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The Bevan Foundation’s Access to Justice Project Lead, Isata Kanneh, reflects on the use of racist rhetoric in politics
Growing up in South Wales in the 1970s, racism was a daily expectation. It was such a normal part of everyday life that reacting to it was often considered a sign of being oversensitive, of “having a chip on your shoulder”. Daubed National Front slogans formed a kind of background wallpaper and television was peppered with racism (one of my first television memories was watching in silent confusion while the Black and White Minstrel Show dancers cavorted on the screen in black-face). As a child, I was generally expected to accept casual racism, from strangers and friends alike.
Our political leaders in those days were not immune to these racist overtones, and occasionally tapped into them for effect. Most famously, in the year of my birth, Enoch Powell made his Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to the 1968 Race Relations Bill. Powell used the racist imagery of “grinning picaninnies” and “the black man” having “the whip hand over the white” to provoke fear of the proposed equalities legislation, claiming that white people now found themselves “strangers in their own country” .
There is evidence that Powell’s speech brought debates about race to the fore and encouraged the open voicing of racist views. It also spurred the far right into action. Both a dockers’ strike and a demonstration of porters from London’s Smithfield Meat Market in support of Powell’s speech were reported secretly by MI5 to have been organised by far right activists. Yet the speech, demonstrations, and media coverage, had their effect. They contributed to the unashamed voicing of racist views and a rise in racist violence that lasted into the next decade.
Today, open racism is often talked about as a thing of the past. Last year, Liz Truss appointed the most ethnically diverse cabinet ever, with 7 out of its 31 Ministers (22.6%) coming from Black, Asian, or minoritised ethnic backgrounds. Despite appearances, however, a racist rhetoric has crept back into politics that echoes that of the 1970s. The National Front slogan for the 1975 EEC membership referendum Make Britain Great Again was used word for word by UK Trump supporters in 2021. And extreme racist views have emerged in startling places. In April 2023, Pembrokeshire councillor Andrew Edwards was suspended by the Conservative Party after an openly racist recording surfaced of him saying that Black people are of “a lower class than us white people” and that “all white men” should have a black slave.
Racism voiced by those in public life promotes racism in society and increases the legitimacy of the far right. An Opinium survey in 2019 found that racial and religious hate crimes increased by 15-25% in England and Wales following what the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called the “divisive, anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric” used in the Brexit campaign. The Committee drew a direct parallel between the behaviour of politicians and societal acts of hate against ethnic minorities.
More recently, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has been accused by Baroness Warsi, a peer from her own party, of “emboldening racists” following the Home Secretary’s comments about “small boats” Channel crossings and her claim that “almost all” grooming gangs are made up of Pakistani men – contrary to recent Home Office research which noted that most perpetrators are White.
Reports that the far right is planning marches in Llantwit Major and Swansea bring Baroness Warsi’s words into sharp focus. As a pub landlady in Essex stubbornly replaces the golliwog display recently seized by the police, I am reminded of the grinning minstrel faces that once passed as prime time Saturday night entertainment. Racial tensions are easy to inflame and difficult for societies to recover from. In an age when views are globally becoming more polarised, we need our politicians to lead by example and to take a clear stand against division and hatred. Otherwise, we could find ourselves in a country where racism is pervasive and we all feel like strangers.
