Boris Johnson set to launch probe into 'all aspects of inequality', promises 'big, big effort'

BORIS JOHNSON has said he will set up a commission to look at "all aspects of inequality" following anti-racism race protests across Britain.

Writing in the Telegraph newspaper on Monday, the prime minister said there was "much more that we need to do" to tackle racism despite "huge progress", and argued the "substance" of the problem needed to be addressed, rather than the "symbols".

There have been anti-racism demonstrations across the UK since the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in the US on May 25, and Saturday saw far-right groups gather in London to counter the anti-racism demonstrators.

"It is time for a cross-governmental commission to look at all aspects of inequality –- in employment, in health outcomes, in academic and all other walks of life," Johnson wrote.

"We need to tackle the substance of the problem, not the symbols."

Johnson said there was a need to "look at discrimination in the education system, in health, in the criminal justice system, we have to look at all ways in which it affects black and minority ethnic groups". 

"And so we're going have a big, big effort, which we will be announcing very shortly," he said.

The prime minister said progress in tackling racism and improving opportunities, such as significantly more black and ethnic minority students going to university, had been "slightly lost".

"What I really want to do as prime minister is change the narrative, so we stop the sense of victimisation and discrimination," he said.

"We stop the discrimination, we stamp out racism and we start to have a real sense of expectation of success, that's where I want to get to.

"But it won't be easy. We'll have to look very carefully at the real racism and discrimination that people face."

Simon Woolley, advisory chair of the government's Race Disparity Unit, said some of Johnson's language in talking of a "sense" of victimhood was "frankly unhelpful".

"The 'Great' in Great Britain was predicated on slavery and colonialism. And its legacy we still live with today," he told BBC Radio.

"The structures that lock people out -- that's not wallowing in victimhood, that's an honest conversation. And we need to confront that."

Shadow justice secretary David Lammy said Johnson was prevaricating rather than delivering concrete steps.

"It's the sort of morning that makes me slightly weary, because it feels like we're going round in circles," said the Labour lawmaker whose report on racial disparities in the criminal justice system is among several which are yet to be taken up for action.

"You can understand like it feels that yet again, in the UK, we want figures, data, but we don't want action."

'Churchill was a hero'

Race campaigners have called for the removal of statues depicting some historical figures, and the toppling of a statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston in the southwestern port city of Bristol is considered a defining moment in Britain's Black Lives Matter movement.

But Johnson insisted a bronze sculpture of wartime leader Winston Churchill -- who some activists say was racist -- outside the British parliament in Westminster should remain in place.

"We need to address the present, not attempt to rewrite the past – and that means we cannot and must not get sucked into never-ending debate about which well-known historical figure is sufficiently pure or politically correct to remain in public view," the prime minister wrote.

Johnson condemned the "thugs" who gathered in central London on Saturday to "protect" the boarded-up statue of Churchill, which has been defaced in recent weeks.

"It was utterly absurd that a load of far-right thugs and bovver boys this weekend converged on London with a mission to protect the statue of Winston Churchill," the 55-year-old premier and Churchill biographer wrote.

"He was a hero, and I expect I am not alone in saying that I will resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square, and the sooner his protective shielding comes off the better."

Johnson suggested that instead of tearing down statues, more should be built of people regarded "worthy of memorial" by the current generation.

Incidentally, the prime minister himself had been branded racist following a 2002 article for the Telegraph in which he referred to black people as "piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles".