It is 60 years to the day that Pakistan was formed. On 14 August 1947 East and West Pakistan – the two predominantly Muslim regions in the East and North Western regions of the then British India – were formed. West Pakistan is now known as Pakistan and East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971 after a bloody civil war. TMP would like to extend our celebratory wishes to all our Pakistani readers.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson Snr., the renowned civil rights leader who worked alongside Martin Luther King and was the first Black U.S presidential candidate, is now heading the Rainbow Push Coalition in the USA and will conduct a UK tour with Equanomics UK from the 20 August to 26 August.
Equanomics UK is a growing coalition of organisations across the UK who want to develop more economic analyses and approaches to equality in the UK. It is a project incubated at the 1990 Trust.
Rev Jackson’s tour is to signify the importance of the economic contribution of Black and minority ethnic people, who were central to the industrial revolution and the making of modern Britain, to rebuilding Britain after the two world wars and who are now significant players in the economy through Black businesses, rates and taxes, labour supply and purchasing power. The tour will pass through Bristol, London, Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Bradford.
For more information visit Equanomics UK.
Following TMP editor Chuka Umunna’s article in the Guardian yesterday and the publication of the REACH report, Winston Alaneme, an 18 year old black student in London, gives his personal view of the problems and the solutions engulfing inner city youth.
“Listen to your elders!” An instruction often directed at young people, which usually falls on deaf ears.
With good reason, young people should enjoy their youth and develop their own sense of identity rather than listen to the mantra of a by-gone age. So why should we think that by glorifying professional middle-aged black businessmen to our youth we will somehow alter their sense of identity? Being a teenager is about rebelling against your parent’s desires; it’s about deconstructing the blankets that have been rapped around you since being a kid and wholeheartedly rejecting their aspirations and creating your own.
I read with interest the leading page Guardian article about a chronic lack of aspiration in black youth. You might call me the other pole in the two extremes. I am of a similar socio-economic group, living in south London I’m a second-generation immigrant with parents from Nigeria but I’m brimmed almost unnaturally for my age with aspiration.
I went to a failing secondary school where I found that the advice heeded to me from my parents about pupil / teacher expectations was largely accurate. I grew up with fellow black boys who were shy and introvert at age 13 become opinionated amateur gangster rappers by age 15, one could only cringe and look on with sadness. The media bull is one too large and its devices to far-reaching to compete with.
Ah the media. There has been lots of talk of late about a growing lack of trust in the accuracy of reporting in the media. Indeed according to the media I don’t exist, a self-motivated 18 year old black-boy at a top ranking University. My demographic is already ‘represented’ in the plethora of RnB / HipHop music. This of course is nothing new; it’s called blaxploitation, the marketing of black people. An unwanted symptom of the black peoples movement, which first concerned commentators in the 1970’s, however it has never been dealt with.
There is now a ‘black-way’ of speaking, behaving and thinking. As such, non-adherence to these guidelines is interpreted as rejecting black ethnicity. The lifestyle and the ethnicity are intrinsically combined and according to many black people one cannot live peacefully without the other. If one rejects the lifestyle they concurrently reject their ethnicity. Coconut.
REACH is an independent body commissioned by Government and chaired by Clive Lewis, Director of The Men’s Room, a charity working with Black young men. It has 22 members drawn from a variety of sectors, including the voluntary and community sector, education, academia and law enforcement.
REACH was asked to look at how communities, local agencies, parents individuals, local and central Government can work together to raise aspirations, create more opportunities and improve life chances of young black men and published its findings in a report yesterday.
The report makes clear that tackling issues around underachievement is a shared responsibility. The Black community, community leaders and voluntary organisations, local and central government all have an important role to play if progress is going to be made according to REACH.
Writing in today’s Guardian newspaper, TMP editor, Chuka Umunna, argues that it will take more than appeals for new role models to solve the growing crisis of inner city teenage killings.
This has been a grim year for urban youth. In London alone, 17 teenagers were killed in the first half of the year, having been shot or stabbed. A report into gang culture by the Department for Communities is launched today, at a time when our inner cities are starting to resemble the notorious American ghettoes of gangster-rap folklore.
The latest killings - the vast majority of victims being black - have triggered a flurry of headlines and hand-wringing, but they were going on long before the media cottoned on.
I work at a charity for young people who have committed minor offences, or are at risk of doing so, in Lambeth, south London, and we know of three other violent young deaths which failed to register on the national radar. At the 409 Project, we are ideally placed to reach those parts which the police and others cannot. Take Darren, 14, a member of a notorious local gang. Gangs like his, he explains, have different categories of member, made up of “olders” (aged 20-plus), “youngers” (aged 16 to 19) and “tinies” (under-16). Each gang is, in effect, a large extended family.
Darren - a “tiny” - is presently excluded from school, having been involved in a stabbing on his school’s premises. The reasons cited by Darren for involvement with gangs are family related, but not in the commonly used sense of family breakdown. Darren has cousins and uncles who are all involved with the gang he is a member of, so through them he became involved too. In his eyes, gangs serve a function - “when things happen, people will be there to back you”. He says inner-city youngsters do not turn to, say, the police for protection, as they have no confidence that the boys in blue will come to their rescue.
In marked contrast, however, he trusts in our organisation; he feels at home with us. Another of our youngsters, 16-year-old Lloyd, who is no longer in a gang, maps out the “battleground” that people like him navigate every day. He describes how CCTV cameras have been installed in his school in an effort to curb the number of incidents there, and explains how the most trivial argument can spill out of the classroom.
Efforts to increase race equality and unlock the potential of people from ethnic minority backgrounds to progress in education and business need to be accelerated, Cohesion Minister Parmjit Dhanda said on Tuesday.
A report published on Tuesday showed that the cross-government focus to break down the barriers that prevent some members of Black and Minority Ethnic communities from equal opportunities, rights and responsibilities is leading to real improvements.
But in his first announcement as Cohesion Minister, Parmjit Dhanda reflected on his own experience of growing up as a second generation Asian in Britain, and said a new focus is now needed to help more people - regardless of their race, faith or ethnic origin - fulfil their potential and play a fuller part in their communities.
His priority will be to tackle the inqualities faced by many Muslim women and young people. The report shows that the employment rate gap between Pakistani and Bangladeshi women and white women has changed very little since 1970. He believes Government needs to do more to enable their voices to be heard and empower them to engage in their communities - bringing economic and social benefits to society.
TMP editor, Chuka Umunna, explores Boris Johnson’s candidacy to become Mayor of London.
Finally the circus act which is Boris Johnson is being subjected to the scrutiny that comes with running for Mayor of arguably the world’s most multicultural city. People are beginning to look behind the mask of the clown.
Over the weekend the spotlight has been put on what we already knew but have forgotten in the midst of the “Have I Got News For You” appearances, alleged extra marital dalliances and musings on the “vicarious victimhood” of Liverpudlians – Boris is so far to the right of his party that his views would make even the driest Thatcherite blush.
His writings on race and Black people reveal the mindset of an old colonialist – the scruffy, public school educated, boat-shoe clad type that talks fondly of their family’s time in “Keeenyaa”, drinking, shooting and the rest, whilst the “nice little people” there tended to their every want and need.
In 2002 here he is on Tony Blair’s then imminent visit to the Democratic of Republic of Congo: “no doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.” In 2003 he is reported cheerily remarking to Swedish Unicef workers and their black driver in Uganda, “right, let’s go and look at some more piccaninnies”. These are just a few snippets but you get the flavour.
Put in this context David Cameron’s keenness for Boris to run is puzzling to say the least. Cameron has sought to move his party to the centre ground, to look like a modern, grown up party at ease with the world and the cultural changes – racial or otherwise – which have occurred since the 1950s. Boris clearly is not.
Boris running for Mayor would have been an attractive proposition to his leader because, though he may be seen as somewhat of a Westminster village idiot, at least people know him. He has the distinction of being a Conservative politician and celebrity in one – a rare commodity.
Cameron has been already been accused of being all spin and no substance, and people have cited Boris running as another example of this. But it is not an accusation that deserves to be made in this case.
There is plenty of substance to Boris, which even a cursory reading of his pieces in the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator demonstrate. The problem is that the substance in this instance is just plain wrong if your aim is to win the Mayoralty of a city, a third of whose population is made up of ethnic minorities for whom your candidate has shown wanton disrespect.
Delays in producing a review of existing discrimination law and a Single Equality Bill have raised fears that equality issues have slipped down the Government’s agenda, says the Communities and Local Government Committee in a report out today.
Equalities legislation has grown piecemeal over the past four decades and a Single Equality Act to unify it must not be further delayed, it concludes. It wants to see the Government press ahead with the act to simplify the existing equalities law and make it more effective.
The Committee’s report on Equality, published today, welcomes the establishment of a single Commission to cover all aspects of equality saying it is a positive move in the battle against unfair discrimination and inequalities.
But it fears that indecision and delays have accompanied the Government’s management of establishment of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) and threaten to hamper its effectiveness, the Committee concludes.
Deep and entrenched inequalities and unfair discrimination persist in the UK. The Committee notes that at the current rate of progress, it may take decades for some groups of people to achieve parity in employment and education while for others―such as Pakistani and Bangladeshi women or disabled people―on current trends parity will never be achieved.
Dr Phyllis Starkey MP, Chair of the cross-party select committee, said today “there are not just moral imperatives in reducing inequality and discrimination but economic and social benefits to be gained too.”
The MPs also welcome the Government’s consultation on the inclusion of measures within the act to prohibit age discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services. However it warns that if such legislation is introduced it is important that appropriate safeguards are in place to avoid criminalising positive age related benefits, such as the provision of discounted bus passes for older people.
Mark Donne, political officer of the Justice for Columbia campaign, argues that military aid and diplomatic support of the right wing Columbian government should cease immediately.
Scrutiny of UK foreign policy during the Blair era was – with obvious cause – focused on the Middle East and to a lesser extent, Africa. Grass roots social change in Latin America has to a degree moved that continent into British political consciousness. However, our relationship with one South American nation, Colombia, has (not accidentally) avoided serious investigation, despite the efforts of the trade union movement and a concerned group of MP’s.
For more than 40 years Colombia has been suffering from an internal armed conflict between left wing guerrilla group FARC and paramilitary groups “strongly associated” with successive right wing governments, up to and including that of incumbent President Uribe, more of which later. The humanitarian consequences of the conflict have been so severe that Colombia currently has one of the worst human rights records in the world.
The vast majority of human rights abuses, including the assassination of over 4,000 trade unionists in the last 15 years, are attributed to government armed forces and state backed paramilitaries. Indeed, more trade unionists are assassinated in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined. Local councillors and journalists are also common targets of persecution and violence, not to mention poor rural villagers who are frequently attacked and displaced.
According to the most recent report of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia: “The human rights situation continued to be critical. There was an increase in reports of extrajudicial executions attributed to members of the security forces and other public officials.” The issue for consideration is why - with such appalling human rights standards - the Colombian administration continues to receive full financial and diplomatic support from the UK and US governments.
President Uribe, an Oxford and Havard educated lawyer, has strongly denied direct links with the paramilitaries, although these claims are looking increasing risible. In July this year, Colombia’s pro-Uribe former intelligence chief was arrested and charged with murder and supplying the names of trade unionists and human rights workers to right-wing militias. Many on the alleged target list were murdered.
Mr Noguera was a close ally of Uribe and former head of the Administrative Security Department (DAS). Noguera had first been investigated over the murder of an academic conducting an investigation into the forced displacement of peasants.
