Deputy Prime Minister: Nick Clegg

It was a clear and unequivocal message, sincerely put, and above all timely.

The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, on behalf of the Government, gave the Scarman Trust lecture at Brixton, the spiritual capital of Black Britain, to say: Yes, we have made progress, ‘we are in a very different place to where we were 30 years ago,’ but ‘if you are from an ethnic minority you face unfair hurdles when you strive for success’.

To best explain his argument, he used sport both as a metaphor - the level playing field - and an actual example to illustrate how racial prejudice holds back talent and what occurs when it is removed. ‘Take football’, he argued, ‘when Premier League teams recruit players now they don’t care about race. They care about their ability’. No surprise then that a ‘level playing field’ has produced a quarter of all players in top flight football who are Black. A quick glance off the ‘level playing field', - football management - and Clegg pointed that there are no Black Premier League managers and only two across four top flight divisions.

Clegg understood that although his illustration to a football-mad nation might resonate with some, with others, they would quickly use the stereotypical argument that ‘well, that’s what they are good at, sport, but not much else’. Funny thing is that the same ‘naysayers’ stated when I was a child, that Black players couldn’t be goalkeepers or defenders because we couldn’t hack it in the winter when things got tough.

The Deputy Prime Minister therefore turned to what some see as the opposite to sporting prowess; the world of business. His argument was that the nation is facing serious economic challenges and part of the solution must be to remove those race penalties that hold back Black entrepreneurs and with it a nation's greater success.

Highlighting the challenge, he stated,

"More than 35% of British Africans want to start their own business. Only 6% do."

This he suggested had something to do with the banks not supporting Black entrepreneurs,

"Past evidence shows that firms owned by individuals with Black African backgrounds are four times more likely than so-called white firms to be denied loans outright. And that Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Black Caribbean and Black African-owned businesses have been subject to higher interest rates than White and Indian-owned enterprises."

Given this is the Government’s first major speech on tackling race inequality, Clegg’s tone and tenor will impress many. Over the last year or so just talking about race inequality has been met with derision, denial and in extreme cases – football - death threats. Clegg turned that on its head. He spoke about the system failing Black people in education, and that though the summer's disturbances were not race riots, they did have race factors. In all these issues around race inequality, he asserted the Government use "deal with it" with a ‘steel fist’. Strong words indeed.

Labour’s Diane Abbot quickly came out to support her political opponent.

"I welcome this proposal. I have run a network for Black female entrepreneurs since the 1990s. It is called “Black Women Mean Business." The biggest problem that people came to me with was difficulty accessing finance. Sometimes the issue was finance to set up in business at all, but it was also problematic obtaining finance in order to expand. In the current climate the problem is worse than ever."

The real test will be whether or not the Deputy Prime Minister can persuade his Coalition partners to put words into deeds. In 1997, the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair made a similar speech about how we ‘cannot be a beacon of society’ whilst racial prejudice holds back Black talent. However, with no strategy nor political will, we hardly moved forward.

Nick Clegg has taken a big and bold step, but it will be meaningless if he doesn’t finish the journey with actions to back up his bold words. If he is serious, we in Britain's Black communities will help him. We have told senior politicians for a very long time that everyone benefits when we can all fulfill our great potential.

Simon Woolley