Labour ‘shuts out’ Black MPs and groups from ‘race equality’ launch

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Published by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 07/02/2024 - 8:34am in

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censorship, Civilians, Diversity, Equality, ethnic cleansing, Featured, Gaza, genocide, ICJ, Islamophobia, Israel, London, Palestine, Palestinians, Protest, Racism, War Crimes

Black MPs and groups were ‘shut out’ of Keir Starmer’s ‘race equality’ launch last night. Several had expected to attend the event in Tottenham, but were not given the new location after Starmer and Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy cancelled the original meeting to avoid facing protesters eager to challenge them over their support for Israel’s war crimes.

Black paper The Voice has reported that:

Black MPs, community media and leading campaign groups were not invited, leading to accusations from party members we spoke to that the Labour party intentionally excluded them in a bid to censor opportunities to grill party leader Keir Starmer and equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds preventing any real scrutiny of the Race Equality Act plans which were launched back in 2020.

This appears to have left Doreen Lawrence, a Starmer supporter, as essentially the only Black attendee – and ensured that no Black MPs or activists who might have challenged Starmer and his equalities spokeswomen Anneliese Dodds about the lack of substance in their ‘plan’.

Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP, dismissed Labour’s plan as ‘window dressing’:

The proposed Race Equality Act is just window dressing. The foremost Black media organisation, The Voice, was not invited to the launch and most Black MPs were excluded. This reveals the reality of where Keir Starmer’s Labour party really stands on fighting anti-Black racism.

Even the paper-thin plan is unlikely ever to come to fruition under habitual promise-shredder Keir Starmer.

Labour’s issues with Black people and other racialised groups under Keir Starmer go back to the beginning of his tenure, when he named an all-white ‘diversity panel’ and excluded Labour’s most senior ethnic minority staffer. Since then, the party has been embroiled in rampant Islamophobia, attacks on Black women MPs and other senior elected figures, wholesale deselection of Black councillors and blocking of Black candidates in areas with large Black communities and more, as well as disgraceful racism toward Gypsy Roma people and naming an entirely male, entirely white panel to select local authority election candidates.

The party has also done nothing to root out the embedded racism exposed by the Forde Report, which Starmer reluctantly commissioned under pressure, then ignored when he could no longer delay its publication.

Read the full story on The Voice here.

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