“This rise in racism hasn’t happened in isolation. We have a government who is only too happy to whip up hatred & sow seeds of division.”
Emma Rose, NEU
By Emma Rose, NEU National President
Saturday March 16th is UN Anti-Racism Day and once again, we need to turn out in numbers to send a strong, united message that these are ‘our streets’.
We cannot escape the reality that racism is on the rise. The Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) reported in April 2023 that ‘there is a high level of racism in the UK which permeates all aspects of people’s everyday lives and impacts their health, wellbeing, and socioeconomic circumstances.’ Just this week, we’ve been reminded again of the daily racist abuse that women in the public eye, like Diane Abbott and Zarah Sultana face, and there has been a huge rise in reported cases of antisemitism and Islamophobia; not just as a result of the war on Gaza, but as part of an ongoing trend. According to ‘Tell Mama’, an independent and confidential support service for people who face anti-Muslim hatred and prejudice across the UK, in almost two-thirds of Islamophobic cases recorded, women were the target of attacks, showing they “have borne the majority of the brunt” of the abuse. Within my trade union, the NEU, we are aware of the impacts of racism on the children and young people we teach, their families and our members for example in recruitment, retention and progression of Black staff; racial harassment and discrimination against staff and pupils and the ongoing disproportionality in exclusions of Black and GRT children. Members of other trade unions will have similar examples of the ways in which racism impacts on their everyday lives.
This rise in racism hasn’t happened in isolation. We have a government who is only too happy to whip up hatred and sow seeds of division, encouraging and emboldening the far-right, and the likelihood is that his will only increase as we head towards a general election, as the government has no solutions to offer, other than to point the finger of blame at refugees as a smokescreen for the fact that they have decimated our public services and destroyed our communities over the last 14 years. When Suella Braverman talks about a ‘hurricane’ of mass migration, when she claims that, ‘the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now’, when she calls pro-Palestinian marches calling for a ceasefire ‘hate marches’, she is seeking to divide communities and encourage racism and the far-right and this is a message that comes from the heart of government.
While it is true that racism is on the rise, however, we can push back on this and win by building the anti-racist movement and it’s vital that trade unions mobilise their members to be part of this fightback. In 2022, I attended a Stand up To Racism fringe meeting at TUC congress. TUC has a slogan, ‘Winning at Work’, but as I listened to Sukhdev Reel speaking, a woman whose son was killed in 1997 in what she believes was a racist attack and who she’s been fighting for justice for ever since, I thought to myself, what does winning look like? As a worker, I don’t want to win better pay, better rights, better terms and conditions in a world where parents are having to bury their children because of racism. In the trade union movement, we often say that an injury to one is an injury to all, and the inverse is true – we can’t win unless we’re winning for all of us. And that’s why we all must be committed to building a world with race equality at its heart.
From the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 when the people of the East End of London halted the march of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts to the protests in Kenmure Street in Pollokshields in 2021 when hundreds of people mobilised to block an immigration raid, time and time again, it is people on the streets who have secured the victory against the racists and fascists.
So, as we approach the UN Anti-Racism Day demonstrations in London and Glasgow on Saturday 16th March and Cardiff on Sunday 17th March, we need to encourage the members of our unions to turn out on the streets – to show the strength that we have and to ensure that our voices outweigh the ones that seek to divide us and promote hatred. There are many more of us than them, but we have to make those numbers count in order to stop the politics of hate, division and racism from gaining traction and to halt the rise of the far-right. And when we come together in this act of solidarity, it gives us the energy and determination to carry on the fight back in our workplaces and communities. When the question is asked of us, ‘which side are you on?’ the only acceptable answer is to be on the side of solidarity, of unity, and of anti-racism.
- The ‘Stop Racism – Stop the Hate‘ National Demonstration is taking place outside the Home Office, SW1P 4DF this Saturday from 12PM. More details here. There is also a protest in Glasgow Saturday and Cardiff Sunday.
- Emma Rose is the National President of the National Education Union (NEU). You can follow her on twitter here.
