George Floyd copper

Let's be honest,the statue came top of his priority list when it was dragged down unlawfully.If you want to go on cut's then why wasn't anything done in the golden years of a 13 year labour government ?

 

Probably because they had lived under Nazi oppression, same with ex soviet states. Had we just been oppressed by someone I’m sure we’d all be knocking down monuments they had built to themselves. As I’ve said I have no feelings for the statues, but we live in a democracy there are ways and means to get things done and I’d like to think that was by sensible debate and discussion. It starts with a statue, but how many coppers have now been attacked. This is where mobs get countries, it’ll be like Nazi Germany pre 1934 if we aren’t careful, far right and far left fighting on the streets. Great thought.

 

The people attacking coppers over here are daft and not representative of the wider movement. It starts and ends with statues because not a single person has burnt a book, or said we should never discuss these things again.It seems to me people of colour want to talk about history quite a lot, just not a version centred around celebrating the empire.

 

'Ways and means to get things done' is why there are protests.

There actually aren't many ways and means to create change as long as overly secure people preside over others in overly secure positions of authority.

Regarding statues, people have been asking for change for 40 years. No change.
Regarding police brutality in the US, people have been asking for change for a lot longer. No change.
Regarding peaceful protests, the idea Martin Luther King was all peaceful and dutiful, absolutely not. If he had been, guess what? No change.

Change can only be brought about by threat, nothing else. We'd all rather that threat be passive and harmless, but that was never the real world, and it still isn't. Strong arguments only prevail if the sentiment is already there among the elite.

All those in authority had to do in the case of US police brutality was actually punish the endless list of wholly unacceptable incidents against US citizens, but they wouldn't. Here in the UK, the ludicrous decision to try David Duckenfield THIRTY FIVE years after the incident is an obvious 'brush under the carpet' attempt, but with Duckenfield actually alive, they had to conjure an even more ludicrous excuse not to exact justice due to the fact there was joint culpability. They won't act against their own, end of story.

I have absolutely no doubt that when Duckenfield dies, he will be retried and found guilty of manslaughter.

It's a story that occurs over and over, and here in the UK, the examples have less to do with racism than they do a crooked system incapable of punishing the rich or the powerful. Saville's crimes broke the day after he died, Prince Andrew remains protected from serious cross-examination, Grenfell Tower will be punished once everybody is dead or disgraced, not before.

That's not going to change by writing letters to MP's or strong words to limited audiences, and that's a sad fact.

 

I’ll say what I believe and that’s that divisions in this country come down to economy/class/poverty on an institution level. I work in recruitment, we work towards the equality and diversity act all across Great Britain. All BAME have the same laws, access to state schools and free health care as everyone else. There will always be a problem because of bigots, but protests won’t change that, so just what in this country do they want to change?

How does it end with Statues when areas are beginning to turn violent? This country and any decent minded person has thought hard to make an equal society in the last 30 years, including making several laws to make it equal for BAME, this movement as it escalates will damage all that work as it continues imo.

 

Because as with any protest, the vast majority are reasonable and decent people and a small minority are idiots. Same as with the football, most people can go and act reasonably but there's always a few idiots that can't for whatever reason, but you don't call every football fan a thug do you.The vast majority of people just want the history we speak about and teach our children to be the truth instead of the one sided version it currently is, alongside receiving fair and equitable treatment from law enforcement which at present people of colour don't receive. Statistically speaking, white supremacists have been responsible for more death and terror incidents in America and also this country in the past few years which shows to me the problems have got worse and not better, despite all the laws we've put in place. There's also been several notable spikes in hate crime against people of colour after various incidents in this country which to me again shows we still have some way to go.

 

Gavin and Stacey is now the next target for the cancel culture brigade. We're going to end up with nothing left on TV.

The Police Brutality issue, I'm struggling with. Theres a conflation of police brutality here and in the US. We dont have a problem with it here. In fact I think it's the opposite - our police need to be tougher. In the US, I think there is a discussion to be had about it - is it a case of 'Police Brutality', or America having a cultural brutality because it's full of guns? Again, the stats - when you look at them properly and in context - dont show systematic, targeting of any racial group.

I fear that we're going to see the death of a police officer very soon. And of violence escalates, which I think it will, we'll see the death of a civilian in these protests. And if that civilian is black, and the killer is white, the circumstances wont matter. The carnage will escalate further.

 

Again these are individuals not as a country, a country can only put laws and opportunities in place and enforce them. We can’t control individuals ideology and bigotry. If they are protesting over that then there will be no solution, and as I’ve said I think it will just escalate, increase tensions and undo a lot of good work done over the last 30 years. Shame.

 

27 police officers were injured in 1 day during the London protests. When was the last time that happened at a football match? How are you evidencing that BAME people dont receive fair and equitable treatment from law enforcement? That's not what the data shows at all.

I'll be honest, I dont know the detail about the increase in white supremacist attacks. I'll have to research that one. But the majority of death in both the US and UK is caused by black communities, on black communities. Proportionate to population distribution. My view is that it tracks back to poverty and the circumstances of the family structure, much more than it does race.

I think we've made huge progress on all forms of equality over the last 20 years. I do think it's now going backwards though, and I think it's because of how the discussion is being played out.

 

I don’t think there is any evidenceA of police violence over here but there is plenty of evidence that the powers they have are used unequally. In things like stop and search

 

https://news.sky.com/story/guys-and-st-thomas-hospitals-to-remove-statues-linked-to-slavery-after-protests-12005037

That we're having to board up war memorials as part of this movement, is disgusting.

 

I would say generally that the BLM movement is a peaceful protest - I’d say the agitators are wannabe Antifa.
This is the problem - we are clumping all protesters under one banner...the BLM movement is being hijacked and manipulated.

 

when England play abroad we cause a lot of trouble almost religiously. football hooliganism has been a huge issue in this country historically and yet nobody categorises every football fan as a thug

I'm loathe to ever quote the S*n but this is ok reporting factually despite the predictably hysterical language. https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/10846125/hooligan-firms-slashed-rivals-stanley-knives-grenades/

hooliganism on the rise again: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/football-hooliganism-rise-offences-rocket-15715381

clearly we have an issue with it still and yet nobody categorises every football fan as a thug. You are also completely the ignoring the multitude of BLM protests in the country that have been entirely peaceful and socially distanced to boot such as the Bradford protest.

it is, this is in relation to stop and search: http://criminaljusticealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/No-Respect-290617.pdf

this is in relation to BAME communities interactions with the criminal justice system.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/639261/bame-disproportionality-in-the-cjs.pdf

I think its also worth pointing out that not a single BLM supporter demanded netflix or itv or britbox pull any of the shows they have done. they have all chosen to pull those shows, as is their right as private businesses. Anyone who wants to watch the shows that have been pulled are still perfectly fine to buy the DVD for example.

 

Stop and Search is one aspect of where I think there's a degree of prejudice being shown. Personally, I think its also a mix of fear and racial profiling. i.e. if you're a Police officer and the stats show crime being committed at higher rates in black communities then I think you're more likely to stop more black people. Similarly, I'd wager that more stop and searches are used in areas of higher crime and poverty, which again, afflict more black people. It needs a degree of context. And that's the only aspect of policing and law enforcement that supports the idea of systemic racism. So if such data is to be used to examine whether there's a problem, you'd need to balance it with other data to understand. That's logical, no? And the other data shows:

You're more likely to be convicted of a crime if you're white
You're more likely to die at the hands of the police if you're white (though it happens rarely across the board).

When you account for crime rates amongst the populations racial demographic, I just don't see the evidence of systemic racism. It looks very balanced:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/849201/race-cjs-2018-infographic.pdf

The real opportunities to solve the problem, lie in why crime and poverty are more prevalent in black communities. And to do that you have to look beyond the idea of racial oppression and you have to look beyond the tearing down of statues and cancelling of TV shows.

 

Football hooliganism is rife amongst just about every major footballing European Nation. I'm think we're going off on a tangent there though, I'm not sure its relevant to the debate.

Thanks for sharing the document at the end. It looks a lengthy read so I'll have a look through when I get the chance. I've outlined my view in a response to Park though. I've also shared an overview of stats - when adjusted for crime rates I think the stats are generally what you'd expect. As I say, I think a big part of the underlying causes are poverty and family culture.

 

Yeah its not essential to the discussion, my point is just that I don't think it's fair to judge the whole movement by the actions of a small minority at one protest, when there's been loads of other protests as part of the same movement that have been completely peaceful.

Yeah its a bit of a long one but its finding are summarised fairly neatly and succinctly. I do also think there are historic issues for why people of colour are more likely to find themselves in those situations, to me it is all inter-connected.

 

I don't think we're saying massively different things to be honest, we just have slightly different lenses. I agree with your last sentence completely and its the lack of willingness to examine the complexity of that blend that I think compromises the chance of progress.

I think some of the BLM movement is misguided, but I'm not challenging the idea that the biggest % of those out protesting will have peaceful intentions.

I'll also say that I think policing is becoming an increasingly impossible job to undertake.

 

According to Government figures covering the last 10 years these are the figures for England and wales for deaths in Police custody
total deaths 163 , broken down to White 140 Black 13 other 10 .

 

Maybe this is going to be the new norm for politicians.