Unfortunately, my speech at this Saturday’s event in Weymouth wasn’t caught on film, so I thought I’d share it. I do this partly to bring awareness of how the wonderful footballer Dalian Atkinson really died.
Welcome everyone to this Stand Up To Racism Dorset event and well done for braving the elements to be with us! We’ll be hearing from a number of fantastic speakers and recognising just ten of the many people of colour who have died in police custody here in the UK – their names are on some of the placards that people are holding up.
We meet today, one year on from the murder of George Floyd. We have, at least, seen some accountability in that case, but of course there has been no justice in hundreds of others. I say ‘accountability’, because if there was true justice, George Floyd would still be alive.
And here in the UK, despite the government’s embarrassing concoction known as The Sewell Report, we know that racism exists both at the systemic and institutional level as well as the inter-personal one. We see the effects of racial discrimination in our school system, our health system, in employment, in our policing and our criminal justice system.
The US is not alone in its use of police brutality, including deaths in police custody – disproportionately of people of colour. When I was a young man, one of my footballing heroes was Dalian Atkinson who played for Aston Villa as well as other clubs including Ipswich and Sheffield Wednesday. He died in August 2016. The News reports at the time indicated he’d been suffering with mental health problems, had an altercation with police outside his father’s home and had died due to a heart condition he had. All terribly sad, I thought.
Wind forward nearly five years and we are now seeing the trial of the two officers involved: one male, one female. Evidence given at the trial over the past three weeks includes:
- Having twice tried to taser Atkinson, the male officer used the taser for a third time, deploying it for 33 seconds – more than six times the standard time of five seconds – and for the majority of that time, Atkinson laid face down on the floor and posed no threat.
- The male officer then viciously kicked and stamped on Atkinson’s head, leaving the imprint of his boot and bootlaces on his forehead. Atkinson’s blood was spattered on the officer’s boot and under the laces.
- Both officers sat on Atkinson’s body as they handcuffed him – one witness testified he was making a growling sound as if struggling to breathe.
- The female officer repeatedly used her baton to strike his body while he laid on the ground.
- Another officer described arriving at the scene and seeing the male officer standing with his foot on Atkinson’s head.
- The pathologist’s report stated that, whilst Atkinson had a heart condition, were it not for the 33-second tasering and the kicks to the head, he would not have died that night.
I cannot tell you how sickened and angry this had made me – not because Dalian Atkinson was a hero of mine, but because he was a HUMAN BEING!
We live in a time when footballers and other athletes have to come off social media due to the avalanche of hate and racism.
We live in a time when Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered in the street by a Far Right fascist and MP Diane Abbott receives daily racist abuse and death threats.
We live in a time when the progress made towards equality is being attacked and eroded and when our government uses nationalism and racism to gain votes.
We live in a time when working class people are suffering from the ravages of capitalism and greed, with low wages, insecure jobs, benefit cuts and sanctions, poor housing, health inequality and a decade of austerity and cuts to public services. No-one’s going to keep voting for that! So, this government has been creating scapegoats: persuading people not to blame the unfair and oppressive system or their despicable policies, but to blame immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees. And they’re aided and abetted by the billionaire-owned media who fill their front pages with racist anti-immigrant rhetoric and lies.
But let me tell you this: that we also live in a time when millions of decent people, up and down the country and around the world, are standing up and saying: “No More!” People are uniting to shout loud and clear: “No more to racism. No more to all forms of prejudice. And ‘Yes’ to solidarity and ‘Yes’ to love!”
Tom Lane
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