Racism Rife in Commons, Says MP
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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.’
(Posted on April 15, 2008)
Comments
We have speed limits, yet, people still speed. We have laws against murder, robbery, rape, child molestation, home invasion, illegal immigration, and yet these laws are continually broken each and everyday. Passing laws requiring different races and cultures to love one another is and has been as silly a notion as counting the grains of sand in the Mohave desert.
Posted by To the right of Attila at 7:31 PM on April 15
As a Brit I can tell you Dianne Abbot is a contemptable hypocrite, she condemned her colleagues for sending their kids to a private school then did exactly the same thing! She is a typical “champagne socialist”, do as I say not as I do.
Posted by AF at 7:40 PM on April 15
‘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.(FROM ARTICLE ABOVE)
AH, the good ‘ole days!
Posted by Howard in Las Vegas at 8:39 PM on April 15
There were blacks in Britain 400+ years ago? Are you kidding??
They didn’t belong there then, and they don’t belong there now. Too bad, she’s just such a victim of a country that’s given her everything. My advice to her (and others of like mind) is to take a hint—go home!!
And no, Britain is not your home.
Posted by kitty at 8:58 PM on April 15
I am sure there is “racism” there. Perhaps those aweful nasty English should go back to England, where they came from, and stop bothering blacks.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 9:27 PM on April 15
“They didn’t pick up on my hints and continued complaining in a loud voice.” Says Dawn Butler, only the third black woman ever to have become an MP.
I think Butler, herself, failed to pick up on any hints from the subtle disdain she was subjected to in this article. How is it possible for white parliamentarians not to miss the one or two black female MP’s sitting in the House of Commons amongst a sea of white faces?
“But we are exaggeratedly courteous to anyone with a different skin colour…
This statement is very true. Today’s White folks are so hypocritical and disingenuous because years of effective brainwashing have usurped any thread of self-honesty and turned us into a white lump of emasculated liars.
Posted by at 9:54 PM on April 15
I remember being shocked when a Labour MP asked me once whether we celebrated Christmas in Jamaica,’ said Abbott
Now Diane, what’s wrong with someone genuinely wanting to learn about your birth country? If you ask a Dutch if the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is celebrated in Holland as it is in England which is the case in both countries, is that ignorant and racist? You’ve made plenty of insensitive remarks publicly in your political career. The British public should be so shocked and demand appropriate recourse.
But Butler has also described further incidents in which she claims to have suffered explicit racism… 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…continued complaining in a loud voice…it would have been rude even if I had been a cleaner or caterer,’
Dawn, is that the best example of racism you can cite? You were the only one in the elevator who was so inclined to make that connection that because you are black woman, and cleaners and caterers are largely comprised black women, their conversation applied to you. That’s a sign of low self esteem. The fact that they continued their discussion suggests they didn’t make any connection to you nor did they expect you to rudely intrude on their conversation.
Diane and Dawn, you are best of friends at your office because of your racist, err, I mean racial connection. Do you ladies want to know what real racism is? It’s not about being mistaken for a cleaner and being discouraged from using an elevator. It’s about being denied from that elevator altogether and everywhere else in Parliment. It’s about obligated to sit on a different part of the bus. But the very fact that you two have seats in the core of British government, and nothing to stop others like you, is proof that real racism, at least directed at Afro-Caribbeans let alone discrimination faced by Britain’s indigenous people, is imaginary. Yet your hypersensitive, secret inferiority complex turned aggression makes you inclined to project, force fit and amplify a racial connection to everything.
But we are exaggeratedly courteous to anyone with a different skin colour, so the idea that anything I have said is racist is absurd
See how they go out of their way to please you? But remember, they can’t accommodate you all the time. They don’t do that among themselves. On the contrary, inter-party memmbers have to be tactfully nasty to each other. So next time you encounter resistance or not get your way, it’s not because of racism. I know you attribute all set backs to racism but that’s the truth.
Posted by Reality Check at 9:59 PM on April 15
‘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.
That’s because it’s England, you shouldn’t be in the country, much less the Parliment.
Posted by PincheGabacho at 10:17 PM on April 15
Zohra Moosa’s quote at the end implies that you can only be represented by someone who shares your race. Is that what these people believe?
Posted by Reader-1 at 10:27 PM on April 15
What a sense of entitlement these people have.
If, by some stroke of luck, they elected a majority of ethnic women, I doubt they would complain there wasn’t enough white men.
Posted by at 10:41 PM on April 15
If you and I disagree, we disagree. If a person who happens to be white disagrees with a person who happens to be black, it is racism. I am so sick of these whiney jerks I could puke. Everyone I know is getting a belly full of their constant whining and crying about every thing under the sun. There have not been cuss words invented yet to describe our feelings!
Posted by Trisket at 11:31 PM on April 15
“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.’
This is typical of the touchiness that these people have when they are quite rightly asked if they have a right as a person who may be a gate-crasher to be in a high security area where bombing and radical Muslim attacks are potentially a major problem. The race card is once again used as a weapon. This in an area where there can be up to 650 people present. You dare not make a joke even with some without litigation being the result.
Posted by Brian Deller at 11:32 PM on April 15
My favorite part is how this paragraph ends without any sense of irony:
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.
Quite right there old chap, more black and women minority MP’s being elected will make the problem of sensitive black and female MP’s go away in a jiffy by Jove!
Posted by white, but not unjustly proud at 12:13 AM on April 16
Poor old black me, if these women want to see some real racism, they should paint themselves white and go to “ANY” major inner city, in the good old USA, after dark.
Posted by The Old Sage at 12:27 AM on April 16
“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.”
Well, maybe this Comrade Butler should go to brain buttressing or backbone bracing training? Of course this would be through a “dedicated complaints department,” that could be specifically established to deal with the bewailing and erroneous parliamentary members of color, who can make it through a general election, but can’t seem to grasp that becoming an MP isn’t the equivalent replacing to Queen Elizabeth on the throne.
This phenomenon is not unknown in the USA, as the arrogantly irascible former Congressgorgon Cynthia McKinney clearly demonstrates.
She who assaults Congressional police officers, for not recognizing that she was the Oprah of our lower house!
Jeepers, someone outside of your gilded district or constituency, doesn’t know who you are and this requires “awareness training courses;” or put another way, a bludgeoning in the guts with the Diversity Gestapo’s truncheons?
As always, God help us all!
Posted by John PM at 12:59 AM on April 16
I remember being shocked when a Labour MP asked me once whether we celebrated Christmas in Jamaica,’ said Abbott
Anyone with two functioning cortical cells to rub together knows that Jamaica is a Christian country, and by extrapolation, that they obviously celebrate Christmas. Whoever asked this question is an idiot, to be sure, but I see nothing racist about it.
Posted by qwerty at 3:30 AM on April 16
“There were blacks in Britain 400+ years ago? Are you kidding??”
There are some that claim that Black people were in what is now England, before the English arrived (ie, Angles, Saxons and Jutes in the 5th Century AD.) The “evidence”. A small carved figure with African features found at Hadrians Wall, apparently of a Roman legionary from NW Africa.
“But we are exaggeratedly courteous to anyone with a different skin colour…”
You can never win with these people. If you do make allownaces, and are over polite and careful never to make any remark that may be perceived as “racist”, you are accused of being “patronising”.
Posted by IrishBlood-EnglishHeart at 8:55 AM on April 16
The notion that Blacks have been in Britain for over 400 years is a recent, subtle, but obviously influential ideological device that has been promulgated throughout the Black community in order to reform the idea of entitlement and change the balance of power. Blacks have only been in Britain as a “community” for barely 50 years. Roy Kerridge termed this ideology “Black Triumphalism” in his book on the subject, “The Story of Black History.”
Posted by BB Wolfe at 12:23 PM on April 16
Diane Abbott - that doughty anti-racism campaigner - will be best remembered, if she is remembered at all, for her complaint that black patients in London hospitals were having to suffer the ministrations of “blond, blue eyed nurses from Finland”.
Posted by jrb from Blighty at 2:10 PM on April 16
I do not have a lot to say that has not been said by others. I have mentioned Dianna Abbott before:
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/03/migration_has_b.php
Incidently, whilst googling Dianna Abott Amren I found this Amren gets a mention on page 13, section 18:
http://resource.nusonline.co.uk/media/resource/CD10%20Resolution%20Documents.doc
It is worth a look at this document if only to see how the other half think!
Posted by John, Somewher in Staffordshire at 4:53 PM on April 16
When will the lying stop? The feel-good public relations spin
doctoring that says all cultures are equal? They arent. I have absolutely no desire to repress anyone, I just want to be
left alone to enjoy my European/Western Civilization heritage without having to dilute it to nothingness to make people who have no business here happy.
Posted by at 7:33 PM on April 16
If only Powell had been listened too. So many problems could have been avoided.
Posted by at 8:23 PM on April 16
“The need to associate with others like ourselves is an immutable feature of human nature and so ethnic identity refuses to die. It is interesting that despite so much multicultural propaganda, a British poll found that 31% of the population still confessed to being racially prejudiced, while another study showed that most Britons harboured feelings of suspicion toward outsiders.”
How Love of the Stranger is Killing Us.
http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/ (weekly bulletins)
Posted by at 9:44 PM on April 16
If racism is so bad, leave the country. You are not wanted.
The situation would have been worse if you were Welsh.
Posted by flyingtiger at 12:09 AM on April 17
“Do you ladies want to know what real racism is? …It’s about being obligated to sit on a different part of the bus.”
If being obligated to sit on a different part of the bus is racist, at least it’s equally so toward the races involved. Being bullied, taunted, stolen from, beaten up, or even killed riding the bus; that’s racist. Apparently, some racism is worse than others.
Posted by at 1:57 PM on April 17
These people need to get out of the UK now!
Has it ever dawned on them that there would be no racism issues if they were in Africa? They’d at last be able to bask in the greatness of their culture and govern themselves without worrying about whitey coming after them. I’m no racial supremacist, I could care less who’s smarter but the fact that blacks can’t seem to survive without whites or being in a white country speaks volumes about intelligence and competence.
Posted by RealityCheck at 3:04 PM on April 17
England, once a great and proud nation whose flag flew around the world has been reduced to an island of fools, morons and half-wits. You adopted the warped idea of giving up your Anglo Saxon race for a blend of everything and anything and now your self-destructing.
Each race belongs to it own nation, a lesson that will be learned the hard way!
Posted by Saggezza at 4:41 PM on April 17
”The notion that Blacks have been in Britain for over 400 years is a recent, subtle, but obviously influential ideological device that has been promulgated throughout the Black community in order to reform the idea of entitlement and change the balance of power. Blacks have only been in Britain as a “community” for barely 50 years. Roy Kerridge termed this ideology “Black Triumphalism” in his book on the subject, “The Story of Black History.” ”
Posted by BB Wolfe at 12:23 PM on April 16
Come on folks cut the brothas a bit o’ slack here. Blacks are indeed a mighty people & built the Pyramids in Egypt 3,000 years ago using their highly-sophisticated black-invented spaceships. Evr’ybody knows that. [source: Rev. Elijah Mohammed, a great black holy man]. So what was to stop them zooming across to England & leaving a few carved trinkets for the poor, dumb-struck natives before heading for Alpha Centauri or some other distant star?
& those alleged black cleaning ladies in Parliament, I reckon, are just another little gift left by the brothas who, as usual, didn’t hang around for afters. On a more serious note it seems that the amount of minority demands here in UK is on a daily basis & blacks are becoming emboldened on a scale I have never seen before. The vast amount of third-world immigrants being ushered in by the treasonous elites, to London especially, & the drive to turn out black voters for the London Mayoral Election in May [Operation Black Vote, [OBV] are simply voting fodder to allow them to continue their cultural genocide of the indigenous British people. The pseudo-Marxists have virtually taken over London. It will all end in tears. And violence.
Posted by dr dees brainwashing elixir at 4:07 PM on April 18
England, once a great and proud nation whose flag flew around the world has been reduced to an island of fools, morons and half-wits.
That wasn’t the English flag, it was the Union Jack.
Posted by qwerty at 5:23 AM on April 20
I wonder what exactly is the true root cause of the sickness that makes so many of the political and cultural British and particularly English “elites” so eager to betray their people and destroy their own culture? There is a really good book waiting to be written here by an enterprising sociologist. Britain had so many traitors during the war and afterwards in the cold war, on a per-capita level probably far, far more then any other nation. Most like Kim Philby came from the wealthy upper classes and lived lives of privilege. They were not motivated by money, greed or avarice. Their only motivation seems to have been a deep-seated wish to destroy their country and its institutions. They also tended to hold far-left political views. Very peculiar.
Posted by at 12:01 AM on April 21