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Five years after the death of George Floyd. People were not interested in the truth. They were really interested in emotion. And all in all it was going to end in an irrational kind of response, which it did. People wanted to say that Britain as a whole was systemically racist. the thing that people didn't want to talk about was human agency. This was kind of almost a sin. You cannot say that
Poor black people should be able to use their own efforts to forward themselves. They're incapable. That's almost the message from the left. Hello, I'm Fraser Myers, deputy editor of Spiked. I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined by Lord Tony Sewell. Now, Tony, we're speaking... Five years after the death of George Floyd, which sparked the kind of globalisation of the Black Lives Matter movement, you were tasked by the British government of the time looking into the various...
racial and ethnic disparities that still plague the UK. We can come on to that in a moment in some of your conclusions. But just looking back on 2020, do you think it's fair to say, did we lose our minds a little bit? back then we lost everything minds everything you know everything went really and um probably looking it's really interesting that along with covid people do lots of reflections now
What, what happened there? You know, what was I, did I really do that? Did I really say that? Or did I really lock everybody up? You know, and. And it's similar, I think, with the BLM stroke kind of global infection that happened after that. I think the mind loss or the kind of... kind of was really driven, I think, by a couple of things. I was speaking to a lecturer and she said to me that maybe for the first time, nobody had actually seen online.
almost like a horrible snuff movie. You know, this thing in real life, you know, somebody dying at the hands of a police. What?
it did was I think you got that visual thing and then everybody had it on their phones and there was that sense that there was, we've got to go out and we've got to do something. Where I think... the mind loss came was there wasn't any kind of connection between what was going on in your own country and your own space and your own reality and what happened in a very small town in America.
You know, I mean, I don't know how many black people are in South Korea, you know, at the moment. And yet they had demonstrations, you know. So clearly something else was going on. And I think what it shows was the power really of that America, that Americana, that kind of civil rights power from Martin Luther King time. to really kind of produce still in us that sense of righteousness and we've got to try and do something to help the underdog.
I think that was so that's there in that kind of in and it's quite interesting that you have people who claim to be left wing, you know, and they're on the left and yet the same time driven by. things that are in america not from here you know which is another contradiction in a sense but i think the other the other the other thing for me um just looking back on it was that um
People were not interested in the truth. They were not really interested in facts. They were really interested in emotion. And this was an emotive act, and so we had to do something emotively about it. Even to a certain extent, the government felt they just... had to do something here. So I think all in all, it was going to end in an irrational kind of response, which it did. And I think what the outcome...
was that people wanted to say that Britain as a whole was systemically racist. They just wanted that to be said. And that's almost, remember, we're dealing with religious things here. That's almost like... part of the ritual once once we had commissioned a report you say that and then that's it what what surprised everybody i think in this sense was the two things
For the first time, I think, in British history, we've had a report that the makeup of the commission was predominantly, I think, one token white guy in there. That was really, really. And so you had all groups, in a sense, in there and looking at this disparity issue and me as a commissioner. That was one thing. And secondly, I think we dared say we had the temerity to say that.
you know, the white group was actually experiencing the worst racial disparity. Yeah. And talking about some of those disparities, I mean, they do exist, but, you know, one of your main points was that these are not... racism is not necessarily the cause of them. You know, there are other factors leading to certain groups falling behind. I mean, it surprised me that academics, intellectuals, well, it didn't, because obviously people are politically driven.
But there were all different things that were coming up in there that drove disparities that were not necessarily anything to do with racism. I mean, for example, you've got things that... you would that would appear to be uh in my own area of education for example you know you would see um a disparity that looked like this was oh this must be explained by racism because you've got
Mainly you've got African Caribbean groups that were performing poorly and excluded disproportionately. However, once we decided to get rid of... a notion of BAME and the whole idea of one group, one block of ethnicity, and you broke it up, you began to see that, in fact, the opposite was going on. In fact,
Indian Hindu background pupils and Nigerian pupils were doing much better than African Caribbean pupils. And then when we cut the cake even further, We looked at the reasons for that, and that couldn't be explained by racism because when we looked at the Nigerian groups, they were in the same classrooms as the African-Caribbean students.
And then that pushed us towards looking at other things. So we looked at family structure. We looked at other factors in there that could explain why there was that disparity. And on it went. Everything seemed on the surface to be normally sort of, oh, that must be racism. There were other factors that were in play. Yeah. I think what was also great about the report, it wasn't...
it wasn't just that you identified these disparities and disadvantages, but you were also able to point to some real successes in ethnic minority Britain. And it feels like that's often... not talked about there's there's doom and gloom from all all sides in a way um from left and and right about where we are as a country it was a happy report in a time when and happy in the sense i mean it was sad for
poor, low-income community. I think it was sad for them. And to a certain extent, maybe Caribbean group as well. But certainly for the new African group and the... and certain Asian groups in education and employment. This was a positive story. The other positive things in some of the outcomes was... The trajectory of race relations in Britain, it certainly marked an improvement. Whereas you talk to people and you would think that we're...
We're back to the 1950s, 1960s, you know, the way people speak about it, when in fact all the indicators showed that things were improving. Yes, there were issues about segregation and things like that, but...
All in all, people were getting on with each other. And in fact, the outcomes for ethnic minorities couldn't have been better, particularly in terms of education. Yeah. And some of the solutions that are often put forward to... certain disparities it'd be good to talk a bit about those we often told that it's necessary to decolonize the curriculum or that we need to see more black teachers in in in classrooms or perhaps more black politicians or or people in in in culture i mean
What do you make of those kinds of arguments? Does that really work? Is that necessary or is it a distraction? Well, I worked in Hackney before I did this report, and that's one of the reasons why probably I was chosen, where prior to that, again, this was... A Labour government instigated the kind of reforming hackney where it was deemed back in the 1990s as having sort of the worst.
school district in europe not even in britain you know and uh nobody wanted to be there or or be in those schools and we actually and i worked there we tried all of those particularly the group that was performing the worst, which was the Caribbean group again, black Caribbean. And we tried the black teachers, the black history, you know, we kept on all those kinds of curriculum elements.
And it just didn't shift at all the outcomes of those students. It was only when we really did a massive school improvement project in that school and talked about leadership and high expectations of students. and really did be quite forensic about the outcomes of the area and of the students and of the pupils and parents getting involved as well.
that the thing shifted and then Hackney flipped in over three years, became a model borough and instigated the academy movement. So you see, I think that there are real examples there of... nothing to do with all those things that the activists want, which decolonize. I mean, we can continue to teach Shakespeare, continue to do all those things that he normally did. It wasn't.
In that area, the problem we found was really to do with how the school was run and organized. And also there's some other things, I think, that... people are avoiding in this whole debate around race and education expectations and priorities. And you can see it from... the groups that are doing well. I mean, I share an acronym with a friend of mine, Ian Roe in America, and we call it FREE, which is kind of family, religion, education, and enterprise.
And those things around particular communities, once they've attached themselves to those things, they're the drivers towards success. So really, we were doing the... thing that people didn't want to talk about, which was human agency. The idea that communities can drive themselves. And there was not really anything institutional that was stopping anybody going forward.
via only your own energies. And this was kind of almost a sin, because we have to talk about this again in religious terms. You cannot say that... Poor black people should be able to use their own efforts to forward themselves. They're incapable. That's almost the message from the left. And we said, no, we've got evidence that that can happen.
And if you look at communities that are doing well in our society today, and they just happen to be Chinese, Indian, and Nigerian, those three communities. are using that they're not they're not doing anything they're not really engaging anything to do with decolonizing the curriculum or anything else that you want to think that would be anti-racist in the sense of that project
And I think that sometimes some of those things are hindrance. Listen, I mean, we've been misunderstood. There's a little misunderstanding around this whole. Report everything. First of all, we did not deny in any way the existence of racism or institutional racism. That was obviously a ploy to use it to distract from what we wanted to say. And actually, we state that racism continues. It persists. However, even though it persists, it's not enough to stop, I think, the agency and the...
and the efforts of individuals and communities to do well. There are lots of, they're about, well, Kemi, I don't know, added some more kind of. outcomes for our report but recommendations we had about 50 odd and and so that would have that would have acknowledged that there was a problem if we had to put recommendations in but if you look at those recommendations
They're all pivoted around this whole idea of agency and getting people to empower themselves. But it's an acknowledgement there were structural issues that we have to deal with. But it's not as if Britain is in this sort of almost, you've got a sense that we're almost in some apartheid kind of regime, the way people would talk about the UK. And it was far from that.
Yeah. And of course, we've recently had some quite appalling race riots last year. Do you think that that have we taken a step backwards or do you think that was more of a kind of one off? Are you talking about the Southport? The Southport riots, yeah. Yeah, I think, for example, the Southport thing, I think was quite specific. I always believed that...
You've got to be so careful with it. It's the same thing with the BLM thing, with the one-off issues that happen. Just as you can, a black person watching this now will say, look, I've experienced. a lived experience of racism yeah on my way home or in my family they can they can tell you about that so it's not that these things don't exist but what we what we were tasked with was to look at the overall
picture, the data, numbers, the big picture story rather than the individual instance. I think the Southport thing was. Worrying for two reasons. And I think that my report does actually have some implications for it. I think that you can't excuse people who are. basically arsonists who decide to go after people who are vulnerable. That is a criminal offence, and you must condemn that. However, if you...
Not everybody was involved in that. People had some serious, you know, kind of things that they felt, grievances that they had. And I think that here and in the US, what's happened is we just haven't listened. to those left behind people, yeah? Predominantly white, predominantly on our south coast and in the north, yeah?
And we're just, I mean, every government just seems to ignore them. We didn't in the report. We just said, look, we're looking at disparities and this group of people have some serious issues to address around housing, around education.
around employment you know and in a sense they they they often get condemned as just a bunch of racists and just so as far as we're concerned that's wrong So there's that issue and then there's a specific Southport issue, which I think in its context, you know, one must be very careful with that because, you know, people were indulging criminal activity.
Others weren't. People were on their laptops. I mean, I think a lot of racism is on the social media, but I don't think necessarily people should be jailed for saying things. So I think that whole thing did expose a number of issues that we deal with. But I think the particular underlying issue, which still hasn't been dealt with, is that...
And actually, you know, governments are not sharp enough on this because you ignore that group at your peril because they are the majority. London will not decide next election. Yeah. You know. And just finally, what direction do you see things going? In America, there's talk of a sort of vibe shift. You've seen the end of sort of DEI schemes. A lot of this kind of racial politics seems to be on the back foot.
Where do you think Keir Starmer and the Labour government stand on this? Obviously, they did famously take the knee during Black Lives Matter. There's been talk of a race equality act, though we haven't seen anything that hasn't seemed to have come out in... Any real form? Where do you think this is going in the UK? Let's be honest. Politicians will go where the wind blows. We see this with the grooming gangs thing. They'll wave to their constituency.
condemn it, condemn an activity one minute and then not say anything or the other. I mean, I hate to say, I mean, I'm free of sort of being the chair of a commission now, but I mean, in a sense, I can freely say that. it's pretty cynical out there. You know, I really do. I'm sorry to say it's my opinion. I think from any, even though I'm from a particular brand of politics, I think it's on all sides. There is this cynicism.
And so, honestly, I'm not happy, really, with where we're going with things. And I think the lecturer has just got to be a bit smarter, you know. I did like the way the Red Wall did play the two parties. I thought that was something that was good. That was good about people thinking their way through. But then reform comes along and you wonder whether that's another, you know.
a group being played again, you know, we don't know. And, and I, so my, my, my sense is that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm fairly concerned about the, the way in which. In the US and in the UK, we kind of can be victims of political cynicism. But on the other hand, I do think that the left itself... and this is some advice for them, they tend to open up the chicken coop to allow the fox in because...
in a way you condemn that group of people and they've got nowhere else to go. You know, you make them into the... And then that allows another group to come in and grab hold of them. So they've got to do some serious thinking. Identity politics really isn't working and never really did work, you know, in the end. It was something that was fashioned out of the 1960s. And it's just not really having any deep application. I think even for black groups as well, it's just not working, you know.
So my sense is that you've got to speak to everybody. You've got to speak to all needs. And be more clean skinned in the way you're going forward. That's a bit of my idealism, but I don't know if that's going to work. But you can see it. You can see how. this thing is being played out. So, you know, somebody who's written this report, I also feel quite strongly, and this is what I wanted to say on this program, was that I felt that my own government
could have used my report as a mechanism to do leveling up much better. It wasn't about really race. It was about how you level up the whole country. We spoke about geography and social class. and family structure and they could have used it in a in a better way to kind of you know but i think they got scared again of race race comes along and everybody gets frightened everybody
is scared of not being, you know, they don't want to be called a racist. And so they try on different ways to avoid, you know, the truth. So, yeah, you know, and the report is still out there and it can be used. It can still be used as a tool. to, you know, to push things forward. I am actually happy also that a lot of people have repented of their sins. You know, they were coming for me. I mean, I see this in the Labour group.
In the Lords as well, they secretly tell me, Tony, that was a good report, but don't tell the whips that. It's that kind of sense that... The report was very recent. A lot of the people who knocked the report never read it. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But hopefully it can still... change a few minds, push things forward for the future? I think these reports are very dangerous, you know, because I just think that you'll never have a gain. It was a chance in a million, really, of something where...
I was left to do anything. No, I was not. People think I was manipulated and we were. We did. We just read the numbers and said the truth. I read reports after this and they all are going to tell you. Even before, especially around race, even before the report is written, this organisation is institutionally racist. Before it's even written, you know they're going to say that. So what's the point?
Whereas we really were open and we were allowed to do that. I don't know if I see that again. In some of the, I tell you a place where I do see a lot of openness, I would say that anyway, but. House of Lords have some internal reports that we have with other joint reports with the other side. And they're very good. They're very scholarly. But they tend to get shelved a lot. But I think that...
Journalists should look at those things because they're less ideological and they tend to run with the numbers and with the facts. And, you know, I'm kind of hopeful for those sort of things. So I think that that's a space where you could get some. And, of course, the work of Spike. We like your work. Brilliant. Well. Tony thank you so much for talking to me today. Sure thank you.