The EU and Race Equality: We’re stronger together

There are an estimated 25 million Black and minority ethnic individuals living in the European Union today. Over six million BME individuals here in the UK.

We all know that right now there is a raging debate about whether or not the UK should leave the EU. It’s a debate that’s tearing the Conservative party apart, but it’s also one that could split the united countries of the UK apart too. As usual with our political class the concerns of the 6 million BME British citizens have largely been ignored. But we demand to be listened to. And this is but one of many views.

From a BME perspective, whether you’re in the ‘in or out’ of the EU camp one of the biggest priorities for all 25 million is that the colour of our skin shouldn’t negatively impact our lives. You know, the basic stuff, such as; jobs, the criminal justice system, housing, health and education, not being spat at, or abused. That’s what we’d like.

Truth is in every one of the 27 EU countries race inequality has steadily got worse over recent years. With almost a decade of European economic austerity and wars raging on its boarders, the result has been not only an unprecedented refugee crisis, not seen since the 2nd World War, but also an economic crises that has literally bankrupted EU nations such as Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Ireland, only to be saved by EU monetary bailouts.

The displacement of millions of people from the Middle East and Africa, colliding with economic implosions of the EU has meant nation states turning inwards, rejecting the other, and looking for visible scapegoats which have usually been Black and or Muslim.

So a big question for six million BME Brits and the rest of the UK is this:

Is tackling race inequality in the UK and the rest of Europe best served if the UK leaves the EU?

To help answer that question I would site a number of key factors both current and historical to give greater context. The current situation toward migrants, particularly if you’re Muslim and or African can be characterised by those dark racist days we witnessed in UK Britain during the 60’s and 70’s .

For example, Europe’s disdain for Africans plummeted to new lows when EU Governments collectively decided to let African migrants drown in their thousands during their desperate crossings from one continent to another. Our leaders, including our own PM stated that if, ‘we don’t rescue them then they won’t come’.

But Africans, Yemenis, Syrians, Afghani’s and many others still came because that’s what very desperate people do. That inhuman policy, first trumpeted by the then BNP leader Nick Griffin, would not have seriously changed had Europeans not been emotionally convulsed by the heart rendering picture of Aylan Kurdi, the three year-old Syrian refugee, who was swept up on a Greek pleasure beach having drowned in one of those infamous crossings.

For Europeans that most shocking image was even more compelling because, for many Aylan looked like one of their children, white. African children had been washed up on their beaches for months prior, but sadly those Black children dying did not ignite a humanitarian response that would change governments thinking.

But as a migrant and or refugee even if you survive the treacherous journey there are many EU States that will openly tell you, regardless of your status, ‘you are absolutely not welcome here’. Those in the refugee camp in Calais refuse to even attempt asylum in France because, no doubt they strongly feel they will have escaped their war torn nations and or abstract poverty only to find extreme poverty in a nation which sees them as intensely inferior.

The case I’ve made for embracing Europe doesn’t seem that strong, not least from a migrant point of view. But that is precisely why Britain and above al Black and minority ethnic communities in Britain must be part of this debate.

If the 20 million or so BME individuals in Europe are ever going to be afforded human rights, dignity and equality we must help drive that agenda.

Let’s not forget it has been the UK and our race equality laws that have set the tone for tackling discrimination across the EU. This, we began more than 50 years ago with the 1965 Race Equality Act and the various changes right up to the Equality Act in 2010. The UK driven by us has always been the benchmark for other EU countries to follow. In recent years the EU has made its own legislative frame work on race equality which now holds the UK to account, but in truth some member States have be dragged kicking and screaming to undertake their race equality obligations.

So, if the UK leaves the EU how can we effectively lobby the other European Union States to treat people who share the same religion and look like us fairly? We simply can’t. Imagine for second, a UK Minister, with the UK outside the EU, going to Brussels to demand better treatment of Africans in their country?

And what about us here in the UK?

With the anti-Muslim, anti-foreigner rhetoric that is gathering a storm are we so naive to think once the UK pulls up the draw bridge to the rest of Europe, all that anti-foreigner stuff is somehow going to disappear? And do we really believe, as UKIP leader Nigel Farage would have us believe, that having sent back a million white Europeans, the UK would then open its arms to the Commonwealth countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean? Farage, with all your bigoted supporters do we look that stupid?

Here in the UK the present political climate is already seeing a crack down on ‘foreigners’, and it’s spin off effect to all BME communities. The Prime Minister’s own rhetoric has been ‘we’re stopping benefits for migrants’. Furthermore, we are already seeing the negative effect the recent Immigration Act which forces house letting agents to check the legal status of tenants has had. This, at a time when landlords already have no qualms about discriminating against Black people.

The truth is our challenge is both internal, fighting a government which at times seeks to undermine our race equality laws, and external, holding off the rising rabid racism in mainland Europe. We must fight to hold the race equality line here, but also support our brothers and sisters in the EU too.

The tragedy in this often rabid racist debate about Europe is how we lose sight of the enormous talent we have all around us – the energy, the creativity, the dynamism our diversity brings. All this is lost through the prism of disdain for the other.

It is only together with other BME communities in the EU and frankly with the millions of good people across Europe can we tackle the poisonous racism that is spreading like cancer in places across Europe. In engaging in this fight we serve well the UK and the rest of Europe as a place where all peoples from many different backgrounds can both live and thrive.

When it comes to tackling racism in the UK and mainland Europe, we're stronger together.

Simon Woolley