Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 10 June 2020
I am pleased to open the debate on behalf of the Conservative Party. I thank the Scottish Government for bringing the debate to the chamber and allowing us, as a Parliament, to unite against the scourge of racism.
I asked to speak in this debate, and I speak not as a politician but as a member of a group of friends who have been connected through sport for some 35 years. We have discussed and debated and tried to tackle racism in the world in which we live, where we witness it far too often. On a Zoom call last night, we debated—sometimes quite heatedly—what I should say today, so my speech is as much about what my friends said as what I have to say.
I did not know George Floyd. I do not know who he was, what kind of character he was or what he had or had not done to attract the attention of the police, other than what we have seen and what has been reported. To be quite frank, that does not matter. What matters is George Floyd’s irrefutable right to be treated with the same dignity and respect as every other citizen would expect, irrespective of their background. What we witnessed was the abhorrent treatment of an individual by those who were charged with public protection, which I am sure that all of us still struggle to absorb, and which resulted in his death.
Let us be clear: racism pervades our society, and it is a learned behaviour. People are not born racist; it is absorbed from the society in which we live. I am old enough to remember when casual racism was commonplace across mainstream television programmes, and comedians readily appeared on television using language that we could not countenance now. It was not that long ago. The thing about casual racism is that, much of the time, the perpetrators will not accept or recognise that they are being racist. Nonetheless, it falls on us all to continually point out racism whenever we hear or see it.
I witnessed blatant racism a long time ago, when I was a wee skinny white Scots boy. I went down to compete in London, and the day before I was invited, along with the team manager, to attend a Coventry-Spurs football match. I was in the car with the manager and his two friends when we came to a road crossing. An elderly gentleman, who I assumed was a Sikh, was waiting to cross the road. The driver indicated to him to cross, but, as the man stepped off the pavement using a walking stick, the driver revved up his engine and edged forward. The gentleman nearly fell over trying to avoid the car, to much laughter from the three companions in the car. The driver once again indicated to the gentleman to cross, and when he moved forward, the driver repeated the revving of the engine. The laughter from the other three in the car grew louder. I sat in the back feeling absolutely shocked—I am ashamed to say that I was shocked into silence. I could not get my head around how anyone could treat another human being like that, let alone how others could find it funny. From that moment on, I wanted to go home. I did not sleep—I ran like a drain the next day, and I just wanted to get back on the plane.
I kept thinking that I should have got out of the car and helped that man across the road, irrespective of the circumstances. I was so ashamed of my inaction that I told the story to Phil Brown only last week, when he phoned me to talk through ideas for how we could respond. Thankfully, he understood how a young, 21-year-old, inexperienced boy could freeze in that situation. I still find myself ashamed, having told the guys only last night. I told myself then that I would not stand by and do nothing ever again.
Any discrimination is about seeking out and highlighting what makes us different. If we truly want to tackle the scourge of racism and discrimination in all its forms, we need to look at what binds us. We need to look at opportunities to share passions and experiences. For me, that was sport. My heroes were people like Jesse Owens and Muhammad Ali—not just because of their achievements, but because of the arenas in which they achieved them, which were overtly racist in the worst way. Jesse Owens won four gold medals in front of Adolf Hitler; he came home a hero and went straight back into a segregated society. Cassius Clay won an Olympic medal for his country but was not allowed to eat in a white restaurant; he threw his Olympic medal into the Mississippi river. They led the way—as did Arthur Ashe in tennis and Tiger Woods in golf—he won the Masters title at a course that black men were normally not allowed to play on. In fact, it was said that a black man could not get into Augusta unless he was waiting tables. That was not long ago. Tiger Woods now has a locker there, of course. Those were all men who overcame blatant racism and were accepted for their brilliance in their fields. They were pioneers through achievement, and their message is important to me.
Nelson Mandela said:
“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination.”
However, in a blog that I read this morning on social media, a friend of mine, Kriss Akabusi, said:
“I don’t have any answers but my lived experience tells me the current enthusiasm from the world media to talk about #blacklivesmatters will fade soon and all things will remain the same.”
And little wonder. Who remembers Rodney King, back in 1991? The global condemnation and marches were not dissimilar to what we are seeing now, nearly three decades later. What has changed? Busi has to be proved wrong this time. If we want to tackle racism, we should not just point at America. If we want to tackle racism, we should not just point at some eastern European countries with terrible records on racism. We should not even look down south and point. If we are serious about racism, we must look in the mirror and ask whether that is us—and we should never let racism go unchallenged again.
15:42