Racism rife in Commons, says MP

Dawn Butler, one of only two black women in the House, speaks out about the discrimination she has suffered from politicians of all parties

Dawn Butler, the MP for Brent South

The House of Commons, held up as a beacon of democracy, has a 'dirty little secret', according to black MPs - its racism.

Dawn Butler, only the third black woman ever to have become an MP, said she faced such frequent racism from politicians of all parties that she had to 'pick her battles' to avoid being constantly in conflict with her colleagues. Disillusioned by what she has found, she is calling for a dedicated complaints department with the power to suspend politicians and send them on awareness training courses.

'I thought people in Parliament would be progressive. It is still a shock that they are not,' she said. 'Over the past 400-plus years, the only black people - and black women in particular - in Parliament have been there to cook and clean. For some politicians, it's still a shock to come face to face with a black women with any real power. Racism and sexism is Parliament's dirty little secret.'

She is backed by Diane Abbott, the only other black woman in the Commons, who said that she had suffered 20 years of prejudice. 'In the beginning, some of it was sheer ignorance. I remember being shocked when a Labour MP asked me once whether we celebrated Christmas in Jamaica,' said Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.

'It has not helped that the Labour party powers-that-be have always seen me as "uppity" but I have dealt with the racism and misogyny by reaching out to other black women.'

Butler, who won the Brent South seat in 2005 when she was 35, described how shocked she was by the attitude of a senior Conservative who challenged her right to have a drink on the Commons' Thameside terrace, a privilege reserved for MPs.

In an article written for the Fawcett Society's new collection of essays, Seeing Double: Race and Gender in Ethnic Minority Women's Lives, Butler describes how former Tory minister David Heathcote-Amory confronted her as she went to sit in the members' section on the terrace. 'He actually said to me: "What are you doing here? This is for members only."

'He then proceeded to ask me: "Are you a member?" And I said: "Yes I am, are you?" And he turned around and said to his colleague: "They're letting anybody in nowadays."

'This man could not equate the image he saw in front of him with that of an MP. It was quite upsetting for my team and so we had to take it further.'

In an interview with The Observer, Butler went on to describe how an official complaint she made was stonewalled. 'It's not as though Parliament has a human resources department that you can complain to and expect disciplinary action from,' Butler said. 'So after being told by the Tory chief whip and the Speaker of the House that there was nothing to be done about it, I had no choice but to let it drop.'

Heathcote-Amory, MP for Wells, rejected the allegation that his remarks to Butler in September 2006 were racist. 'It is quite absurd,' he said. 'What she is actually objecting to is that I didn't recognise her as a new MP. I simply asked her what she was doing at that end of the terrace, and they are quite sensitive about this kind of thing, they think that any kind of reprimand from anyone is racially motivated.' He agreed that there was a problem with too few black and minority ethnic MPs being elected.

'The trouble is that feminism has trumped everything. We are a bit obsessed with getting more women in and I think genuinely broad-based politics is one that takes people from every social and religious group. But we are exaggeratedly courteous to anyone with a different skin colour, so the idea that anything I have said is racist is absurd.'

But Butler has also described further incidents in which she claims to have suffered explicit racism from politicians, lobbyists and police who provide security at the Commons.

'I was using the members' lift in the middle of last year, when a number of politicians started talking about how cleaners and catering staff shouldn't be allowed to use that specific lift,' she recalled. 'It was obvious they were talking about me and so I started to drop hints that I was an MP.

'They didn't pick up on my hints and continued complaining in a loud voice. When we all got out of the lift, I ran along the corridor after the particular person who had been most involved, and tried to make them realise how rude it was to talk like that; it would have been rude even if I had been a cleaner or caterer,' she said.

Zohra Moosa, editor of the Fawcett Society book, said: 'With only two black women MPs and not a single Asian woman, Parliament has never once been representative of Britain. There is no excuse for an unrepresentative democracy in this day and age but, until we change the way our institutions work, we will never have the politicians we need.'

Observer

Family of seven still search for peace after five years of race hate

Eight-year-old Khalid Mohamed was helping his parents move into their new home when some older boys on bikes started chasing his family and shouting racist abuse.

As the bewildered Somali family tried to settle into their new house in north London, adult neighbours joined in the heckling. "Fuck off Pakis. We don't want you here," they yelled. "We will burn the house down."

Since that day five years ago, the Mohamed family - who fled war-torn Mogadishu before Khalid was born - has barely gone 48 hours without enduring abuse. Stones are thrown at their house at night; lit cigarettes pushed through their letterbox. Khalid's father, Abdalla, 46, has been grabbed around the throat in front of his severely disabled daughter and terrified wife. His car has been vandalised on three occasions. His wife, Asha, is called a "baldy Paki" because she wears a scarf.

Two men were arrested on separate occasions, one of whom was found to be carrying a knife. Both were released without charge and continue to live close by.

The family lives trapped inside, fearfully awaiting the next attack and convinced that one day their tormentors will fulfil their promise to torch their home. The five children, the youngest of whom is seven, cannot even play in the garden.

As his parents can speak little English Khalid, now 13, has grown used to being called out of class at school so that he can telephone the police to report the latest attack. "We are petrified. We don't sleep at night because we are scared something is going to happen. It happens on a daily basis and all night. My mum cries every day. She believes them when they say they are going to burn down the house. They look like they could do it," he explained.

Today, the sombre-faced youngster will speak at a conference to highlight an alarming rise in hate crimes across Europe and the launch of Coalition Europe, a new human rights network. Alongside an impressive array of leading politicians and campaigners from 13 different nations gathered at the House of Commons, the nervous, slightly built boy will talk of the terror and abuse his family has endured.

In Britain, 48,000 racist incidents are reported to the police each year - almost 14,000 in the London area alone - and the figures are rising steadily. The rest of Europe has seen an even more dramatic rise, even though they do not record cases as stringently as Britain has since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

Suresh Grover, of The Monitoring Group, which supports victims of racism, said: "These violent acts range from desecrations, damage to property and physical assaults and murder. The racist killing of Dr Nithesh Kumar in St Petersburg last September was a shocking reminder of the growth of racial violence aimed at any 'dark skinned' individuals living in Russia. The country has recorded 84 racist murders in the past four years, 54 in 2006 alone, with a 17 per cent rise in racist incidents to 537."

Similarly, the growth in hate crimes has been a major problem in Germany since unification in 1990. It is estimated that over 100 people have been killed by neo-Nazi groups since then. Last year the German government recorded 958 hate crimes, a 10 per cent rise. But campaigners believe that - as these countries do not have the same comprehensive recording procedure as Britain - most attacks go unreported.

Donatella Linguiti, the Italian undersecretary of state for equal rights, will join the prominent human rights lawyers Peter Herbert and Imran Khan and other figures from across Europe to call for a more stringent examination of the problem so that far more can be done to tackle it.

Mr Grover said: "Over the last few years the police have recorded an average of just over 45,000 racially motivated attacks annually, now up to 48,000. Community groups across Britain have witnessed an alarming growth of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism since 11 September. This unique pan-European initiative will demand action from all European governments and that they bury their inertia on this issue."

For Khalid and his family, the drive to combat racist abuse is painfully close to home. The attacks have become so frequent that Mr Mohamed has set up CCTV on his house to try to gather evidence as the police have repeatedly refused to prosecute. He has multiple locks and an alarm. His children all carry mobile telephones in case of attack.

At night he watches and waits for the groups of men who stand outside his house hurling rocks and abuse, terrifying his youngest children in particular.

"Even though my dad stays awake all night, there are five locks on the door. He just sits there waiting for something to happen," explained Khalid. The family of seven has begged the housing association to move them, but to no avail.

"We are seriously scared. We are always telling the police this is really serious but they don't treat it as serious. They treat it as if we are lying," said Khalid, who wants to be a mechanical engineer, but says he now has problems concentrating on school work and maintaining good grades.

"Since all this started, I don't get as much chance to learn. We are all so scared. We just want to move away. Dad pleaded with the housing association. He said we would all live in a one-bedroom flat but they said that would be illegal," he said.

Last night, London and Quadrant Housing Association said: "We confirm that Mr Mohamed has made a number of allegations of racial harassment against residents. We have investigated all these but neither we nor the police have been able to obtain sufficient evidence to support the allegations at present."

Independent