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Title: Racism@UK
Author: Solidarity Federation
Date: Summer 1999
Language: en
Topics: racism, United Kingdom, Direct Action Magazine
Source: Retrieved on April 7, 2005 from https://web.archive.org/web/20050407003451/http://www.directa.force9.co.uk/archive/da11-features.htm
Notes: Published in Direct Action #11 — Summer 1999.

Solidarity Federation

Racism@UK

There’s more to racism than nailbombs, knifings and the odd fruitcake.

What does racism mean to you? Here’s 3 possibilities; individual

prejudice; institutionalised discrimination, or; the erasure of the

point of view of people who are not white.

Actually, it is used to describe all of these, but the first gets a

disproportionate amount of attention. As a result, the reality of racism

is often painted as merely a product of ignorance and prejudice (and

therefore predominantly working class). Nothing could be further from

the truth.

It is no coincidence that it was the Daily Mail, hate sheet of the

middle classes, who first named the suspected murderers of Stephen

Lawrence. As the media circus arrived in town, racism was once again

firmly framed as being about evil people. Furthermore, the style and

attitude of the suspects was identifiably working class, which also

helped distance “racism” from the Mail readership.

Now, the antics of the racist working class and their effects on those

who are subject to their hatred are not in doubt. The occasional (and it

is occasional, fortunately) overt violence they use causes horrendous

damage to people’s lives. But even this pales into insignificance when

compared to the sheer scale of institutionalised discrimination, which

permeates all capitalist countries, not least ‘multi-racial’ Britain.

Bear with me for a moment, while I slip into cultural studies jargon to

describe how racism operates — I do this simply because culture is a

critical part of social control:

‘An ideological mechanism serves to distort reality in order to displace

racism from the institutions of power onto the white working class. In a

culture dominated by the assumption of individual responsibility and

will, there is a tendency to regard the motive as more important than

the consequences of any action. The unspoken assumption is that the

subject of the action is all-important, and that the object is of

significance only in relation to its subject’.

To put it another way, here is an example of what is meant by ‘subject’

and ‘object’, and how ‘everyday’ racism works.

witch-hunt

The story starts back in 1990, when workers and union activists in the

Housing Department of Hackney Council in East London began to complain

about a witch-hunt against black, and particularly African workers by

management. This witch-hunt turned out to be called an ‘anti-corruption

campaign’ initiated by the Director, Bernard Crofton. Crofton was

adopted by liberals as the hero of the piece, an ‘anti-corruption

campaigner’. He was the ‘subject’.

The black and African workers targeted by the ‘anti-corruption campaign’

were the ‘objects’ of the exercise. Predictably, the media adopted the

subject’s point of view — that it was indeed an anti-corruption drive.

They ignored the alternative point of view — that black workers were

subject to obsessive scrutiny of their professional (and private)

conduct with the intention of finding enough dirt to sack as many as

possible of them on trumped up charges (for example, alleged mortgage

irregularities).

Because it was an ‘anti-corruption’ drive, it must have been uncovering

corruption, and therefore its opponents must have had something to hide.

Thus, from the start, attention was firmly placed on the so-called

‘corruption’, involving such issues as black housing workers allegedly

colluding in the mounting council rent arrears. The wider question of

why these workers (plus squatters and tenants) should be blamed for

Hackney’s housing crisis instead of the government, the council and the

(white) management for underfunding and the mismanagement of resources

never really surfaced, even in the anti-Crofton camp.

For those who accused Crofton (and his campaign) of racism, the media

attention was on his motivation, not the way the ‘investigation’ of

black staff was carried out. The technique of using a unit of

‘untouchable’ ex-police, and its focus solely on (black) workers rather

than management was ignored. For the defence, Ken Livingstone, among

others, was wheeled out to testify to Crofton’s record of anti-racism

and commitment to equality. Having absolved Crofton of ‘racism’, as they

defined it, the council was conveniently blind to the institutionalised

racism going on through the very practice and conduct of the

‘anti-corruption campaign’.

class hunt

Class makes a difference in how non-white people experience racism. The

lower down the social hierarchy you are, the more restricted the

definition of what ‘appropriate behaviour’ is for you, and therefore the

wider the scope for disciplinary action. In other words, you cannot get

away with as much deviation from the norm as a middle class person can.

Another practical problem is that, if you are the bottom of the pile,

there are far more people above you. This means there are far more

people with the power to discriminate against you.

On the other hand, the further up the hierarchy you are, the more likely

you are to be useful to your superiors, and therefore get their support.

Crofton came unstuck when he made the mistake of targeting someone who

was part of, or useful to, the ruling clique in the local Labour Party,

when he accused Personnel Director Sam Yeboah of obstructing an

investigation into failures to check references of West African job

applicants. Racial discrimination is OK, but not if it affects the

allies of power.

As an aside, Yeboah himself strengthened structural inequality and

discrimination, by presiding over restructuring and overlooking

procedures designed to prevent promotion through such ‘re-organisation’,

which is an easy way for managers to promote themselves or their friends

— corruption! Restructuring of Library services, for example, almost

eliminated professional and supervisory grades, destroying opportunities

for low-paid workers to advance through the system. This

disproportionately affected the prospects of low paid, black workers,

serving to keep them in a position where they can be most easily

subjected to the more extreme measures taken by Crofton’s ilk.

It might seem contradictory that an individual who later became a victim

of racial discrimination was also part of the structure of

discrimination, but reality is like that. Just as thirty years ago

sociologists started trying to convince us that class no longer existed

because it was possible to attain high socio-economic status from the

humblest of origins, so the existence of a black middle class is cited

as evidence of the erosion of racism. In reality, social mobility can

co-exist with an oppressive class structure. Equally, individual black

self-advancement can co-exist with institutionalised racism.

job hunt

So, Crofton’s comeuppance came when he seized on failures to check

references of West African job applicants, and he took on Yeboah. The

give-away of his racism was in the fact that he focused only on the West

African job applicants, and the fact that Yeboah is a West African name.

His triumphant exclamations followed — here was evidence of the

corruption he had been looking for. As the media gullibly joined in, we

were treated to the story of the “West African mafia” helping itself to

jobs in a lucrative racket. If only Crofton had looked at a few non-West

African cases, he would have found that what he had ‘uncovered’ was not

corruption, but simple incompetence. Hackney Council’s recruitment

procedures are crap. Nothing new.

In typically incompetent fashion, the ruling clique sacked Crofton. He

promptly went to the media, who swallowed his ‘anti-corruption campaign’

pitch whole. A couple of allegedly corrupt West Africans was all that

was needed to sanction racism. The ‘object’-centred view prevailed.

Eventually, Crofton was reinstated by the Council, amidst much posturing

over the supposed latent ‘loony left’. Crofton emerged as the media’s

moderate liberal, and hero of the story.

In August 1998, Yeboah won record damages for constructive dismissal and

racial discrimination against Crofton and the Council. Post-Steven

Lawrence, the media’s attention is now finally drawn to the “new” (sic)

concept of institutional racism. But I will eat my hat if the BBC does a

special investigation into institutionalised racism in Hackney Council.

And as for special investigations into all the other tiers of government

and control, or even in the liberal media itself...?!