Mick Hartley

Andrew Gilligan and Izzy Lyons, in the Sunday Times [£], on Black Lives Matter UK - in the news thanks to their City Airport protest - and its globe-trotting leaders:

The £200-a-night Costa do Sauipe resort in Bahia sprawls along one of Brazil’s finest beaches. Among this week­end’s guests enjoying a “unique experience with personalised service”, nine swimming pools, 12 restaurants and a spa is Natalie Jeffers, co-founder and organiser of Black Lives Matter UK. Being a self-proclaimed representative of the oppressed clearly has its moments.

Jeffers claims there is a “war going on against black people” in Britain and that black women such as herself face “extreme levels of oppression” from the state.

But even as nine Black Lives Matter UK activists — all white — shut down London City airport last week in protest against “racist” climate change and air travel, Jeffers was packing her suitcase for what was at least her seventh intercontinental flight of the past year. And as The Sunday Times reveals today, at least some of her air miles have been paid for by the Department for International Development (DfID), already under fire for “wasteful” aid spending….

This weekend’s engagement in Brazil was the Association for Women’s Rights in Development congress, where Jeffers spoke yesterday on “the state of our feminist movements” at its “black feminisms forum”.

But to many Britons — black and white — looking on last week, the eruption of the American Black Lives Matter movement in the UK seemed almost as exotic and distant as its leader’s globetrotting lifestyle.

There can be little doubt that the US version of Black Lives Matter is sorely needed. At least 102 unarmed black people were killed by American police officers in 2015, 37% of the total killed, although black people account for only 13% of the US population. But the situation in Britain is different.

Black Lives Matter UK produced a video last month claiming that “on average, one person dies at the hands of the [British] police a week, the largest proportion of them black”.

According to the charity Inquest, there have been 30 deaths so far this year following police contact. However, the vast majority died not at “police hands” but in car crashes during pursuits or after falling ill in custody. Only two of the 30 were black, a much lower proportion than in the population as a whole.

Seven people have been shot dead by British police in the past five years and only two of those were black. One, Jermaine Baker, was part of a gang armed with a replica machinegun attempting to break out an accomplice from a prison van. The other, Dean Joseph, was shot after holding a knife to his ex-girlfriend’s throat.

Last week’s London City airport action raised eyebrows even among long-standing black British radicals. Lee Jasper, former race adviser to the mayor of London, dismissed the protestors as “publicity-grabbers” who were “all called Tarquin”.

Stafford Scott, of the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign, said the only black thing in the entire protest was the tarmac on the runway.

Black Lives Matter UK justified its action by claiming Britain “is the biggest global per-capita contributor to climate change”. In fact, according to the EU, it is the 42nd biggest.

Other critics said the activists should set an example if they were concerned about carbon emissions. Jeffers, it transpires, is not the group’s only frequent flyer. Joshua Virasami, another organiser, “spent 2014 travelling from Turkey to India via Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan and Pakistan”, according to his social media posts. The spokeswoman for the airport protest, Amina Gichinga, re­cently returned from Mexico.

Capres Willow Turner, who organised London’s first Black Lives Matter demonstration, has a blog, “Willow’s Wanderlust”, detailing her extensive travels across Europe. In the past six months, she has been to Berlin, Copenhagen and on a jeep safari in Turkey.

Ilyas Nagdee, another figure in the group, describes on his Facebook page how he has recently been to Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva, Belfast, Rome, Frankfurt, Berlin, Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Bali, Morocco, Florence, Milan, Reykjavik, Sarajevo and Barcelona.

The Sunday Times has also established that Black Lives Matter UK has links to that other home of middle-class progressives, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign…..

Who would have thought?…