A shadow minister criticised fellow Labour MPs today over a ‘facile’ racism row with Priti Patel.
David Lammy criticised a group led by Vauxhall MP Florence Eshalomi for accusing the Home Secretary of ‘gaslighting’ them over her own experience of racism.
Their accusation in a letter came after Ms Patel clashed in the Commons with a group of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) Labour MPs who accused her of using her Indian heritage to cast doubt on black communities’ experience of racism.
The letter voiced ‘dismay at the way you used your heritage and experiences of racism to gaslight the very real racism faced by Black people and communities across the UK’.
But in an interview for the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show today Mr Lammy suggested they needed to focus on the ‘substance’ of racism in Britain instead.
He said: ‘Well, I was in Commons at the time and I thought Florence… gave a very, very emotional question where she evoked her three year old son and wanting to see injustice solved.
‘And Priti Patel’s response was insensitive. But I have to say I’m not into a facile debate about who’s experienced more racism. That’s not the point.’
David Lammy criticised the Vauxhall MP and others in his party for accusing the Home Secretary of ‘gaslighting’ them over her own experience of racism
Ms Eshalomi, 39, (left) revealed today that she was descended from slaves in Brazil. She was one of 31 Labour MPs who later wrote to the Home Secretary (right) for the way she spoke about her own background as the daughter of Gujarati refugees from Uganda during the debate on Black Lives Matter.
Ms Eshalomi, 39, who was elected in her central London seat in December in place of Kate Hoey, revealed today that she was descended from slaves in Brazil.
She told the Times her great-grandfather, Cyprian Miguel Da-Silva, was a slave in Bahia in Brazil before returning Africa and settling in Nigeria in the late 19th century.
It was her angry intervention in the Commons that sparked Ms Patel’s remarks, and she told the newspaper: ‘Maybe I need to learn as an MP not to wear my heart on my sleeve but . . . I don’t want us all to be talking about this when my three-year-old son is a teenager and is being subjected to stop and searches by the police.’
She was one of 31 Labour MPs who later wrote to the Home Secretary for the way she spoke about her own background as the daughter of Gujarati refugees from Uganda during the debate on Black Lives Matter.
In response to a letter the Cabinet minister said she would ‘not be silenced’.
Mr Lammy called on the Government to ‘deal with the substance’ around racism and not focus on individual ministers’ experiences of racism.
He told Marr: ‘Priti and I are in a similar age group so I can well understand when she says that she was called a Paki – which was a horrible term, which was very commonplace – how that would have felt at the time. But, as I say, let’s deal with the substance.
‘We still only have in this country 1 per cent of police officers that are black, 1 per cent of judges that are black, 51 per cent of (those in) our young offender institutions are from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, languishing in those young offenders’ prisons.
‘Those are the serious issues that people want the Government to deal with. Not statues, not Priti Patel – deal with the problems.’
Mr Lammy also attacked demonstrators who attacked a statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.
He rejected calls for the representation of the wartime leader to be taken down because of some of his extreme views, but said there should be a dabate about some of his views about minorities.
‘His statue should never have been attacked, and the idiots that did it deflect from the central message of Black Lives Matter,’ Mr Lammy said.
‘But is anyone seriously calling for Winston Churchill’s statue to come down? I mean, I hope not.
‘I mean, clearly Winston Churchill stood in parliament prior to the war – he was one of the only MPs speaking out against appeasement.
He then, after Chamberlain resigned, became leader and led a coalition government that defeated fascism.
‘And for all of those reasons he’s hugely respected. So I wouldn’t support the statue coming down.
‘But I recognise, of course there’s a debate about what did in Bengal with the famine, what he did in the Tonypandy riots.
‘And I did a documentary for Channel 4 just a few months ago where I looked at his attitude to Africans that had contributed to the First World War, and he was found wanting.
‘Many great figures in history are also flawed and we ought to be able to have that debate as well.