I MET a nurse called Veronica the other day. She told me how, when she first went to church in England and sat down in a pew, the other people there got up and went to sit elsewhere. Veronica is black. That was 20 years ago, and you might say that everything has changed since then. After last Saturday, I am not so sure.
Under the last government, the Sewell report declared that “we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities” (News, 9 April 2021). A very different story was told at a gathering in Oldham at the northern celebration of 40 years of the Catholic Association for Racial Justice (CARJ).
Intriguingly, the opening address was given by a medieval historian. Alison Lowe’s mother was a white Irish Catholic, and her father an immigrant from St Kitts, in the Windrush generation. Alison grew up in a poor area of Leeds, married at 17, and suffered a decade of domestic abuse, before escaping to university, with a toddler and a three-week-old baby, where she became captivated by medieval history, producing a study of Edward II and homosexuality.
At the same time, she became a Labour councillor for a deprived area, and embarked on a political career that has taken her to the post of Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime for West Yorkshire. As befits a historian, her Oldham talk went back to Sir Robert Peel’s principles from 1829. These required policing by consent, officers reflecting the people whom they policed.
Today, black people say that, when they are in trouble, the police don’t come — but that when black people are seen as the cause of trouble, the police come heavy-handed. Black people were four times as likely as white people to be stopped and searched, she reports. They are three times as likely to find force used against them, twice as likely to be arrested — and seven times more likely to die after police restraint. Yet, although they are arrested at higher rates than their white counterparts, they have a lower conviction ratio. Small wonder that consent is in question.
As for representation, black people make up about four per cent of the population, but only 1.3 per cent of police officers. Black officers are under-represented at every level. Only 0.7 per cent of inspectors and chief inspectors are black.
Yet progress is being made. During the recent riots, West Yorkshire was noticeably quiet, something that Ms Lowe puts down to her 18-month initiative in which police extensively consulted local communities and faith groups.
Two weeks before the national riots, police in West Yorkshire had been involved in a stand-off with Roma families, after social services arrived to take some Roma children into care. A bus was set on fire. Community leaders told the police that their presence was making things worse; so officers pulled back by two streets, and the violence abated.
The 18-month consultation had built trust on both sides between police and people, Ms Lowe said. “Police can be arrogant . . . but [this time] they listened and left.” Other police forces are now studying the West Yorkshire community-cohesion project.
As for Veronica: she set up a CARJ group in her parish in Liverpool, where she is now in charge of welcoming newcomers.