David MylesThe irony is that the latest suspension of Diane Abbott, the first Black woman to be elected to Parliament in the UK, reinforces her point about racism.
Britain is in gross denial of systemic racism and wallows in a colour blind approach to maintain the status quo. It is no wonder why when a Conservative Party donor was exposed in early 2024 for his scornful racist comments saying “It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you’re just like I hate, you just want to hate all black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot” it was trivialised by large sects of dominant society and rhetoric such as ‘it happened a long-time ago’ [2019] was used in desperation to wash away the misogynoir that stains our society. One could be forgiven for thinking that somebody made the comments in the 70s, not just 5 years ago at the time.
‘I’ve faced more racism in my five years in the Labour Party than the rest of my life combined’ – Marcia Hutchinson
Speaking on Reflections, a BBC Radio 4 show show that aired on the 17th July, Abbott said: “Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism, because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don’t know.”
Although it could be argued that Diane Abbott could have articulated her points more coherently, particularly as a Cambridge graduate, I am not convinced it would have made much difference in this latest outrage that has transpired. Deliberately misinterpreting Abbott’s comments is convenient for maintaining the social order.
It appears that The Labour Party and society at large wish to glue the lips of those that speak out about racism and specifically Afrophobia. Further evidence of this disturbing act of silencing Black voices was even apparent in the house of commons when Abbott was prohibited to speak 46 times during Prime Minister’s Questions in March 2024. Instead Abbott was left excluded from a discussion pertaining to her reporting Frank Hester, a Tory donor to the police who made contemptuous racist comments inciting violence towards her.
In the latest indignation which led to Abbott’s second suspension, she added, “You don’t know unless you stop to speak to them or you’re in a meeting with them.”
“But if you see a black person walking down the street, you see straight away that they’re black. They are different types of racism.”
This hypervisibility of humans with visible phenotypes such as non-white skin is perhaps why in 2017 an independent ethics report declared that Abbott herself is the most abused woman MP. This differential treatment across the colour line may also explain why Black children in Britain experience tormenting incidents of adultification in locations such as schools, with Child Q being a salient example in recent years.
Last year in August, a report by Amnesty International purported that the escalation of violence towards people from global majority backgrounds manifesting across the UK is a consequence of Britain’s inability to combat racism. The report stated that Black children are over 6 times more likely to be strip-searched than their White peers, and Black adults are nearly 5 times more likely to be strip-searched than White people.
The Labour Party need to hold a mirror up against itself to reveal its ugly act of complicity. The Party clearly suffers from internal racism within its camp, which arguably is only a microcosm of society at large.
The rapid response by the Labour party to suspend Abbott from the Labour Party speaks volumes about a Party that has still yet to address the racism (much of it targeted at Black women) and islamophobia presented in Al Jazeera’s brilliant investigative documentary The Labour Files from over two or three years ago. Labour’s lackadaisical response demonstrates that there is no urgency to uphold the safety for people who are ‘othered’.
In the documentary, Marcia Hutchinson who resigned as a councillor in the the ward of Ancoats and Beswick within the English North Western city of Manchester in 2021 said: ”I’ve faced more racism in my five years in the Labour Party than the rest of my life combined.”
Diane who has now been suspended twice by the Labour Party in less than two years should not only run independently now, but should have opted to do this when the Labour Party suspended her last year. She would have likely still retained her seat, as she is popular in her constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
The British Labour Party has been approached for comment.
