A PROMINENT advocate for racial equality criticised the government’s ongoing denial of institutional racism, saying that it has damaged its credibility.
Dr Halima Begum emphasised that a number of instances immediately contradicted the government’s controversial study on race, which claimed to find no evidence of institutional racism.
After three years, she is resigning from her position as director of the eminent think tank for racial equality, the Runnymede Trust.
She used the Baroness Casey report, incidences involving the black England football players at the Euros, and other recently exposed discrepancies faced by people of colour in Britain as examples.
Begum observed key social and political events during her time as the head of the Runnymede Trust, which began in 2020, including the Covid-19 epidemic and the Black Lives Matter protests.
She stressed the need to implement the demands of young activists into policy reforms that might help future generations as well as the obligation of doing so.
FIVE former London police officers acknowledged using WhatsApp to send each other extremely abusive racist messages, which included references to Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and other members of the royal family.
Three of the messages featured racist comments about Meghan, the wife of King Charles’ younger son, Prince Harry. Her father is white, while Meghan’s mother is black.
Several of these communications made mention to Rishi Sunak, Britain’s first prime minister of colour, as well as the late Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip.
Others mentioned Charles’ eldest son and heir Prince William and his wife Kate.
The five men each worked in a different division of the police but were all former members of the Diplomatic Protection Group, which has seen one former member found guilty of murder and rape and another sentenced to prison for committing 24 rapes and other sex offences over the course of two decades.
An independent study released in March found that the London force remained institutionally racist, sexist, and homophobic notwithstanding its recent scandal-ridden history.
Mark Rowley, the organisation’s new leader, has pledged to remove any unfit personnel from among its more than 43,000 officers and employees.
After a BBC News night investigation revealed the men had sent the texts between August 2018 and September 2022, a time when they had all left the police, the five retired officers were prosecuted.
IN THE most recent Labour Party re-shuffle, former barrister Shabana Mahmood MP has been named Labour’s new shadow justice secretary.
Mahmood, a national campaign organiser who joined Keir Starmer’s team in 2021, succeeds Steve Reed, a former Law Society employee who transitions to rural affairs.
Mahmood was born and raised in Small Heath, Birmingham, and later attended Oxford University’s Lincoln College, where she earned a law degree.
She was given a scholarship by Gray’s Inn (one of the Inns of Court – the historic societies that educate and train barristers in England and Wales) to finish her bar studies at the Inns Of Court School of Law after graduating from college.
After completing her pupillage at 12 King’s Bench Walk in London, she went on to a major legal firm where she focused on professional indemnity litigation.
Mahmood was elected to parliament in May 2010 and was one of the first female Muslim MPs in the country.
She has held shadow ministerial positions in the past, including chief secretary to the Treasury, minister of higher education, and minister of business.
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