TRIGGERnometry - Dr Tony Sewell Defends Controversial Race Report

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:08.000 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:09.480 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.820 A fascinating guest we have for you today. He was the chair of the commission which produced

00:00:19.440 the Race and Disparities Report. Dr. Tony Sill, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:23.080 Hi, it's nice to come back again after my debut some years ago.

00:00:27.520 Your debut was a couple of years ago and in rather more relaxed circumstances.

00:00:32.640 Yeah, you guys have gone up in the world since then.

00:00:35.060 So have you, Tony.

00:00:39.060 Yeah, well, you know, it's been a bit interesting, Ryan, since I last saw you, you know.

00:00:44.680 It has.

00:00:45.380 Things have happened since.

00:00:46.100 I mean, you are an education consultant. That's your thing. Generating Genius is the charity.

00:00:50.200 That's what we talked about last time. And since then, the government asked you to produce

00:00:54.620 a report on racial disparities in the UK. You produced the report. We had one of your commissioners,

00:01:01.620 Mercy Marocchi, on the show to talk about it. But we were keen to have you back. And thank

00:01:06.560 you for coming back to talk to us.

00:01:08.060 Sure.

00:01:08.540 What's it been like for you, first of all, just on an individual level? Because that report

00:01:12.560 was not that well received in some quarters.

00:01:15.560 Well, that means he's doing quite well then, if he's like that. No, I mean, the people who

00:01:21.520 need to receive it are the government.

00:01:22.960 Yeah.

00:01:23.180 And I think that we want them to sort of obviously try to, you know, put all of the recommendations

00:01:29.420 in place. But we're not a patsy for government. I mean, and they're going to find those recommendations

00:01:35.540 tough and challenging. For me, I must admit, I think in terms of trying to explain what

00:01:46.700 happened over that period, I think that misunderstanding might be one way of looking at it. But I do

00:01:54.000 think that, you know, one of the interesting things about that is that I don't know how many

00:01:59.760 people actually read that report. I mean, who reads reports in the end? And it's quite

00:02:06.100 interesting that, you know, government commissions lots of these things, but the attention this

00:02:10.380 had was interesting. And obviously, it did happen as, you know, I mean, stimulated by the

00:02:15.480 George Floyd murder. But then it was more than that, because it was about the UK and what

00:02:21.100 happened here. I would say that what happened here was an interim in terms of what we were

00:02:29.640 trying to do. First of all, before you even get into the reaction. I mean, the reaction

00:02:32.960 was, I would disagree with you. I don't think it was actually all bad. I think what happened

00:02:37.280 was that there were a lot of people who, when they did read it, liked it. Yeah. And were

00:02:42.200 very supportive of it. So we have that. But yes, people misunderstood it. And I think that

00:02:47.640 was the thing. And why they misunderstood it was really going back to my debut, really, with

00:02:52.380 you in a sort of, they thought that what they had in terms of myself and my commissioners

00:02:58.980 was a bunch of people who were just basically, you know, kind of, I don't know, sort of supporters

00:03:07.100 of the Tory party, just basically Boris's mates or whatever. And he just cobbled together a

00:03:12.380 few people, and they were going to write a report for him, and he was going to go home

00:03:15.380 and be happy, you know. And actually, if they read the report, what they missed was the complete

00:03:22.340 opposite happened. And so, in effect, what actually happened was that people responded

00:03:29.660 to what they read in the Guardian or in the other papers, but they didn't actually read

00:03:34.340 the report. So, for example, like, you know, people say to you, oh, I don't like that report,

00:03:39.460 or they're denying racism or whatever, but they never read it. They just said that. So you

00:03:44.380 think, wow, are we in a world now where people are not even going to just look at the thing,

00:03:49.340 the thing, you know, even, even, you know, some, some pages or some of the recommendations.

00:03:55.780 The answer is yes, Tony.

00:03:58.340 Well, you know what, I'm thinking, given that not every, you're right, not everybody reads

00:04:02.640 reports, or very few people do. There'll be people watching this who maybe have got an

00:04:06.120 open mind. They haven't read the report. They read some of the coverage. They don't know

00:04:09.000 what happened. What were some of the key findings and the key recommendations that you made?

00:04:14.540 Well, let me tell you what really did stir up the problem for this and why people

00:04:19.260 didn't, didn't really think that they, they, they, they grasped it properly, or they grasped

00:04:24.100 it wrongly was that we, first of all, we were looking at four areas, really education, employment,

00:04:30.660 crime and policing and health, right? Those are the four. Right from the outset, we did say

00:04:36.820 quite clearly in that report that there was persistent racism in the country. We weren't

00:04:41.340 denying that. That came out straight. That'd be the first interesting thing that came. So

00:04:45.120 that was one of the first findings that racism exists and it's alive. But then what we did

00:04:49.760 then was we said, but you can't just understand racism in isolation. It's connected to lots

00:04:55.360 of other things. So for example, socioeconomic backgrounds becomes the key element here. And

00:05:00.900 then, you know, you look at other things like the family, cultural factors, geography, where

00:05:06.420 you live. And then what you do then is you, once you, you start looking at those other variables,

00:05:12.260 and also you bring in the white group into this, cause they, they actually happen to be human

00:05:17.360 beings as well. And they're, they're, they're, they're examined in the mix. Then you come out,

00:05:23.060 you, you emerge with a report that basically says this, that overall, I mean, and this is,

00:05:29.160 this is sort of the key finding here is that race disparities exist, but racism isn't the

00:05:37.320 major driver for most of them, the major reason for, for, for most of them being there. So

00:05:42.600 that's a kind of strange kind of tension, because you're saying that there's a racial disparity,

00:05:46.500 but racism isn't the key element. What really is, what is the key driver in all of this is your,

00:05:52.600 is your, is poverty, is your socioeconomic background. That's what drives the whole area.

00:05:58.360 Yeah. And, and, and, and if you look at the, give you one particular group that doesn't fit in the

00:06:06.140 whole kind of category. Also, the other thing is that you can't actually start, I mean, this is

00:06:11.260 another finding, we, it's a pretty obvious one that you can't just lump everybody together. So for

00:06:15.720 example, ethnic minority groups will lump together. So the experience of an Indian doctor in Harrow

00:06:22.400 is, is a world away from a taxi driver in Bradford. You know what I mean? Yet we categorize them as

00:06:29.140 Asian. Yeah. You know, well, these people are fighting a war back home, right? But here they're,

00:06:34.080 they're like one group. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense, you know? And so we, and, but one of the

00:06:39.360 things that was quite interesting was, and the battle really in schools from my own area in education.

00:06:45.860 And, and, and, and when we, when we cut it and we said that people were saying that all these black

00:06:51.460 boys are being excluded and all these black boys are doing so badly in school, but what do we mean

00:06:56.400 by black? Because once we cut it and we said, right, let's split black Caribbean and black African.

00:07:03.060 And then there was a world of difference. I mean, in terms of exclusion rates, black African boys

00:07:09.420 were, were, you know, hardly excluded. I think like seven in, in 10,000 were being excluded

00:07:15.120 for African boys. Whereas Caribbean was 25 in 10,000. A huge difference. And when it came to the exam

00:07:23.100 results, African boys were, were, were, were, I would say in terms of, we could put progress in,

00:07:31.400 in, in, in, in, in, in GCSE results way ahead. In fact, they were way ahead of white groups as well.

00:07:36.420 Yeah. And, and, and Caribbean groups were worse than white groups in terms of some of the outcomes.

00:07:43.200 So you say, here's a racial disparity. You can't no longer talk about black boys as a whole,

00:07:49.520 because they're not the same. And, and let's, let's be honest, these same boys are in the same

00:07:54.120 classroom. They come from the same estates. They're in front of the same white teacher. Yet these results,

00:08:00.860 this, you know, diverging in different directions. So you cannot look, you no longer can say,

00:08:06.260 that the reason for black boys underachieving in school is teacher racism. You see, you have to

00:08:12.540 go somewhere else to find the answer. And where we, where we landed it was to do with, I mean,

00:08:18.320 a couple of things, really, you can see it. It's landed in the poverty issues. Yeah. But it's also

00:08:24.420 landed in the family issues and some cultural issues as well. So for example, if you were to

00:08:29.480 then look at some data around that, it's, I mean, I want to put a health check on what I say here,

00:08:35.240 because I do not think it's family style at all, or single mothers to blame. And people will keep

00:08:42.160 saying this. I don't, but I just think we have a recommendation around that as well. But if you

00:08:48.280 just look at how those families are set up, I mean, 63% of the black Caribbean, my communities,

00:08:55.160 inverted commas, are from lone parents, 63%. The African is 40 and Indian is six. Then you only

00:09:04.060 have to put those issues together in terms of poverty, you know, and it's not that every lone

00:09:12.080 parent is poor, but the vast majority of them are, you know, significant amounts are because of the

00:09:17.800 situation you're in. And it's not to say you shouldn't be a single parent. But what we should

00:09:22.440 then do is as the commission is recommend resources for you. So what, what we were findings in terms of

00:09:30.040 findings, then that's the key thing that you just the things complex, you can't just go out there and

00:09:36.560 say, here is this racist, race disparity, equals racism. Yeah. The other thing, and I think this is

00:09:43.820 probably the key driver geography where you live, and we saw this in this Hartlepool election, and we saw

00:09:48.440 recently, of the, of the, of the neighbourhood, of the 20 big poor neighbourhoods that we have around the

00:09:55.700 country, 19 of them are in the north, the poorest, right? And obviously, a majority of that is white

00:10:03.280 populations, yeah, in the poorest. There's also some on the south coast as well, but the majority of them are in the

00:10:08.360 north. The other thing with that is that London and the south east comprise of, when it comes to social

00:10:15.740 mobility, the highest mobility rates are happening in London and the south east. So, you know, if you're a

00:10:23.280 Bangladeshi girl in Tower Hamlets, you're, you're flying in terms of exam results. If you're a Bangladeshi

00:10:29.400 girl in Bradford, you're nearly at the bottom of the, the pecking order. So the, the, where you live in

00:10:35.800 the UK is, is the, is a key determinant. So what people didn't want to hear was that message that this

00:10:43.840 thing is complicated. They wanted us to say, look, Tony, look, don't, don't give us any of this kind

00:10:51.880 of nonsense. This is, it's racism. That is the thing that's driving this thing. But, and I'll come

00:10:57.820 on to that in a minute, but, but, but we couldn't just say that because the evidence didn't take us

00:11:03.400 there. You know, you go where the evidence, the evidence took us to somewhere which was more

00:11:07.700 complicated and needed, needed more sophisticated answers. Now, in our world of identity politics,

00:11:15.320 if you come up with anything that's complicated like this, or say that it's different variables,

00:11:20.760 you can only be one thing. You're either, you're either in the race camp or you're out of it.

00:11:26.520 Yeah. And that's it. And if you're out of it, that means you're a race denier, you're a Judas,

00:11:31.520 you've betrayed your race, whatever. Now, you know, to me, I think there's some links in America here.

00:11:37.160 And I was thinking of this the other day, we're not the same as America. And we do import some of

00:11:41.700 the things that are bad there in terms of our thinking. But I think African-Americans and black,

00:11:47.480 I think it's emerged out of here. The group that is, that looks like it's like an equivalent to an

00:11:54.620 African-American is my, my community, black Caribbean. And that, that, that is the thing that

00:12:01.460 sticks out here. Now people say, oh, you're dividing all people and you're dividing black from white.

00:12:06.820 And, but the data shows, the data is showing all these elements to be the truth.

00:12:12.280 And we're talking about it. And why do you, do you think it's something as simple as the fact that

00:12:18.740 there are, that black Caribbean, especially black Caribbean boys are less likely to grow up

00:12:23.880 with a dad in their house. And then the impact that that has.

00:12:26.720 I'm going to say, no, I'm going to throw you at that because people have associated me with trying

00:12:34.840 to explain away these problems by landing it on, on, on black women, as it were. And I don't think

00:12:41.660 it's there. I don't think the problem is there. I think what, what, when we cut this, it's a factor.

00:12:48.040 I'm not denying that in terms of poverty, but that would be a factor for single white women in,

00:12:53.320 in Hartlepool. You know, it's, it's a fact, it's a factor for everybody. What, what I think goes wrong

00:12:59.040 is the history of that community. What, what came up in, in, in our, in our kind of thing,

00:13:06.320 our kind of findings was this issue of trust. Now, if you go back to like the wind rush period,

00:13:13.660 and then, and then there was, when I grew up, it was in the sort of seventies. That was kind of the

00:13:17.800 rebel period with the police. And those two kind of periods of kind of, I would say quite heavy

00:13:24.400 trauma for a community, you know, because if you look, if you can imagine it, you, you come all

00:13:29.300 the way from Jamaica or Trinidad or Barbados, you know, you haven't, you've been begged to come over.

00:13:35.620 People have asked you to come here. Yeah. And then you land here and you get all this crap,

00:13:40.040 you know, immediately, no, don't come here. Don't go back home. But you've been asked to come.

00:13:43.640 Come here. I mean, it's really interesting about migration. This must be, this set of people

00:13:48.640 must be the, the historically for Britain. Enoch Powell went on a campaign to the Caribbean

00:13:55.580 and begged people to come over there to Britain. One of the things that was interesting when my

00:14:01.020 parents came here, and this isn't going to be dynamics about poverty, is that, um, they were

00:14:06.140 surprised to see how poor white people were. They were shocked because they thought all white

00:14:11.060 people were, were rich. So they didn't, that, that thing was that stung in their heads. And

00:14:16.200 I think that whole issue goes on about, it's translated to this horrible word called white

00:14:22.100 privilege. Cause they still think that nothing bad can happen to white people. Somehow they're

00:14:28.800 blessed with this kind of thing of privilege from the gods or something. And I do think that

00:14:35.080 that resonates. So you come into the country and you get this bad experience. Then your kids

00:14:41.260 get crap in school as well, you know, and the police and all of that. So you have a community

00:14:47.220 that looks very much like an African-American one as well. It looks like it's one that's out of,

00:14:53.340 you know, completely out of, outside of the society, because it has this mental thing about,

00:14:59.300 we can't trust it at all. Unless you have, and you have the anti-vac thing, which is, is interesting

00:15:04.060 because, oh, I, we can't trust it because we can't trust anything that the government gives,

00:15:07.960 because they're giving it for free and that, that couldn't be right, you know? And so there's

00:15:12.280 that, there's that kind of thing that you compare that to the more recent arrived sort of West

00:15:18.200 African, but someone from Nigeria, and we call it immigrant optimism that comes in and just

00:15:24.540 sees, well, they haven't got all that historic baggage at all. They just come in and say, wow,

00:15:29.140 right. Free education. Wow. Let's go for it. Teachers, pens, books, things that you have to pay

00:15:35.800 for back home or wherever, is all free, you know? And you get paid, I mean, in my day, when, you know,

00:15:43.100 they actually paid you to go to university. I mean, it's a bit different now, but, you know,

00:15:47.880 so all these, these resources are there for you. And so the mentality is go for it. And so those,

00:15:55.060 those young people from, from those African backgrounds will have parents and people around

00:16:01.000 are saying, look, you've got, there is no, there is no history here. Just work hard and do well.

00:16:07.080 And they are, and they are doing well. Yeah.

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00:17:52.140 Tony, isn't there another factor here though as well, which people who are critics of yours would

00:17:56.780 want to talk about a lot, which is the legacy of slavery. The Afro-Caribbean community are by

00:18:02.700 definition descended from slaves who were taken to North America and the Caribbean, right? Whereas

00:18:09.100 a West African probably wasn't descended. And so that generational disadvantage, the legacy of-

00:18:15.580 I don't buy that.

00:18:16.140 You don't buy that?

00:18:16.700 No, no, no. Here's the thing. I spend half of my life in Jamaica. I'm lucky I have the two places to

00:18:23.340 go to. So I'll be whizzing off soon away from this cold place. It's getting warm now. But

00:18:28.140 so, and one of the interesting things is about class and about, it's about class and poverty.

00:18:33.660 If you look at the migration to America from say, like Jamaica, and you go to the unit,

00:18:41.260 there's a university called the University of West Indies, 80% of the graduates don't stay. You know,

00:18:46.060 once they've got their degrees, they go to the US. Those graduates will, and people professionally as well,

00:18:53.260 will go in and they occupy top jobs in America. So what you've got is a Caribbean middle class.

00:19:02.460 They're the doctors, they're the lecturers. I mean, more than lecturers, professors,

00:19:08.380 they're running things, you know. And so you've got a solid black middle class that's been going to

00:19:16.380 America all the time. They haven't been coming here. What happened here was basically, you know,

00:19:23.340 people came here in the 1950s, they were poorer, and stayed poor-ish. Yeah. And was linked really to

00:19:31.100 the white working class that was here. And that's been, it's the socioeconomic issue.

00:19:36.060 And the way they were treated when they arrived. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Whereas in fact,

00:19:39.980 it's a quite interesting tension now. It's, you know, it's quite interesting when you compare

00:19:44.380 what goes on towards the US from the Caribbean compared to what went on migration towards the UK.

00:19:50.220 African Americans sometimes are quite resentful of Caribbeans. They look at them as almost like the

00:19:55.580 elite, almost like you would say, like, for example, the Indian population here, for example,

00:20:00.380 they looked at as an elite-ish kind of proposition over there. So the slavery thing is interesting.

00:20:08.140 I'm not saying it's a factor, but you can see that what is driving, I think, is how you then

00:20:17.420 come into a country, how you migrate into a country, and then if you are going to be socially mobile

00:20:24.860 inside that country. What happened to my community is we just got stuck. We just got stuck

00:20:30.300 with alongside, without being, you know, negative here, with the rest of the white working class

00:20:37.900 that were here as well. We just got stuck here. And I think that, yes, you could talk about there

00:20:43.500 was some more privilege for those white working class people, but essentially they were already

00:20:47.260 stuck as well. They were stuck. So slavery is a factor, but it's not the driver here. It's always

00:20:53.980 about, so there was, there is something inside Britain about how it allows people to actually

00:21:01.820 move through the gears fast and how, how you can get stuck in this. And, and what are the,

00:21:08.700 what are the reasons why our school system was one of the reasons why we got so stuck?

00:21:15.100 Because it operated on a level where if you didn't pass your 11 plus or whatever, I mean,

00:21:21.100 it happens in the Caribbean as well. Or, you know, you were stuck in these secondary schools.

00:21:24.460 I was stuck in one of those as well. And, and, and to get out of those things was hard,

00:21:28.940 you know. And then, and then it had, I mean, I went, when I went to university,

00:21:33.820 5% of the population from poor backgrounds went to university, only five. It was just,

00:21:39.500 it was a middle class kind of, you know, kind of, you know, in a provision. It wasn't for poor

00:21:44.940 people. Only recently we've been going to university in big numbers since Blair opened it up.

00:21:50.460 So we've got, so the issues, and this is what's comes back to the issue about my report was that

00:21:57.260 what was dangerous for me in the report and what, why I've been the black Satan as it were,

00:22:03.180 or the black Christ on the cross, wherever I am, was that I dared bring class into this. I dared bring

00:22:11.900 family and all these other elements into the race thing, because all they wanted to see here was pure

00:22:17.020 race. And they wanted the thing they wanted to run from the slavery right the way through to

00:22:21.020 racism. And it's just not that it's not that simple. You see, you see, and it's a very,

00:22:27.900 very good point. You're saying it's not that simple. Why do you think we're just constantly

00:22:33.260 obsessed with wanting an easy solution to complex problems?

00:22:37.340 Because we don't want solutions. You see, the people inside, what's, what's actually happened

00:22:43.100 here is that there are people who actually don't want, it'd be strange, but don't want solutions,

00:22:48.860 you see. Somehow it's the perpetuation of the problem actually suits them. It's a really strange

00:22:55.980 mentality, but if you, because when you ask them, and this is the thing about the report that I think

00:23:00.140 people don't like is the 24 recommendations are progressive, they're radical. Yeah. And they're

00:23:06.380 about solutions.

00:23:07.340 And give us a flavour, Tony, again, for people who haven't read the report, what are some of

00:23:11.180 the key recommendations?

00:23:12.300 Well, the first one to kick off, which is, which is the one that, that, that's interesting,

00:23:16.620 is that we ask the Equalities and Human, Human Rights Commission, who are the police really for

00:23:23.900 racism, the, the, the, the agency that's, that, that, that deals with all of that. We want them

00:23:29.340 to be more robust and have more powers. So that was the first recommendation. And then we said on top

00:23:34.700 of that, that you've got to do with the online racism that's going on as well, that Marcus Rashford

00:23:38.780 and all these other people are talking about. Now, where, and I asked both of you, did a report

00:23:45.180 that was meant to be on race and ethnic disparity, recommending that the, the, the, the agency that

00:23:54.140 actually does deal with racism has more powers, and that the government have got to deal with online

00:24:00.540 racism. That, that is the first recommendation. How did that come to be marked as denying racism?

00:24:08.140 You know, where did they, they lost their heads. And what I think's happened, that's one recommendation,

00:24:14.460 but we didn't stop there. We went after the robots as well, because the AI and, and artificial

00:24:20.460 intelligence, all the kinds of things that you would do in terms of coding that could be biased.

00:24:27.420 We asked the government, look into that and make some changes, like insurance, things like that,

00:24:33.340 how you, how you calculate all these other things. We, we wanted that whole, so, so that's deep seated

00:24:39.340 kind of racism you're going after there. So when people began, that, that, that, that, that's a

00:24:44.860 recommendation too. And I can keep going. Yeah. I mean, I'll come to a couple in a minute, but if you

00:24:48.620 just pick up those two. Yeah. Um, I, I, I suggest what happened here was that we caught friendly fire

00:24:58.380 and it was unfriendly. If you see what I mean? So the people who thought it's come back that in fact,

00:25:04.860 the recommendations were going to be soft or whatever, didn't know, or didn't want to know

00:25:10.700 that the first recommendation that came out is, was about anti-racism. It was about that.

00:25:16.220 So what this government has got to do, and this is why, this is why I don't really understand where

00:25:21.260 the criticism could have come from because it, it, you know, the Labour Party would love this.

00:25:27.900 You know, it's, it's for them. You, you, you, you, you have a recommendation that's saying that

00:25:33.660 that agency has got to be tougher, have more resources, go after all, and already the government

00:25:40.140 are doing it because they're changing the law now. But now we're going to have to have Facebook.

00:25:44.460 We're going to have to have Twitter really be serious about this. Otherwise they're going to get

00:25:49.100 fined heavily. Yeah. And so, um, that's what we recommended.

00:25:54.540 Hold on, Tony, but aren't you being a bit naive, if you don't mind me saying so, about why people

00:25:59.500 were critical? Because they were critical because they wanted you to come out and say the country's

00:26:03.980 institutionally racist. The police are all racist. The education system is racist. Employers are all

00:26:09.660 racist, uh, because that's the worldview that they, they already have. And they wanted you to confirm

00:26:15.100 that. And when you didn't, that's why they got angry.

00:26:17.100 I think you've got the world record for racist in one question.

00:26:21.900 But, but, but, but, you know, you go with the evidence. I've, I've, I've painted a more

00:26:26.780 complex picture than that. But these people don't go with the evidence though.

00:26:29.020 Yeah. I mean, I've painted a more, I've painted a more nuanced picture than that.

00:26:33.100 Yeah.

00:26:33.420 And then you, and you, you have to, you have to, and look, it doesn't solve the problems you see.

00:26:39.420 For example, if you, there is racism in the police and that, and that's a fact.

00:26:44.540 And we've got strong recommendations for that. But you can't then just say that if you're gonna,

00:26:50.620 if you're gonna deal with the issue of the family, you have to have a recommendation that's really

00:26:55.500 specific for that and deal with that and not, not, not kind of dodge it. Because in the end,

00:27:01.260 you can just say, okay, let's have, let's, let's do more unconscious bias training in schools.

00:27:07.260 If you think all teachers are racist, that we've tried that. It's a complete waste of time.

00:27:11.820 Yeah. Because the problem isn't with the, with the, with the teachers in that regard,

00:27:16.140 that the issue is with the capacity of the family to deal with some of these problems.

00:27:21.500 And what, so what we did, we brought out a recommendation that said, we want,

00:27:25.180 and this is a very strong one. Government got to think hard about that. We want a task force

00:27:29.660 for the family. It's going to give, so in the end, what will happen is in real, in real terms,

00:27:35.980 those, those African Caribbean mothers or, or lone parents will get, will actually get more resources

00:27:42.780 as a result of this report. I mean, I mean, it's just as, as flat line as that. They will get more

00:27:48.780 help for that. But, but, but we, we won't, we won't say, oh, we're going to have more trainers

00:27:54.060 coming to teach and tell them how, try and pull out the racism out of their heads or something.

00:27:57.900 I don't know, but that's not working. You know, that's not because that's not where the problem

00:28:01.980 lies because African children are just doing really well in that system and, and, and, and flourishing

00:28:08.060 in it. And so you just have to go where the evidence takes you. It's not about, um, bias or,

00:28:15.980 and you're right. Those, those things that people wanted me, you to say and didn't say,

00:28:22.060 that's, that's the thing, you know, I didn't, they really didn't want a complex nuanced thing

00:28:27.020 about this. They just wanted just you to, to yell, you know, the world is racist. And, uh, and that's,

00:28:33.500 and a lot of, and a lot of companies went along with this as well. And they kind of just,

00:28:37.660 because it suited them to kind of say, well, look, we will put our George Floyd kind of thing

00:28:43.180 on our black power thing on our kind of logo tomorrow. And I go back and do the same practice

00:28:48.380 because black people are not progressing in those organizations either. You see? So it doesn't

00:28:53.100 matter how kind of, you know, you, you put out these gestures, it doesn't make any difference

00:28:57.660 because the real issue around, um, progression as well in, in those, in those companies, you could argue,

00:29:03.500 well, you know, okay, is it racism that's stopping those people progressing or just something else

00:29:10.220 that's going on? You know, and then you look at back to what I said about this history of this group

00:29:17.020 and what happens in there and how you feel in a sense, do I belong here? Do I really belong here?

00:29:23.340 And then if the opportunity is there, are you empowering those people to progress rather than

00:29:31.740 sticking labels on an organization and saying you are this or you are that? When in fact,

00:29:37.500 the real problem is made was part of the problem could be about getting those people to really now

00:29:43.180 begin to think about how can I have the confidence to go through this, this difficult organization.

00:29:51.340 And I think that, that, that, that really is the problem.

00:29:55.980 But it's also as well, Tony, I mean, let, let's be fair, Windrush did a tremendous amount of damage

00:30:01.500 to, you know, particularly Caribbean people's trust in the government. Do you not think it was

00:30:06.060 just another example for them of them being let down by the government and it's still happening now?

00:30:10.780 Yeah, I agree. And I think that what you've got to do is you've got to not

00:30:15.020 put people, I mean, one of the things in the report that I think was really good is that it didn't

00:30:19.900 only just land it on one area. And this is one of the things that people think, oh,

00:30:24.620 you're only on this side and you don't look at the other argument. And because it's nuanced and

00:30:30.380 complex, racism exists. So we're not saying it's not an element. We're not saying that teachers aren't

00:30:34.700 racist either, but you have to look at where it lands. So Windrush is a key aspect of it in terms of

00:30:42.700 something that went wrong and something that definitely has elements of racism in there.

00:30:48.700 But even there, you see, what's sad about Windrush is that it only is known for the fact that,

00:30:59.180 for now, for a legacy, this was the thing where people got ripped off. It's not known for the rich

00:31:05.580 legacy of Caribbean people. It's not labeled with that. So again, you've got to try it. We've got

00:31:10.860 to try and think of another way of getting some balance there, because it isn't only about those

00:31:16.620 people getting ripped off. It's also about the contributions of my parents' generations,

00:31:21.980 the positive ones, you see. So yes, but you are right. And what you've got to do is almost go down

00:31:30.060 a twin track with this and say, there are other nuanced issues that you've got to deal with.

00:31:35.900 And you also got to deal with the institution. And that's why we've put these recommendations out

00:31:41.420 for right. The number one is the body that polices this thing is going to get fully loaded.

00:31:48.300 You know, I mean, you cannot, I mean, anybody's seen that first recommendation. What on earth?

00:31:53.980 Why are these people jumping up on that? You know, that's, that's a key recommendation for what

00:31:58.780 you're talking about. So let's talk about policing, because one of the things I took away from my

00:32:03.420 first interview with you is how balanced you are as you are now you were then. And you talked about

00:32:08.540 your own experience growing up in this country when, you know, a black man had committed a crime,

00:32:12.860 suddenly everybody within a, you know, an area was being arrested or stopped by the police.

00:32:18.300 So, you know, and we know friends, we've got friends in comedy or whatever, who will talk about

00:32:23.180 by the time I was 25, I'd been stopped by the police 15, 20 times. So what were some of your

00:32:29.660 findings and some of your resulting recommendations in that area, which I think is a concern to a lot

00:32:34.380 of people? Yeah. I mean, the policing one was an interesting one, because what we did there,

00:32:37.820 that was really about trust. And again, coming back to this community that it's not that African

00:32:43.260 people aren't going to get stopped as well, but that trust element for a community along the years,

00:32:48.940 especially in the seventies, the police have, you know, got to do a lot of catching up.

00:32:54.300 And so what we, what we found was that the building of that trust was, was needed. So what you needed

00:33:01.180 to do really was give the community a sense that the police was a service rather than a force.

00:33:09.420 And they, they were actually part of, you know, the policing themselves, you know.

00:33:14.700 Um, there are some issues though, about how you do that. Um, if, so we came up with, with

00:33:22.380 safeguarding task force, which was a kind of, um, safeguarding group, which was this, this, this sort

00:33:28.860 of, uh, it's a group that actually can hold the police commissioners can hold the, um, you know,

00:33:36.460 those who are in the top management of police, they come to that group and they have to then regularly

00:33:42.220 explain how they're doing, what their operations are. So the community itself has a power over that,

00:33:47.740 that, that group. And that, that, that was key. Well, but we, we wanted to find very,

00:33:52.060 so we want to find very practical recommendations, not theoretical ones. One of the ones also we

00:33:56.540 insisted is that the police turn on their, um, the, um, video or that they have the body cams.

00:34:05.260 Yeah. And, uh, that, in fact, that would be a compulsory because at the moment you, there's,

00:34:10.460 it seems to be like it's voluntary though. Oh, I forgot to turn it on golf. So, but you have to

00:34:15.660 have it on all the time. And that's a key element in terms of people feeling secure about that,

00:34:21.100 that interaction. I think the other one that is interesting is there's some of the training

00:34:26.540 around police. And I've seen this in teaching as well, de-escalation training and how you,

00:34:31.500 you, you know, in, you know, you go, you see that interaction that you have with young people,

00:34:35.420 how do you make that better? So the training has got to be much, much more focused. The two radical

00:34:41.100 ones, which are, which the government will find hard, but they're going for, and that, and I think

00:34:45.180 this is the one that people, again, are surprised when they see it, is we've insisted on what we call

00:34:50.060 residency. This is to make the police more representative of, of, of the area that you're in. So,

00:34:57.020 for example, it, if you're at the moment, we have a police force that is, um,

00:35:05.740 particularly on the white side. I mean, the Asian side is a bit more balanced. There's hardly any

00:35:09.820 black people actually in London. The numbers are sort of really small at the moment. And so

00:35:14.780 there's a 40,000 uplift that they've been now given. So to get more officers. So what we want,

00:35:21.980 what we've directed is that the police officers have to come from the area, you know, that you,

00:35:28.300 you, you live in. So you, if you're going to join the police, you're going to join them from in your

00:35:32.380 area. So in, and that would say, for example, if you look at an area like Tottenham or, or Lambeth,

00:35:37.900 then we have to have police officers who live in that area joining. I mean, exclusively, but they,

00:35:43.900 they will get now that's a significant change because that will mean that the actual force,

00:35:49.900 the complexion of the force will change because it will represent the communities.

00:35:54.460 That's radical. Um, and, um, the Met have already taken that up as a, and they're going for 40%.

00:36:00.940 They're going to increase that. And I know Cressida Dick has said that she wants to do that.

00:36:05.580 So, but we want it across the country. So it doesn't, so don't get me wrong. If you're in Cornwall,

00:36:12.060 you know, it doesn't mean that you have to find, you know, a thousand black officers in Cornwall,

00:36:16.060 you know, but, um, but, but, but, but, but if you're in a situation,

00:36:19.660 but if you, but if, if, but if you are in Tottenham, which at the moment is, you know,

00:36:26.060 you go out there or in Croydon and probably 90% of the officers are white and the, and the,

00:36:32.060 the communities is 80% ethnic minority. It doesn't reflect that. So what we're saying is that that

00:36:38.300 should change. People have asked me, is that, um, affirmative action backdoor? No,

00:36:43.340 but it's, it's, it's actually looking at the skillset of that community and saying that it

00:36:49.260 should reflect that. Yeah. But we don't stop there. One of the other radical ones is to do with,

00:36:57.020 um, the possession, possession of class B drugs. Now, what, what's actually happened is that because,

00:37:03.420 um, black communities are over policed, when those police officers go on looking for say knives or

00:37:10.300 whatever, the, the, um, issue is that. Tony, can I just stop you there? I know it's a very

00:37:16.460 important point you're making, but I just want to, I'm listening to you through the eyes of a

00:37:20.540 critic to some extent. And I want to say, well, you say they're over policed. Why are they over

00:37:25.660 policed? Well, this is it. They're over policed because we have a situation where 24 times more

00:37:34.620 likely to die really of homicide. Black males are, uh, likely to be victims of homicide compared to,

00:37:43.020 uh, their white counterparts. So that's 24 times more as a black man, you're likely to die of

00:37:51.020 homicide or homicide to death. But I mean, I mean, we're talking really about a knife crime.

00:37:56.700 We're talking about a murder. Yeah. And I say that with hesitancy, but that's it. 24 times more than any

00:38:02.380 other group. It's probably the most kind of, um, you know, for us in terms of findings,

00:38:11.740 we were, we were, we were almost in tears with that one because why, why we were moved by that

00:38:17.660 was nobody really cares. And I say that, and I don't say that flippantly. I think that we've

00:38:24.380 reached a point with knife crime at 21 community, one set of ethnicity, 24 times, uh, getting homicide

00:38:34.140 compared to the majority, compared to the white population. Nobody really cares. And I say that

00:38:40.060 because we've reached a kind of point now where we're fairly indifferent about another black youth

00:38:46.860 dying of knife crime. We just say, well, you know, we just expect, and here's where the difference gets

00:38:53.340 even more interesting. In London, when you hear about a knife crime, you automatically think it's

00:38:57.820 a black person, two black kids doing it. You don't even think twice. You don't think it could be a white

00:39:03.180 person. You just think everybody, everybody in the newsroom, everybody thinks, oh, it's going to be

00:39:07.180 two black kids doing this or a group of black kids on another one. And so we've reached a point of

00:39:12.700 indifference in this that's, that's unacceptable.

00:39:16.220 Why is it Tony that, and we, and I agree with you, like, you know, when I was a teacher, I was a

00:39:22.860 teacher in Newham, which has a, which has a huge gang problem. And I remember one of my students

00:39:27.660 telling me that he was in trouble and he was going through a bit of former students and telling me

00:39:32.540 that they were looking to remove him from one school to the next. And I said, are you happy about

00:39:37.340 that fresh start? All the rest of it. And he went, no, because I'm going to, they'll murder me.

00:39:41.180 Why is it that we get more upset about some poor, unfortunate soul being murdered

00:39:47.740 in Minneapolis than we do about young black boys dying in our own city?

00:39:55.100 I'm not going to, I'm not going to be pushed in because I can see a headline coming here.

00:40:00.700 And I'm not going to, I'm not going to answer the question, how you put it, right? Because I don't

00:40:05.700 want journalists listening to this to try and do a sneaky on me.

00:40:09.640 Yeah, what I will say is what I said before about the fact that we've become, you know,

00:40:22.440 kind of cold to this now, because it's too, it's too close to home. And we can't, we don't,

00:40:27.800 when it comes to solutions, you see, we don't know what to do. That's right. Yeah, we think

00:40:32.360 there's nothing that can be done. That's right. That's right. And in a sense, it's that that's

00:40:38.040 the problem here in, in a way that has become, and I've written about this before in the past,

00:40:43.560 as you know, and it's, and it's become an issue for us, um, that, that we can't, I mean,

00:40:50.840 I, I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm more kind of worried, not so much about the solutions to it, but the,

00:40:57.640 the fact that people just accept it. And you said, who I'm really cross with is the BBC. We will,

00:41:03.960 we're going to want to, let's say everyone's having a go at them. Let's take another piece

00:41:06.600 out of them now. And I think that their attitude towards, for example, um, what I've seen when

00:41:13.960 it's been reported, the way they report these things is interesting because there is, there

00:41:19.720 is a sense in which they're not, they're not delving into the reasons why they're not, they're

00:41:25.480 almost frightened to go there and talk about some of the community dynamics around this.

00:41:31.160 And, um, and, and, and also my community is probably embarrassed by it.

00:41:37.800 And, and also there's another thing it's easier to, in a sense, it's all about devils really to

00:41:43.240 find that devil again in the white person and, and, and the white community or whatever it is,

00:41:48.920 or the white privilege. But when it, when it, when it comes home, it's just, it, you know, it's like,

00:41:54.600 Oh, what am I going to do is I'm help. And, and, and then, uh, so what they, what, what I've heard

00:42:00.760 some things that people put it on cuts, you know, kind of, you know, kind of cuts in terms of grants

00:42:06.760 and things like that, you know, and, and austerity, people trying to find desperately trying to find

00:42:12.440 different things to explain, you know, and it's not, I mean, actually we've got some data that showed

00:42:16.680 that actually knife crime was at its height when austerity was at the bottom, when, when that were

00:42:23.240 labour in power and there was no austerity and knife crime peaked. There is no relationship really

00:42:28.520 between the two things. So we come back to, um, there is a relationship, you know, in one way,

00:42:35.000 I can't contradict myself. There's a relationship. Yes. In terms of some poverty. And I think there is,

00:42:41.320 but there's also another thing going on because you can't just lay on poverty alone. That has to be

00:42:47.000 to do with maybe stuff in the family, maybe stuff also to do with some mental health issues. And I

00:42:54.440 think, I think also there are some cultural factors as well. All of those things wrapped up.

00:42:58.600 And in the police, when I interrupted you before, you were saying, because the black community is over

00:43:03.720 police and we've, you've now explained why, because there is this problem going on, right? Because of that,

00:43:09.560 more people are stopped and therefore more people are found to have drugs and then people end up with

00:43:13.880 criminal records. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly what we've done. So, so in order to avoid that

00:43:18.760 problem for innocent, well, I say innocent, but certainly black kids who are just not involved

00:43:23.640 in knife crime, but get caught with possession, what we're saying, and it's a strong recommendation,

00:43:29.080 and it's a radical one, is that they should be diverted to something else in a sense of diversion

00:43:34.520 activities, but not having a criminal record, because that's the problem. You're getting so,

00:43:39.000 so many black youngsters being caught in this problem. And, and, and it wouldn't happen to

00:43:44.600 you if you were a student at Oxford University. Right. Because you wouldn't be so over policed.

00:43:49.320 Yeah. So they wouldn't catch you with the, and they probably take more drugs than anybody.

00:43:53.000 Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, so it's a, it's a question of fairness. So, and also that they

00:43:59.800 probably get better lawyers or whatever. And those kids, we don't want them to have a criminal record.

00:44:04.840 So what we've, we've, we've asked to go down the health route. We want something, there's

00:44:10.280 got to be a consequence. You can't just have them be possessed because we're not going down

00:44:15.400 decriminalization, but we're saying that the consequence we hope will not be criminal,

00:44:21.400 you know, a criminal justice one in a sense, but it will be a health one. And, and obviously you have

00:44:27.720 to admit your guilt. So in a sense, and I, and the police have welcomed this funny enough. They,

00:44:33.400 they, they, you know, it wasn't just something.

00:44:34.840 Well, of course they don't want to run around locking up. People have got a bag of weed in

00:44:38.600 their pocket. They can deal with that quickly and then move on to trying to find the real knives

00:44:44.520 and the real criminals. I mean, there was some pushback on this, but we're not naive. We, we,

00:44:49.160 we know that a lot of kids are out there with those bags of weed or whatever, and they're selling it.

00:44:54.120 We do know that we're not naive. Keith Fraser, 30, you know, over 30 years of policing. It was one of

00:45:01.240 the commissioners. He understands all of that. However, we balance that with the idea that,

00:45:06.200 you know, this, there is this, you know, kind of almost, um, stream of kids going into the criminal

00:45:13.480 justice system. And then once they're in there, then that that's worse because they get caught up

00:45:17.400 in, in other things. And so that was a way of stopping it. So look, you, you, you get to that one

00:45:22.600 and you ask where on earth did this backlash on the report come? Because so far I've outlined

00:45:29.880 some stuff that even a Labour government would sweat on, you know? So I, again, I, I come back to this

00:45:37.560 idea that they didn't, they, they gave us friendly fire because of who we were. They thought that we

00:45:43.640 were, there was a, there was a preconception that they thought that this was going to be,

00:45:47.560 we were just going to chuck the government, some easy things to do. And, uh, uh, uh, uh,

00:45:53.240 and we were controlled by the government. When in fact, we were fit, we were fiercely independent.

00:45:58.680 And, um, we are giving them a hard time, you know, we, we've put something in here called the

00:46:02.920 extended school day. You know, that's going to cost the government millions of pounds.

00:46:09.080 You imagine giving, but the reason why we put the extended school day was to help those single

00:46:13.080 parents. Cause you know, you think about a single parent now, if she knows that her, her son is,

00:46:18.360 her daughter is going to have an extended school day. That means they can do debating and they can do,

00:46:23.560 make films like you guys, they can do things that will help their social mobility in that extended

00:46:28.200 time. Now, who's going to pay for that? You know? So this, these are interventionist things,

00:46:35.800 dare I say socialist things that, that, that are in the recommendation. Um, the thing is as left as

00:46:42.600 anything, you know, and, and, um, and so this is the, you can, you can see my, you know, sort of how

00:46:49.000 kind of frustrated I am with it because in a way what they've done is they've sent a message to

00:46:55.480 communities about something that is going to help them. And only because they didn't say it or whatever,

00:47:02.120 or they didn't read it or they didn't want to know they've, they've made the thing negative.

00:47:07.240 When in fact, what should be happening now is everybody should be getting behind these

00:47:10.520 recommendations and really, and really kind of pushing the government and making sure that

00:47:16.040 they're going to put it in place. And do you sometimes get frustrated with people,

00:47:21.400 particularly on the Labour Party who purport to have those communities interests at heart,

00:47:25.480 and then they do or say what, like the examples that you've given and actually they're not helping

00:47:32.040 their community.

00:47:32.680 You see, this is where, again, uh, I'm going to be very political here and say that

00:47:39.800 Harriet Harman came on and she, she liked what we were doing. You know, maybe we hate it now,

00:47:44.680 I don't know what she's going to say, but she was quite interesting and people,

00:47:47.800 oh, Harriet Harman. But, but, but she could see where this was going. And what she really liked was

00:47:53.640 giving the teeth to, um, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, making them look like the old

00:48:00.520 CRE real kind of just go for racism, do get, you know, get that online stuff stopped. So there

00:48:06.680 clearly are people inside that party that want to do things that are positive, but they've got

00:48:13.240 themselves in a mess and particularly with the Hartlepool thing as well, but they appear to not

00:48:17.160 even like working class people. You know, it's a strange thing for a party, you know,

00:48:21.240 called labor. Yeah. Well, I'm not party political. I'm independent of that, but I'm just saying that

00:48:27.240 they, what, what, here's where I think it's a good, good thing for labor to do. If they were

00:48:32.280 really kind of focused, what they should get behind this report and really push the government say,

00:48:37.320 this is a really solid report and you, which you, you've, you've commissioned,

00:48:41.880 are you going to put these things in play? Yeah. Um, so, um, yeah, that's so, so, so for us,

00:48:49.320 you know, that was where it is, but, but, but, but the policing thing is, is an interesting one.

00:48:53.800 We should, if, if, if this report results in more black and ethnic, particularly more black police

00:49:00.440 on the beat going on there and actually also not on the beat, but progressing in that force and

00:49:05.800 coming up there and, you know, detectives and things like that, they're there, but they just

00:49:10.920 need to be there in more number, you know? And I think it's, it's, and it's, it's an interesting

00:49:15.720 area for the community to, it's not that, you know, black kids need to be policed by people who

00:49:21.240 look like them, but they've got to see somebody that looks like you, you know? And, um, and,

00:49:27.320 you know, the police want this to happen. The government wants it to happen. We are, we're giving

00:49:31.720 them a kick up the backside and saying that you've got to do it now. You've got to mandate this.

00:49:35.160 You know, it's got to happen.

00:49:36.600 But it's also as well, when the thing that I found very interesting was talking about stop

00:49:41.320 and search.

00:49:41.880 Yeah. Now we, we, we, we, we, we've, we've, because of this thing, but what the, the issue

00:49:47.800 that we, there's some people who say we, you should, stop and search doesn't have any kind

00:49:52.920 of, you know, positive outcome. It's, it, it, it makes black youth kind of feel depressed

00:49:59.240 and they're pressured by it. And there's racism involved. I, we, we agree all of these things

00:50:04.040 happen. But on the day when, for example, there was a case where, where one poor kid was stabbed

00:50:11.560 48 times. And if you come across that case by a bunch, a couple of kids, 48 times, you know,

00:50:17.240 and, um, that lone parent or that, that may not be a lone parent. It could be, um, you know,

00:50:24.920 not that case. Um, but the, the family or whoever's around that boy, they would want us to go off

00:50:33.800 on that evening, that same night and find those knives and find those criminals, those perpetrators

00:50:39.720 of those crimes. So in a way, it's almost like the police have to use that tactic. And we say,

00:50:45.560 fair enough, but do it properly, do it fairly, do it in a manner that doesn't also criminalize

00:50:51.400 those kids that you find on route who've got some weed, you know? So all of those elements,

00:50:57.240 make sure your, your, you know, your body cam is on, you know, um, use de-escalation tactics when

00:51:03.080 you're doing it, you know? Um, so I think that we want it, but we want it done fairly.

00:51:09.720 It sounds like a lot of the things you're talking about are a way of just adjusting

00:51:15.080 elements of the current system to improve it, to make it better. Uh, and I think maybe that's where

00:51:21.080 some of the sort of unfair pushback has come is where people have just want you to tear the system

00:51:25.800 down and build a great new utopia in this place. It certainly seemed that way to me, but I want to

00:51:31.000 move on a little bit, Tony, and talk about the media's role in all of this, because, um, you know,

00:51:36.280 what did you make of the way that this report was covered by the, by journalists whose job it is to,

00:51:40.760 to give an objective reading of, of, of what you've presented?

00:51:44.360 Yeah. I mean, I think what happened here, again, it comes back to the, the, the prejudice around the

00:51:49.720 report. It was clear that there's some sections of the media wanted to take it down before it was

00:51:53.880 even written because they, they didn't really like the fact that who was composed in, in there,

00:52:00.600 myself, whatever. Why not? Why don't they like it? Because, because maybe they thought that I was

00:52:06.520 just, um, some patsy for the conservative party. Right. Yeah. And, and, and, and they're wrong.

00:52:12.200 You know, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't think it through. So what happened was that they

00:52:15.640 went, they put resources to, to, towards trying to sort of bring it down. And they never really

00:52:21.560 addressed any, it's quite interesting. They never addressed any of the recommendations.

00:52:25.640 There's, there's one in there for office for health disparity, which we've never had in this

00:52:29.640 country before, which really is gonna, it's gonna, you know, significantly help, um, black and ethnic

00:52:36.280 minorities live longer and, and, and be healthier, you know, because you've got a targeted now agency

00:52:41.560 that's going to do that. And, um, you know, I think they, they conceded that that wasn't bad.

00:52:51.480 So it's hard to, it's hard to describe the media because to be honest, there were other sections

00:52:57.080 of the media that, that really came out and said they were for this and it was much needed.

00:53:01.480 Yeah. And, and of course others that didn't, um, I was disappointed by the BBC, their coverage of

00:53:08.280 this. I'll name them because I think they need to be, they, they did, they didn't come back and look

00:53:13.320 at those recommendations. I mean, one of the things that the media missed, which if I was a journalist,

00:53:19.400 I just don't know why they didn't go after it, which was this whole issue of the class B drugs.

00:53:24.760 I mean, that is a massive story because you're teetering on. So, so why did they miss a government

00:53:33.000 recommendation about the fact that young people could be in a position now where the police are

00:53:39.640 gonna not put them in a criminal justice system, but, but, but divert them or, you know,

00:53:44.840 why would you, why would you miss that just to go on some kind of, I don't know, journey about

00:53:51.080 language that we use around race? You see, they're so obsessed with identity politics

00:53:56.040 that they even missed the, the juicy story in the report. You know, this, this is, this is the kind of

00:54:04.600 thing that is strange. There were so many stories inside that, inside those recommendations.

00:54:09.880 Do you think that's part of the problem that we now view everything through the lens of identity

00:54:14.120 politics, that we can't really be objective anymore?

00:54:18.040 No, or, or even see something that, that, that looks like a great story for you. It's just blocks

00:54:23.240 everything. And so what, what, what it was, was there were the bad guys over there that, that,

00:54:28.680 that basically they don't, they don't believe in racism, whatever they're, they're the deniers.

00:54:33.160 And, and, and, and I hate to say this in a sense, but a significant amount of white journalists on a,

00:54:39.960 from, from, from, from a particular point of view, we're going to police that, you know, and tell,

00:54:45.960 tell the rest of the community what they should hear. And I think that's, that, that's really what was,

00:54:51.000 what was going on. And, and, and, and, and then, then the community just hears these things,

00:54:57.000 it gets on, on the Twitter RT and that's it. You know, this, this is, this is the, this is,

00:55:03.320 these are the groups of people that deny the reality of racism. When in fact, they actually,

00:55:09.320 the first recommendation was to strengthen the body that polices racism. I mean, you couldn't,

00:55:14.920 as I said, you couldn't make it up, you know, and that, and, and, and so, so to me, yeah,

00:55:22.040 we're in a, we're in a crazy place at the moment.

00:55:23.880 And do you think that this report and the, the legislation that's going to be put in place

00:55:29.960 is going to help to calm things down? Or do you think that we've gone, I mean,

00:55:35.480 not through the looking glass, but almost halfway through?

00:55:38.040 Here's the irony of the whole thing, which, which makes me kind of feel confident and happy.

00:55:43.240 Funny enough, because of this, the controversy around the, and, and the whole thing,

00:55:48.760 the government are going to be really, you know, pressured now to look seriously at these

00:55:54.200 recommendations. So I actually think in a strange sort of way, I'm hoping, I'm fingers

00:55:59.960 crossed to get full house on this. So in a way, you know, for me, it's great. And I, I believe that

00:56:06.280 we may have, we may have to have a part three here where I come back, because they're, they're,

00:56:10.520 they're coming back. I've never said record time, July. That's record time for any commission.

00:56:16.360 Most of these people who do commission, they have to wait three years to get to hear anything.

00:56:19.960 If they do, we're, we're, we're in July to hear it. So, um, uh, and I, I, my expectations

00:56:27.240 are high that we will get, so what's the result? The racism, I'm sticking it online. Marcus

00:56:35.800 Rashford is going to be really happy, you know? Um, well, he, they lost.

00:56:39.960 He's one, he's one on, he's one on, on the kind of online racism. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, I mean,

00:56:50.440 the, the less black kids are going to get in the criminal justice system. You're going to have a

00:56:55.160 situation where more black single mothers are going to get more cash in their hands or whatever

00:57:00.200 they're going to get. You're going to have a, an office for health disparities is going to look at

00:57:04.440 the real health conditions around black and ethnic minority people and white working class people

00:57:08.520 generally. I mean, you know, you have a whole kind of range of, um, uh, you know, significant

00:57:16.280 practical solutions, which is, this is the thing you see that nobody wants to go down. Oh, we could,

00:57:21.720 we could, we could actually put some answers to some of these things or at least, at least,

00:57:25.000 no, we don't want to. We want to come back to identities and stuff like that. And, uh, you know,

00:57:30.440 um, you know, trading for this and whatever, you know, and. Well, there's people making a few

00:57:35.640 quid out of it, aren't there? Yeah, that's right. And I think that's, that's, that's the problem.

00:57:38.840 You know, we've got an industry here. And so, and I think that those people, ordinary, and I,

00:57:45.720 I always want to appeal to just ordinary people, yeah, who can see the common sense in this and

00:57:50.520 can see that they will benefit or not. That's how you judge it, you know? And I, and, and, and,

00:57:56.520 and, um, we're going to force this government to do that. We're not, we're not patsy with this

00:58:00.920 government. They're going to have a hard time putting this across the line. And believe me,

00:58:04.920 you know, a conservative government diverting, you know, drugs possession is unheard of.

00:58:12.360 Yeah. Well, I know your hands are probably somewhat tied, or maybe you don't like the,

00:58:16.680 the war on drugs is something that I think is, is not a good idea personally. And I've,

00:58:21.000 we've talked about this with others a lot. Uh, and, uh, you can totally see how

00:58:25.640 not criminalizing people for possession of drugs that they're not even trying to.

00:58:29.720 Class B drugs, of course. Class B. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, that, how that would help. Um, and you

00:58:34.840 mentioned America. Uh, we, do you think a lot of the way that we, we've seemed to have started to

00:58:40.920 have these conversations in a way that I don't think we used to have in this country. Do you think

00:58:45.880 a lot of that is just taking the American discourse and just importing it, importing it here?

00:58:50.680 Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I think that the, particularly in my sector, the university

00:58:56.360 sector, they've got to be so careful. We've got to be so careful because, you know, I, I,

00:59:00.920 our universities are great places, you know, and I really enjoyed being in them amongst them,

00:59:05.480 but we've just got to be so careful that we don't, I think what, what's gone wrong is that

00:59:10.440 they think they're pleased. I think it's something to do is also with that nine grand as well. I mean,

00:59:14.840 that, that is a big issue that the, the, the students, the power that the students have

00:59:19.080 with that money. They pay, therefore they're the customer. That's right. Therefore, that's

00:59:21.960 really what's going on here. Believe me, if the students weren't paying this, we were having

00:59:25.720 this conversation. I really, I think that's the driver here. And I think they think that

00:59:30.680 the students want, so there's a sort of sense that they don't want to, uh, almost kind of, uh,

00:59:38.040 you know, injure the students, you know, in terms of their sense of identity and what they

00:59:42.920 want. So they're trying to please everybody. And it ends up pleading anybody really. And I think

00:59:47.960 lecturers also got to be careful in this as well. So, and that comes from the American campus coming

00:59:54.200 here, you know, as well. So I do think that we should be more robust in that. And, and, and it's,

00:59:59.720 and I'm not somebody who, and again, I get caricatured as some, someone who is, who doesn't,

01:00:06.520 I mean, I, who doesn't think that there's a, there should be a balance here. I do think,

01:00:11.160 I do think that universities should, you know, there, there, there, there are, there are times

01:00:16.200 when, you know, there, there could be people who are not welcome, but very rarely, I would say it's

01:00:22.920 very rare, you know? So, um, yes, I think you're right. It is coming a bit from the US. I do think

01:00:29.320 that, um, we should, we should be careful about that. And I do think that that's something that

01:00:34.920 I'm hoping that the UK now, and this, this, this report really, in a sense is doing,

01:00:39.000 is looking at the UK lens and what, and as I've spoken about the nuances, all of you,

01:00:45.000 both of you have recognized things that are inside the UK, but, um, nuances that we know about

01:00:50.840 inside, you know, the, the, the, and it's not, it's not the same as America. Some of it's similar,

01:00:55.640 but it's not the same, you know, the way in which class operates here, you know, and the way in which

01:01:00.560 we, you know, our schooling system and everything else either it, there are similarities,

01:01:05.160 but there are differences as well. Tony, you talk about history a little bit when you were

01:01:08.840 talking about, quote unquote, your community, Afro-Caribbeans coming here, uh, et cetera.

01:01:14.600 History has been a big topic over the last year in this country, in, in relation to race in

01:01:18.920 particular. Uh, what are your thoughts on, on some of the conversations that are being had about that,

01:01:23.960 the importance of teaching history through a particular angle or focusing on certain things

01:01:29.240 or avoiding certain things or whatever? Like what, what have you made of that debate?

01:01:33.960 Well, one of the things that is interesting with, and I can see a particular way in which history,

01:01:41.000 I mean, in a strange sort of way, I, I got a, I got a really, it wasn't a bad, I had a crap school,

01:01:47.800 but I mean, the history stuff was quite good. And what we, what happened was that we had an old Marxist

01:01:53.160 that taught us history, which was great, really, because more and more I'm beginning to,

01:01:56.760 you would have believed that maybe I'm a, maybe I'm just a closet Marxist because, because,

01:02:01.720 you know, what he did was, um, Christopher Hill, all these other people, what, what those,

01:02:06.200 those kinds of historians, they, they, they looked at the industrial revolution, you know,

01:02:10.520 and saw that there were parallels. I mean, it's not like for like, there's no way was it the same,

01:02:16.760 but we were taught about the fact that working class people in this country from women working in,

01:02:23.400 you know, in the 19th century, in, in, in those horrible kind of making matches in, in,

01:02:28.360 in a bright May factories, to kids going up chimneys, to the factories in Manchester,

01:02:35.480 and all of those kinds of industrial revolution things were gone, as well as the slavery that was in,

01:02:42.040 that was in the Caribbean. And, and, and so we, we got a range of Britain really,

01:02:47.000 as an imperial force that was fairly negative in a sense. And we got, we got that and we understood

01:02:52.440 that. And it was, we had a good, we had great debates around it. So we were, we were well schooled

01:02:57.800 on that. And, and, and, and what was clear was that there were, there were drivers of class and

01:03:05.080 race going on at the same time. I mean, we got that, that, that notion in, in terms of history.

01:03:10.120 What history has become a bit is, is it slipped into the identity politics element now? Because you,

01:03:17.000 because what, what, what tends to happen is you're teaching people history because you want them to

01:03:22.280 feel good. You know what I mean? So, so what happens is the history becomes like a psychological

01:03:28.360 kind of thing. So it's not really history about facts and understanding how things happen dynamic.

01:03:34.120 What, what, what you, you, you're trying to solve a couple of problems at the same time,

01:03:39.560 and they're not really the same problem. So, for example, people's sense of feeling mistrust to

01:03:44.360 the society and their trauma around dealing with Britain. I think that should be dealt with

01:03:50.200 separately almost than what you do in a, in a, in history, because in it, and we, we've come up in,

01:03:57.160 in, in, in the report with the making of modern Britain. So what we've tried to do is, is,

01:04:02.600 is produce a history that looks at the complex, again, involvement of Britain in terms of the

01:04:10.520 empire, but also in terms of some of the positives as well. You know, you just work the two things

01:04:16.040 together, but also we want to look at local history as well for working class white kids. What, you know,

01:04:21.480 what is the history of Lancashire? What's the history of, you know, Middlesbrough, you know,

01:04:26.200 what's your local history? So you get a sense of, and then the kids in Middlesbrough learning

01:04:32.520 about perhaps what happened in the Caribbean and the kids in, in, in Brixton learning about,

01:04:38.760 you know, the history of Lancashire, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a whole sort of sense of,

01:04:43.960 and then of course the ancestral histories as well. Lots of things we want, we want a lexicon

01:04:48.760 around Indian words that come, you know, sort of words that have, that have come from subcontinent

01:04:53.320 into, into the modern language, the, the positive influences that you have. So I think the,

01:05:00.360 the answer to your question is that, um, I, I, I think what we, we need to do is have a better,

01:05:06.600 it's not changing the curriculum, but have a, have a better sense of the forces that make

01:05:12.520 modern Britain and they're complex and they're interesting and they're not always negative.

01:05:16.840 So it's not just let's kick out, let's burn all the books that are to do with dead white men

01:05:22.760 and, and, and then leave, leave, leave all the rest to look at. It's not, it's not that process at

01:05:28.920 all. It's actually looking at the influences. So for example, I'll give you one example of this,

01:05:34.040 which is interesting. We, we, we, Caribbean writers came over here in the 1950s, lots of them,

01:05:41.320 and a lot of their influences were, was Shakespeare, was, was the classics were,

01:05:47.240 if you look at their, you know, if you look at the books that they read and, and, and who they

01:05:51.800 were influenced with their biogs, they're very, they have, they have a positive view, even though

01:05:56.600 they were anti-colonialists at the same time, they acknowledge the influence of Britain on them.

01:06:01.720 Yeah. So you, you, you can't then just indoctrinate kids to say, look, all of this was a bunch of

01:06:08.520 evil and all of, all of this is just good. It's, it's, it's, it's a complex mixture of,

01:06:14.520 of both things coming together. And I think that's, so that's, that's how I would like us to see history.

01:06:20.120 And it's also about acknowledging, okay, the British Empire did do a lot of bad,

01:06:23.880 but you know what all empires do? The Ottomans weren't woke.

01:06:26.680 Yeah.

01:06:27.480 You know, they didn't talk about intersectional identity politics.

01:06:32.840 Neither did, you know, Genghis Khan, all the rest of it.

01:06:35.240 What you've got to do with this is, and I'm, is it's, it's really true. I heard somebody say,

01:06:42.040 once a teacher says that he, he was priding himself on teaching history where there was

01:06:47.880 no European contact. And I said, I was wondering, what does that mean? So what he wanted to do was

01:06:53.000 teach the kids about Africa pre-slavery. And, and, and what, what he missed there was, I agree.

01:07:00.440 I think there was, there was, you can teach history pre-slavery and you go into, into another

01:07:05.160 history and he wants to talk about, I don't know, Egyptians and, and pyramids and things like that,

01:07:09.720 which is interesting. I think there is, and, and, and he, he felt that the kids needed to understand

01:07:14.120 history that was, that, that was longer and that was, that was stronger, you know what I mean?

01:07:19.480 And that was blacker, you know, really, that's really what we're talking about here.

01:07:22.120 And, and in effect, that kind of dodges some things because I used to teach in the Caribbean

01:07:28.760 and here. And in, and what I realized about Caribbean kids was they were much more confident

01:07:34.760 than my kids here the same year. And when I looked at the history curriculum, what they did was they

01:07:40.040 didn't dodge slavery. What they did was they actually talked about how in Jamaica in particular,

01:07:46.280 people retained their humanity within the inhumanity. So for example, you, you, you open

01:07:54.120 up those slave ledges and you see, um, all that, that the accountant would have, um, you know,

01:08:01.240 the pigs, the goats, and then somebody named Sambo who, and it's all kind of the, so the slave

01:08:07.240 and enslaved African was just part of like the stock that was there, the livestock. Now the, the truth

01:08:13.560 of the matter is that my ancestors were not animals. And what, and what you, what you needed then is a

01:08:19.400 history that talked about how they, um, almost retain their humanity through dance, through, um,

01:08:28.120 the way they cooked, the way they dressed as a whole social history, religion as well. Um,

01:08:35.080 everything coming into, and that, and that, and that history is important so that people could understand

01:08:41.720 that and also how that influenced the present. And I, and so what I noticed that, that they were,

01:08:46.760 they were doing that history in the Caribbean. So, and also how they resisted slavery. That's the

01:08:51.480 key thing. Cause yeah, you know, if you, if you were just an animal, then you just accept it, but you

01:08:55.640 weren't, you know, so, so, and so knowing about Sam Sharp and all these other people, so there's a

01:09:00.280 constant resistance to slavery as well. So what you have then is, is, is not dodging it, but actually,

01:09:07.640 and you don't judge also the fact that the British made loads of money and, and, and, and exploited

01:09:12.920 people and, and you don't just dodge the horrors of it, but you also talk about that piece of the

01:09:18.200 humanity inside that. And I think that's the key way in which you then bring that through,

01:09:24.760 you know, so that you end up with, um, a very proud people because they've, they've been,

01:09:30.280 you've seen the legacy of it, you know, and, uh, you do end up with a history that shows

01:09:36.840 you, you know, the, the, the, the ways in which the, that community was pressured,

01:09:42.120 but it was so you end up seeing how they were involved in their own emancipation.

01:09:47.960 And the thing that, that, that, that, that slavery couldn't take away from them was their imaginations

01:09:52.920 and their minds. And that was, that was the key element that they taught.

01:09:57.800 So I think that back to that teacher, yes, you know, but if you were just, if you were just dodging,

01:10:03.400 I mean, he didn't have the resources or the kind of sense of, of how to, to teach that piece.

01:10:09.320 So he thought, oh, what I better do, I better not hurt the kids to make slavery.

01:10:12.760 Let me, let me go back and, and, and go for some Wakanda sort of thing where,

01:10:17.000 you know, we're all kind of, you know, some kind of, um, and, and, and little does he know that

01:10:22.680 even in, I mean, although Africa has its kingdoms and it's, and it's, um, you know, uh,

01:10:27.880 you know, and it's great architecture, they also had issues, you know, because they're real people,

01:10:33.560 you know, it's not a wonderland, you know, so.

01:10:36.640 Well, I mean, you talk about pre-slavery, actually, Middle Eastern slave traders took more Africans

01:10:41.460 out of Africa than the white colonizers did. It's, history is complicated, man.

01:10:45.300 It is, it is.

01:10:46.080 That, that's what it is, right? And that's how you got to teach it.

01:10:47.980 But you see, one of the things that people misunderstood sometimes, or misunderstandings,

01:10:52.140 is that if you teach the humanity within the inhumanity, that somehow that's, that glorifies

01:10:58.460 slavery, which it doesn't, what it's, you're doing is you're saying, wow, what a people

01:11:03.660 that actually did, um, you know, you know, endure this and actually retained, retained their

01:11:11.320 humanity inside this. Um, and, and, and, and that's important, particularly for black Caribbean

01:11:16.300 kids to understand that, you know? So when they come to that period, it's not just, you know,

01:11:21.540 yes, the slave ships there, yes, people were raped and whatever, but at the same time,

01:11:26.080 what else went on? And, and, and, and the Caribbean have got that history, that social

01:11:28.980 history. So that person, Sambo, is no longer a kind of derogatory name who's an animal,

01:11:34.080 but it's a real person.

01:11:35.200 Yeah. Yeah.

01:11:36.360 That's a very positive message to end the, the, the conversation on Tony. Thank you so

01:11:40.360 much for coming back. I would really appreciate it. And I think that the, the nuance with which

01:11:44.780 you have the conversation, actually just on a personal level, I'm very inspired by the positive

01:11:49.740 and optimistic approach you have. So much of the discussion around these issues is so

01:11:55.500 negative, not focused on finding a solution. Just people just want to tear the whole thing

01:12:00.460 down and not look to actually improve people's lives. So I commend you for that. And, uh,

01:12:05.280 congratulations. I hope, as you say, you hold the government's feet to the fire, uh, get them to

01:12:10.720 implement the recommendations. And look, if it's not enough, there'll need to be another report and

01:12:14.280 more recommendations to be made, right?

01:12:15.780 Yeah. Well, thanks for having me.

01:12:17.660 No, it's a pleasure. And we always finish with the last question before, uh, some questions

01:12:22.600 from our patrons, our locals patrons is what is the, what is the one thing we're not talking

01:12:27.200 about, but we really should be?

01:12:28.940 Oh, right. Right. What, what you should be talking about now, I suppose is, oh, I would say, um,

01:12:39.020 what we should be talking about now is class. We should be talking about poverty and class.

01:12:46.000 That's what we should be talking about. Not denying race, but we should also be talking about

01:12:51.120 poverty. Don't forget poverty and class because those are the, those are the real key drivers,

01:12:55.380 I think. And, and if we can get over, if we, if we can have that conversation more and more,

01:13:00.160 I think we will find that we'll, you know, we're beginning to be, we'll find solutions to some of

01:13:06.020 these things that, that, that take us in a different place than we are at the moment.

01:13:10.120 Well said, Tony. Thank you. Uh, thank you for coming back and thank you guys for watching.

01:13:14.520 We will see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one.

01:13:18.500 See you soon and, uh, take care guys.

01:13:30.160 Bye.

TRIGGERnometry - June 06, 2021

Dr Tony Sewell Defends Controversial Race Report

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