A young black owner of an electrical contractor business stopped and searched on his way home from work by Met Police officers who allegedly told him he “didn’t look like” an electrician has described the experience as “traumatising and humiliating”.

Despite being just 23, Josh King employs 15 staff at KK Electrical Contractor Limited and inspires youngsters into construction work with motivational TikTok videos posted on his account.

Earlier this week a video taken by a member of the public went viral showing King and three colleagues – all wearing company-branded clothing – being dragged out of their car by police, and handcuffed while officers searched them. One of the men was arrested for carrying an electrician’s knife.

King’s 90-minute ordeal last September came around six months after Baroness Casey’s report into The Met called for a “reset” on the force’s stop-and-search policy, saying black people aged between 11 and 61 were at least three and a half times more likely to be stopped than white people in London every year since 2016.

King acknowledged police have a "difficult job", but said the way they dealt with him and his workmates was "not acceptable".

“So many [black] people face the same experience and loads have been reaching out to tell me it has happened to them, " he told Byline Times. "Thankfully what happened to us was captured on camera. How many [black people] are stopped and searched but don’t have that? It’s scary."

King said despite coming from a deprived area he has been "blessed to be on the right path" and is trying to get young people into work, yet, "I'm still being looked at as a criminal because of how I look, which is wrong." He added: “The police should have shown us more respect.”

King, from Peckham, Southeast London, qualified as an electrician aged 20 and his firm manages electrical fitouts for office projects around the southeast. With most of the materials provided, King sometimes uses his black Mercedes CLA to get to and from work and fills the boot with tools.

On 13 September 2023, King and his colleagues were driving through Clapham, on the way back from a job in Guildford, Surrey, when they were stopped by officers in a police van parked by the side of the road.

King couldn't understand why he had been stopped, and when he asked, "they dragged us out, and put us in handcuffs. They took us into their van, searched us and made us take off our shoes. It was humiliating."

He said officers told him they didn't check his car registration, and had simply stopped him "because I had a nice car".

"They don’t know my story, or who I am. Why can’t I drive a nice car? It’s not a reasonable explanation. It made me feel upset," King explained, adding that one officer event commented that the group "don’t look like electricians" despite being in their work uniforms, and in possession of construction cards.

"It’s crazy – what does an electrician look like? What does a doctor look like? What does a lawyer look like? It was blatant racism. It’s wrong.”

Because the men had packed up quickly on site to avoid traffic, one of King’s 20-year-old colleagues had an electrician’s lock knife in his pocket. The men explained it was used for cutting thick electrical cables, but the youngster was arrested on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon.

“They were waving the knife about to passers-by as if to justify their actions. It was embarrassing,” King said.

King and two of his colleagues were let go, but the workmate with the lock knife, who declined to be named, was held for 24-hours. On 11 January he was told he would face no further charges.

King said his workmate was "really distressed" by the situation, having "never been in trouble in his life".

King, who has never been stopped and searched before, says he would like The Met to say sorry for the "traumatising experience", and give him the opportunity to work with the force to help reduce crime.

Speaking directly to Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, King said he was not "slagging off the police" by speaking out, and acknowledges the capital has an "issue" with knife crime, but he hopes to turn this "negative into a positive".

King wants to help the Met "in a small way to tackle knife crime by inspiring young people to change their lives through working in construction.

“I want to speak about how I became someone who employs 15 staff, pays taxes, works by the book, having been working since I left school at 16. “If the police can supply classes for me to speak to young people [at risk of falling into knife crime] and give them advice and direction, I would do it.”

Commander Claire Smart, responsible for the Met Taskforce, said the group was searched after a passenger in the car "was seen attempting to hide a lock knife in a door compartment following a traffic stop".

"Possession of a lock knife can be illegal and officers thought the man's attempt to hide it was suspicious," she explained, before adding that the Crown Prosecution Service had later decided he should face no further action.

Smart continued: "When done right, stop and search is an effective tool and officers take 4,000 dangerous weapons off our streets every year as a result of this tactic.

"We know nonetheless stop and search has a significant impact on our communities which we are keen to better understand."

Smart said despite no formal complaint being made, she would "welcome the opportunity" to meet King to discuss the matter further and hear his concerns.

During the past 20 years, I've reported many times on the violence and prejudice Palestinians have faced as a result of Israeli occupation. And in 2014, for revealing the role of Gaza's gas in Israel's military assaults my contract at The Guardian was terminated.

It's in that context that I believe Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer's recent statements calling for an immediate end to Israeli violence that is killing "innocent Palestinians" represent an important shift. Given that he is likely to be the next British prime minister, the imperative is to leverage this development and hold Labour to it.

Starmer told an audience in London last week that he condemned the “fear and terror” experienced by starving Muslims in Gaza in what was his strongest language yet about the conflict.

Speaking at an Iftar last Thursday hosted by the Concordia Forum, a trans-Atlantic network of Muslim leaders, Starmer explicitly criticised Israel’s policy of forced starvation in Gaza, recognising “those around the world whose fast is not through choice, but through force.” He added: “We know there are Muslims in Gaza who will be mourning rather than enjoying this month. Families who will not have food around the table this evening. The sound of fear and terror rather than laughter and singing. Empty spaces around the table where their loved ones once sat.” 

Starmer also demanded a total cessation of violence in Gaza, including an immediate ceasefire and a “permanent end to the fighting.” In addition to demanding that Israeli hostages are returned to their families, he also urged “an end to the killing of innocent Palestinians. No equivocation – that must happen now".

Starmer also said that the planned Israeli military incursion into Rafah must be blocked, while international aid going into Gaza is resumed: “It is absolutely imperative now that humanitarian aid gets into Gaza rapidly, without disruption or blockade. And any offensive into Rafah cannot be allowed to happen.” 

Starmer emphasised British Muslims’ positive contributions to UK society and the economy, pointing out that “for generations, Muslims have made Britain a better place. A massive contribution to our social fabric: from our NHS to schools, charities to business.”

He also directly addressed the rising trend in anti-Muslim hatred. Paying tribute to the British Muslim community, Starmer articulated the Labour Party’s zero-tolerance commitment: “I know many people will also be concerned about the sickening rise in Islamophobia we have seen in our country. So let me be clear. A Labour government will never turn a blind eye to that prejudice.” 

Commenting on the importance of Ramadan, the Labour leader gave thanks for “the solidarity, community and clarity” of this holy month and for the “generosity of Muslims during Ramadan” which “reminds me of the hugely powerful teachings that the Muslim community invites the world to see during this special time.” 

‘A Seismic Shift’

Starmer’s language at the Concordia event which I attended as part of the organising team represents a seismic shift in the Labour Party’s approach both to the Middle East conflict and to questions around anti-Muslim prejudice in Britain.

Many will see this shift as too little, too late. They are right. More than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, while 2.2 million Gazans are facing severe food shortages with over a million experiencing “catastrophic hunger”.

This shift, however, did not come out of the blue - but has been the result of concerted efforts behind the scenes by civil society leaders.

Starmer’s statements demonstrate that Israel has now become increasingly isolated from some of its closest international allies, with the political spectrum across the UK attempting to disassociate from Israel’s current policy.

With a Labour government seen as all but inevitable this year by most political commentators, the challenge for civil society and British Muslim communities is simple. Comprehensive disengagement from Labour, as some activist campaigns within parts of the Muslim communities have demanded, will not help Palestinians but instead guarantee the total retraction of Muslim voters from any semblance of meaningful UK political influence. That would leave a vacuum in government which emboldens potentially dangerous and destructive policies.

The only viable alternative, in my view, is for British Muslim communities to ensure through strategic lines of engagement that the leaders of the incoming government are incentivised to listen to British public opinion, which overwhelmingly is supportive of an end to Israeli’s onslaught in Gaza, as well as the restoration of Palestinian rights and statehood based on international law.

This article was first published in the February 2024 monthly print edition of Byline Times. Subscribe now to get ahead of the curve.

After the infamous 49 days of Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak was identified by the Conservative Party as the safest available pair of hands. He was a Prime Minister who could be trusted to knot his own tie and lace his own shoes, a dependable front-man for the increasingly unbalanced Conservative Brexit belief system. In short, he was Head Boy material.

Boyish and immature were qualities previously observed in Sunak’s male predecessors. Neither David Cameron nor Boris Johnson could quite carry off the role of grown-up, as if at heart both men remained fans of escapades without consequences. 

Cameron had his boyishly unlined face and Johnson his unbrushed hair. He had his arch schoolboy’s vocabulary – the fourth-form Latin and ripe English poppycock – and between them the old Etonian pals looked confident of doing what they wanted and not getting caught. Or not being punished if they were.

Sunak’s boyishness is of a slightly different order. 

Keen, compliant, he too gives off a sense of arrested development – the old school old boy who never grew up. The first clue is the hair. 

Hair statements are a conspicuous feature of 21st Century politics and, in the hothouse of Sunak’s private all-boys boarding school, Winchester College, he’d have understood hairstyles as a form of communication, a way of giving or withdrawing consent. His neat side-parting consents to authority and to the inherently traditional values of any institution founded in 1382.

His daily care with a comb projects a message that once, in his schooldays, was graciously received: Sunak was favoured by the adults and appointed Head Boy. 

As Prime Minister, he retains an unmistakable Head Boy Energy.

Importance Ingrained

In April 2022, Rishi Sunak made a donation of at least £100,000 to his old school. In an interview with Sky News, the then Chancellor said that Winchester College “helped make me who I am as a person and I’m sure it helps me to do the job in the way that I do it”. This sounds true enough, especially because since becoming Prime Minister Sunak has brought in former Winchester chums like James Forsyth as his closest advisors. 

In the same interview, Sunak thanked Winchester for the “opportunity”, like a contestant on The Apprentice. He isn’t wrong to do so, because in Conservative politics an education at a grand English public school is still today a gateway to the big end-of-series prize. 

Sadly for Sunak, achieving his schoolboy ambitions didn’t stop him getting stuck at Head Boy. He applies himself to public speaking, for example, as if no idea or policy is entirely his own, though his attempt at presenting as an adult should be commended considering his age. 

If he continues to do his duty and work hard he’s confident of earning adult approval and an impeccable termly report. Because isn’t that what always happens?

Take a look at the Conservatives’ poll ratings, and his own personal favourability with the public, and it would seem not.

Democracy was not a feature of Sunak’s appointment to the big job, now or then.

There was no public vote to make him Prime Minister and, back in the 1990s, Winchester’s Head Boy was anointed by the Head Man. I’ve asked former pupils what the position involved, but most have only vague memories of a ceremonial function, often involving Latin. No one remembers clearly what these Head Boys did (there were two of them, which Sunak has never managed to mention) and they tended to be ‘anonymous’.

I imagine it all felt much grander and more important to those who were actually chosen; a once-and-forever Head Boyness ingrained for the rest of a Head Boyish life. 

From now on, Sunak was not to be criticised but congratulated. He could have been forgiven, aged 18, for looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. As Head Boy, his presence around the quads and classrooms was exaggerated in size, at least to himself. Looking ahead, the future appeared smaller and less simple. 

Now, from 2024, he can look back with the telescope the right way round – he’s learned that much at least – and school is magnified to look like the best days of his life. Worth a gift of a hundred thousand pounds, at least.

In his carefully curated biography – let’s call it the ‘Head Boy of Winchester College’ – is a widely-known, self-publicised fact about Rishi Sunak. It’s a boast he doesn’t recognise as a curse. If he did, he’d never have made Head Boy in the first place. Nor, as a schoolboy, could he have ingratiated himself so successfully if he hadn’t mastered an indifference to glaring class injustices or to the texture and traction of contemporary reality, which was refused entry at the Winchester College gates.

Sunak was proud to represent 800 years of elite plunder and token forays into the community. Later, he confirmed his horizons were so narrow and his mind so unquestioning he reliably came back with his gormless £100,000. 

Representation Not Responsibility

The Head Boy, by any old school measure, was someone who made the grown-ups happy. Children at boarding schools, like Sunak at Winchester, often find themselves making an unconscious promise to their parents not to fail or get into trouble. A stonking career compensates for the parental ‘sacrifice’ and justifies the family separation. 

But every step up the ladder is also an unresolved plea for attention and affection – a condition explored in 1970 by the Jamaican writer and politician Lucille Iremonger. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, like Johnson and Cameron before him, has the Phaeton complex.

Phaeton, in Greek mythology, is a frustrated child of the sun god Helios. He insists on driving his father’s chariot just for one day. When eventually he gets his chance he crashes the chariot, which in the ancient worldview explained why so much of Africa was a desert. According to Iremonger, a hunger for power was the tragic fate of children who suffered a trauma in childhood, and she developed her theory from a study of British prime ministers between 1809 and 1940. Most of them were abandoned by their parents in English private boarding schools. Phaeton’s blind sense of purpose, Iremonger notes, “could lead only to disaster for himself, and possibly for others”.

Pity the eager Head Boy. His character already compromised by boarding school adaptations, he now embraces the corruption of prestige without power. Head Boy is Sunak’s version of Tory immaturity, which like Cameron and Johnson he can use as a reason to be excused. 

In front of the COVID Inquiry, for example, he could convince himself he wasn’t included in significant decisions and that, to the best of his recollection, few communications of any importance passed across his desk. He may have been Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he was light on power and responsibility. The Head Boy always is.

What Sunak’s Head Boy persona does bring with it is a brittle neediness. He needs validation, which is what got him the job in the first place. When he isn’t liked, or when he’s challenged, his Head Boy face drops. He gets tetchy and confused when he can’t find the right answer or when his answer isn’t accepted as right. 

He’s a good boy, he really is. He’s done well and worked hard, so why doesn’t he get the respect his unelected Head Boy status deserves? Why isn’t he loved? He has no idea, and if a playful Christmas video might help he’ll try it. It turns out he’s not very good at playful, not after so many years of pretending to be fully grown-up. 

Due to his immense personal wealth, but also due to his schooling, Rishi Sunak is vulnerable to accusations that he’s out of touch. During his Sky News interview, for example, he appeared unaware of the fact that he was echoing the more hapless contestants from The Apprentice. Those who thank Lord Sugar for the opportunity are the ones about to leave the show.

Thank you for the opportunity, Winchester College. Sorry I couldn’t have done better.

Richard Beard is the author of ‘Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England’

The title is from an article in ‘Left Foot Forward’ by Prem Sikka who is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, and also a Labour member of the House of Lords. This article is rather impressive (do read it verbatim) – such that I’m afraid that... Read more