd have a different kind of police, a different kind of judicial system, a different kind of prison system,
different kind of education system, a different health system, a different foreign policy,
a different you know, because none of these things are satisfactory and all of them are interconnected
because they're part of one system which doesn't put us at the centre,
you know, where we're the object.
So we're the victims of that system, if you want to look at it like that.
And that's what needs to be changed in the 21st century.
We have a political system that's been around for a walk since the late 17th century and certainly 400 years.
And it doesn't it's not fit for purpose. It doesn't cater for needs.
So the thing is, what is the alternative to be thinking about alternatives and what's positive about defunding the police?
You could say that people are thinking, oh, well, let's think about an alternative. What should that alternative be?
And I think to keep thinking along those lines about, OK. Yeah. What is it?
What would be in our interests? What would serve the interests of the majority of people to deal with various problems and so on, so forth.
And then, of course, we also have to think about why do these problems arise? Why do we need protecting from what?
Well, you know, that there's also there was also the questions that need to be asked about issues of crime and so on,
because you might ask her who are really the criminals, are the criminals.
You know, somebody goes in shoplifts are the criminals, those who are sitting in some plush office exploiting people and getting millions of lies?
The system, isn't it? It allows the criminals at the top, the criminals at the top of actually running the system,
and they're labelling the people at the bottom, the criminals. So those things need to be looked at as well.
Those great inequalities and how they're produced.
Why is that inequality?
This is this these things the people who are in universities are supposed to be explaining to the rest of the world, why is it that everybody works?
Everybody produces value. But some people accumulate all this value and the rest of us, a producer, get almost nothing.
And then we're told that, well, we can't afford this. And the health service.
So we can't afford peepee, whatever it's called, Pepes, we haven't got enough money or we can't have this or we can't have that.
We can't have meals for kids at school. We don't have enough money.
How is that possible in the 20th century in the world?
What is it? The world's fifth biggest economy. Is billions of money swilling around then we call it.
For kids to have this. So to my mind, all of these things need to be questioned because again, they're all interrelated and changes.
As the song says, this change is going to come. I think that's a perfect sentence to end it on.
The change is going to come. Thank you so much. Professor Nikki Montha, Professor Audibert,
attorney for these incredibly powerful and moving talks as your very generous engagement with the questions that have cropped up.
Thank you so much.
I going to part in this for all the students we know if everyone who's on the sort of YouTube channel as well as on this particular platform,
participating, asking questions, etc. It was really wonderful.
Thank you again to the Wilson Welfare Office, especially Bahadoor for like sort of manning this whole thing and putting it all together.
Did you wish these were different times and we could sort of all go off together and go to ball and have dinner together?
No. But in any case, perhaps, hopefully in the future, you'll be able to do that.
And thank you again so much for being here and coming, so to say,
to Wilson College and helping us think a bit more deeply and critically about Black History Month and about being in the UK right now.
Extremely grateful to both of you. Very welcome. Well, it's all very much.
Thank you. Thank you both the best.
Thank you.