Allen Lane Foundation
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2000 LectureDo "People Like Us" get the best out of grants?delivered at the Ismaili Centre, 8 February 2000Dr.Richard StoneGrant makers may be tempted to say "but institutional racism is about the police. I've got enough to deal with – what with double the number of applications overwhelming us, and then those cash flow crises in the projects we support. Why can't we go on giving it away in the easy way we used to?" After a year and a half as Adviser on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, I have had to change my mind on many old ideas. One of them is them is the way I give money away as a trustee on the Lord Ashdown Charitable Settlement. The judge on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry was Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. Sir William had been a judge in the Court of Appeal for 17 + years. He was "supported" by three Advisers. They were Tom Cook, former Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire; Rt Rev Dr John Sentamu, Bishop for Stepney; and me, Dr Richard Stone, chair of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality. In all the evidence which the four of us heard about the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, we never came across any evidence of direct racism by any police officer. However, on the balance of probabilities we were unanimous that "institutional racism" was a serious factor contributing to the "collective failure" of the investigation. When we came to write the Report of the Inquiry, we quickly found ourselves addressing this kind of indirect racism. "Taking all that we heard and read into account", we wrote in paragraph 6.34 of the Stephen Lawrence Report, "we grapple with the problem [of institutional racism]". And grapple we certainly did. We collected quotes from Stokely Carmichael, from Lord Scarman, and at one point, one of the Advisers suggested an apposite quip from Sir Walter Raleigh. "But he was a slave-trader, I seem to remember" I countered. So we had one less quote, which pleased Sir William in his wish not to have too long a Report. I argued against defining "institutional racism". I gave three reasons.
I lost the argument. 6.34 goes on "For the purposes of our Inquiry the concept… which we apply consists of: The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantages minority ethnic people". Soon after the definition, comes "without recognition and action to eliminate such racism, it can prevail as part of the ethos or culture of the organisation." And then comes a typical piece of Sir William's forthright use of language. "It is a corrosive disease". "How can you justify writing that this bit of the Metropolitan Police investigation was an 'abysmal' failure?" I once asked Sir William at another stage in the Report. "But it was abysmal, Richard. That's why I used the word!" One word about which I was never entirely happy was "unwitting". Much of the racism we saw did not come up to the evidential test for "direct" overt racism. However, much of the "institutional racism" felt to me more witting than unwitting. We included "unwitting" in order to emphasise that our Inquiry had as its only legal precedent, the Inquiry by Lord Scarman into the Brixton riots of 1981. Scarman had used "unwitting" in his Report to describe the racism he found in the actions of the Metropolitan Police then. In our definition there are two words which I particularly wanted to be in. These are "racist stereotyping". Racist stereotyping is exactly what the police officers did to Duwayne Brooks. 46.28 reads "There was unwitting racism in… Inspector Groves' insensitive and racist stereotypical behaviour… he assumed there had been a fight." Mr Groves was the first senior officer on the scene. He was in charge of about 40 officers in three police mini-buses. His assumption that there had been a fight was disgraceful. There was never any evidence of a fight. Stephen and Duwayne were attacked by five young white men who used the word "nigger". Duwayne only just escaped, but Stephen was deeply stabbed twice. In less than a minute from when they ran across the road towards the two boys, Stephen had been stabbed twice with deep wounds on each side of his neck and the five had run off up a road called Dickson Road. Stephen ran for a bit, then collapsed and was in effect dead within five minutes, although he continued to breath, lying unresponsive in pools for blood for another 15 minutes or so. The notion that an event involving two young black men must be a fight was not only a fiction which Mr Groves made up. It is also the standard stereotype which the 20 or more officers under his command were only too happy to take on. Six years later, they gave evidence to us that they still believed there had been a fight, despite everything they must have seen and heard about the case on television and in their own canteens. The following day Stephen's headmaster announced to the whole school that Stephen had been killed in a fight. The false stereotype was allowed to spread unchecked. I go on at some length today about Mr Groves, because his wrong actions demonstrate the damage which racist stereotyping can lead to. We go on to say that Mr Groves further "wholly failed to assess Duwayne Brooks as a primary victim… He failed thus to take advantage of the help which Mr Brooks could have given." He should of course have asked the officers on the scene if there had been any witnesses. He knew Duwayne Brooks was the originator of the 999 call which brought him and his team, but he did not bother to find out anything from anyone. If he had, he might have shot off after the murderers up Dickson Road in one of his vehicles, as Duwayne had begged one of the officers to do. Mr & Mrs Lawrence sensed within a few days that the Met police were not pursuing the case with the energy and commitment that the case deserved. They did not need a definition of racism to conclude that the failure was because the family are black. Perhaps this is the core of their major achievement. Mr & Mrs Lawrence have woken up large segments of white, as well of black Britain to the injustices which they have suffered. Firstly, to have their son murdered in the ghastly way that he was. Secondly, to have had to live through the huge failure of the police investigation of the murder. Above all, we all know deep down that their injustices are linked with the fact that the family is black. That link is the beginning of understanding what institutional racism is. There is nothing puzzling about it. It needs no definition. Once the idea is grasped, the thing to do is set out to address the problem, not sit about agonising about which words most accurately define it. The grappling with the concept of racism came up again during Hearings in the second stage of the Inquiry. This was the time when we invited evidence from national and local organisations and individuals in five cities in England. Sir Herman Ouseley told the Inquiry that it is useless to address racism only in one corner of one institution – in our case, the police in South-East London. Only if pursued in all institutions in the country will significant change occur. After his presentation to us, I took him aside and suggested to him that he was spitting in the wind. "No government will ever take on institutional racism in all institutions of the country. Let's hope that, by dealing with it in one corner of one institution – the police in SE London, the ripples of good practice will start similar changes in the rest of the police, and then outwards into other institutions." I am glad to say I was to be proved wrong. The Prime Minister as well as the Home Secretary, when launching the Stephen Lawrence Report in parliament accepted that institutional racism exists in all institutions. They even went on to embrace multiculturalism as a positive part of Britain under a New Labour government. So, just because the terms of reference of the Inquiry refer only to the policing of racist incidents, no institution or organisation can think this is a problem only for someone else. We all have to look to our "processes, attitudes and behaviour" in whatever is our work, to deal with "unwitting" as well as, frankly, "witting" discrimination. What does this mean for trustees and staff of grant making charitable trusts, as well as for non-charitable grant givers? Firstly, I suggest that, even with the best will in the world, we cannot get it all right. The very fact that an institution is an institution means that it will always discriminate somehow or other. Even small trusts count as institutions, I'm afraid. Particularly in relation to projects or individuals from minority communities, a white led organisation [and most of those represented here are white led] is bound to be affected by bias. The same, now I look back on it, applied to the medical practice of which I was senior partner for 20 years. At the most simple level, don't we all connect most easily with people with whom we are most comfortable, most like ourselves? The way our systems work are bound to favour PLUs - People Like Us. That's with the best will in the world. With less than the best will, it is all too easy to go on running things "the way we've always done it". Especially when our energy levels are running low, and our emotional tolerance is more drained than somewhat, we are unlikely to find time to ponder whether we are giving to our applicants/patients in a totally even handed way. When our work is analysed, figures for outcomes which benefit black people are frequently worse than for white. Are white-led voluntary organisations really more worthy of our support than black-led? Are the people who band together to support the needy in their community less sincere if they are black, less imaginative in sorting out what will and what will not make an impact? When we used to holiday on the Isle of Wight, we were asked to fill a tin can for money to support the penny whistle and brass bands of [all white] youngsters going the rounds of sweet little village carnivals. It was easy to identify with those bands. Our three children are all musical, and we could easily picture them spending regular evenings blowing jolly tunes, rather than risking the menace of city street life after dark. Then I think of the Ebony Steel Band. Some of you here may remember an ACF meeting I set up some years ago, when I arranged for its director, Pepe Francis, to tell us how he and I set up the band as a charity – the Ebony Steel Band Trust for the abled and disabled. That was in response to a talk I heard given by Pepe in the 1970s. I knew of the wonderful Mozart the band played, as well as its Caribbean and pop repertoire. Pepe explained how preparation for the Notting Hill Carnival music as well as the gorgeous intricate costumes, is a year round activity. He showed clearly how the activities give young black people a strong pride in their culture. Another result was that it gave them excellent, street credible reasons for not being on the streets at slack times of the week. I pointed out that all that he was doing is charitable, even including prevention of drug addiction. That he had a boy in a wheel chair playing pans was an extra benefit, to say nothing of the promotion of good race relations since there are always a handful of white children taking an active part. Yet, what of charitable funding? I asked on the Isle of Wight about the funding for the children's music. They had little problem raising all they needed [well, almost all] for instruments, tuition and premises for rehearsals. Some came from local education budgets. Most was raised from local philanthropists, and from local authority small grants. Ebony Trust, on the other hand, cost about £25,000 a year in the 1980s. It has grown to £80,000 this year. The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea has veered from modestly supportive in some years, to verging on hostility in others. The Trust has been on the edge of collapse and closure three times in the last 15 years. He has lost half of his premises, and has no satisfactory space now in which to rehearse what has become probably the best and the largest steel band in Britain. He has refused to give up an annual trip to Somerset, where a Westminster based priest encouraged a steel band in a local girls school. Pepe would rather not be paid himself than deny those girls their float in the Carnival procession at Notting Hill. One or two London based charitable trusts have been quite generous for three or four years at a time. Pepe cannot go on by himself for ever. He so much wants to leave Ebony at a time when it has some degree of stability. This year he is once again under threat of closure due to lack of funds, and of pressure from the authorities. Though unwell, he knows he will have to keep at it for a number of years yet. This may sound like yet another sob story from one of those dreadful children's charities which have little heart shaped faces peering out from the letterhead. I do have the choice to give to one of those or to Ebony. Believe me, I'll give to Ebony first any old day. But why is it that projects like Ebony do not have access to the sorts of funding packages of the little sick children? Need I say that black organisations do not have the big funders behind them who will pay the exorbitant amount those fancy brochures cost? Fairness in Funding is a publication of the Association of Charitable Foundations. It was published in 1995, and it addresses inequalities in grant giving. Every survey quoted of Black potential recipients shows very few charitable grants going to projects serving these communities. Certainly even at the minimal level of their proportion of the population, they receive way less than their numbers would suggest is equitable. The reality is that need is often greater in recently arrived communities whose members have yet to achieve the financial security of families, like mine, which have been here for over 100 years. Really embarrassing is to read a survey of trustees and staff which asked what proportion of trust grants and total trust money they thought goes to these minorities. Analyses of the responses compared to what the trust accounts showed was actually spent, showed huge disparities. Donors thought they gave perhaps 5% or 30% to black projects. In almost every case the actual figures were more in the region of 2% to 3%. In our visits to five inner city areas, the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry found that in all of them Black people were 4 to 6 times more likely to be stopped by police. In each city I asked senior officers in public about these disparities. We were told that "you cannot rely on statistics. There are so many variables." My response was to ask how much all the possible confounding statistical factors could contribute to reducing the disparities. They all accepted that it could be no more than 1%. This means that you were still 4 or 5 times more likely to be stopped by a police officer if you are Black than if you are white. When pressed, they all agreed that the only difference between those stopped very often, and those very rarely is the colour of their skin. Trevor Hall, the most senior civil servant in the Home Office, has been stopped in his motor car 46 times by police. He has never been charged with anything, nor given adequate reason for any stop. I have been stopped only once, and that was when I was backing slowly up the hard shoulder of a motorway. Figures were released recently showing that the Stop & Search has dropped by 50% since the launch of our Report last February. The disparities have not decreased as would be expected. They have actually increased, from, an overall average of about 5% to 6%. How much then of the disparities in police Stops; in the niggardliness of our grant giving to black people in need, or for that matter the disparities in the performance, say, of Black and white school pupils, is the result of teachers and the rest of us connecting more easily on a Friday afternoon with People, or the children of People Like Us? Or me with my patients, or most of us with beneficiaries who, being good PLUs, run voluntary organisations in the ways we are used to? When analyses of what we do show us operating the same disparities as the police in the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, or in their use of their discretion in stopping black people, we are usually appalled when confronted with what we are doing. Sadly, because we are human, we then tend to go into defensive mode. We give what we really know are rather feeble excuses. We deny what we are doing - it must be "the others" who are to blame – other trustees who live out in the sticks with no contact with black people, or staff who are sloppy, or beneficiaries or pupils, or members of the public who are not bright enough, not trying hard enough, or being disruptive at the end of a hard week. Is it really so awful to admit that our institution "disadvantages minority ethnic people" – the words in our definition? After all, even the Prime Minister has admitted that all UK institutions are institutionally racist. Even if the majority, or all the staff are Black, we will still not get it completely right. None of us can hear all the needs and all the wants of the people to whom we owe a responsibility. Grants officers or police officers from a Caribbean background may well not know of the special needs of African or Asian families. The best we can do is to listen and to hear what those needs and wants are. We have to find the time to make changes in response to the needs described to us by those to whom we are responsible. Sadly, this is what the police investigating the murder of Stephen Lawrence did not do. They did not listen for the special consequences arising from the fact that this was a racist incident. They did not listen for, nor did they hear the special needs of Mr and Mrs Lawrence. "the whole history of… [family] liaison was marred by the patronising and thoughtless approach of the officers involved. The treatment of Mr and Mrs Lawrence was collective, in the sense that officers from the team and those controlling or supervising them, together failed to ensure that Mr and Mrs Lawrence were dealt with and looked after according to their needs. . . . They offended Mr and Mrs Lawrence by questioning those present in their house as to their identity, and by failing to realise how their approach to Mr and Mrs Lawrence might be both upsetting and thoughtless. This sad failure was never appreciated and corrected by senior officers… who tended to blame Mr and Mrs Lawrence and their solicitor for the failure of family liaison." I still feel a sense of outrage every time I remind myself that the officer in charge of the investigation of the murder of their son, Chief Superintendent Groves, managed not to meet the parents for over a year. To summarise this point, it is just not good enough to do what an inner circle of active members would like to be done, especially if that inner circle is made up largely of white middle aged men. Let's move from the large canvas of institutional racism to a very specific job which came out of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. This relates to those of us who are in direct contact with the public. It is about the need for "close co-operation between Police Services and local Government and Housing and Education Departments, to ensure that all information as to racist incidents and crimes is shared and is readily available to all agencies". The stabbing tendencies of the five suspects of the murder of Stephen Lawrence were well known to many people who lived on the estate where he was murdered. Those five had nearly all been disciplined by or been expelled from local schools or youth clubs, for brandishing knives, or for threatening and actually assaulting Black boys, in blatant, vicious, racist ways. There had been a series of stabbings by the five, each more vicious than the one before. Unchecked, a death was almost inevitable. Yet the police knew nothing of any of this. Local managers, street cleaners, estate staff, gardeners, milk delivery men and women, community nurses, traffic wardens, GPs like me, we must sort out ways of keeping the police up to date with racist and violent activities on our patch. We, all of us, have to understand this responsibility, and know where to report when we have concerns. The role is similar to reporting suspicions of child abuse. We all dial 999 without thinking how to do it. I believe that we have made reporting suspicions of child abuse as automatic as dialling 999. Now we have to make prevention of racist murders as basic as prevention of child abuse and as dialling 999. Addressing institutional racism is not just a sop to improve the lives of people like Mr & Mrs Lawrence. Apart from anything else, that is patronising, and smacks of a new kind of colonialism. No. I have no doubt about it. If I give a lesser service than my best, to an easily identifiable group of people, deep down I know that I am being less professional than I can be. As we were told on the Inquiry by white and Black police officers, "a racist officer is an incompetent officer". I think that applies to all professionals. And we know what it led to in the case of the 60 or more police officers involved in the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. It led to a widespread public exposure of that lack of professionalism. Sir Paul Condon says that it is the way we conducted the Inquiry which has led to the lowest morale in the Met ever. I have thought a lot about the way we did it. I really don't believe that it was the Inquiry that caused the lack of confidence in the police of many Black people – and I fear quite a lot of white people too. Surely, what caused the damage was the exposure of the collective failure of the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation. I'm afraid it was the dreadful lack of professionalism of most of those officers which has damaged the reputation of the police. When police officers act "appropriately and professionally", the words we constantly use in our Report, they will probably stop Black and white people on the streets in more less equal numbers. Then, and only then will a new trust begin between the police and their communities – and between the communities and their police. We too, in our various professions, will be rewarded with greater trust, and greater job satisfaction, when we rid ourselves of practices which are less than the high levels of professionalism to which we aspire. We have constantly to look into the ways in which we operate, to recognise the times when, in the way we implement the norms of our job, we are discriminating particularly against Black people. Both trustees and grant making staff need to look again at Fairness in Funding. Why not audit the grants we give every year or two to see whether we are as fair in the way we distribute our money as we say we are so proud of being? I'll bet most of us are operating the Inverse Care Law, so fondly trotted out by medical sociologists. "Those most in need are the least likely to benefit from the treatments available". The Inverse Care Law is usually a direct result of PLUs targeting fellow PLUs. Don't let's get caught up in dissecting definitions. Get out and make the change. Senior and junior police officers ask me how to do it, how to address institutional racism. My answer is simple, and it comes from the Florence Nightingale. She taught her nurses "When a patient comes into your hospital, you treat him like a guest in your own home." If the police had treated Mr & Mrs Lawrence as guests in the officers' own homes, they would, I am convinced, have tried very much harder to find the killers. They would have not have assumed that Stephen and Duwayne were involved in a fight. They would have heard the invaluable evidence which Duwayne could give them, and they would have known to follow the killers up Dickson Road. They would not have antagonised Mr & Mrs Lawrence. They would not have done the family the discourtesy of questioning the unusual choice of that indomitable couple to have a lawyer acting for them from the start. They would certainly would not have blamed Mr & Mrs Lawrence and their lawyer, as they did for years, for their own failures in the investigation of the murder. They would actually have acted "appropriately and professionally", and been proud of it. I was taught some years ago by homeless Bangla Deshi patients that I was not treating them "appropriately and professionally". I was giving them a lesser service than my "permanent" patients. Outside Paddington station is the largest collection of cheap Bed & Breakfast hotels in Britain. More and more families were placed by East London boroughs in these West London hotels during the 1980s. The reason for this is obvious, although rarely reported in the media. New homes at rents affordable to low income families were built or became available in London up until 1979 at the rate of about 20,000 a year. Within 2 years of the change of Government at the 1979 General Election, the number was down to little more than 1,000 a year. Bangla Deshi families began to swamp morning surgeries. Just at a time when we had begun an appointment system, they came in with three or four children, all "medical emergencies". They had to be seen, and were probably all found to have nits. Imagine what is involved in explaining to a father with little English, and a mother with none, how you apply the cream to all four scalps after a shampoo. Then no washing for a week, then wash and apply again. Then wash a week later. If I was running 20 minutes late at the start of that consultation, I was over an hour late at the end. And then he would tell me his wife had been bleeding for over a week. Oh, no. A threatened miscarriage, and I already know St Mary's hospital is closed due to lack of beds. Then some of my permanent patients left my list because they could not get to see me. "What's the point of an appointment system, Doctor Stone, if I have to sit in the waiting room for over an hour?" I flipped. "Why do all these wretched Bangla Deshis have to come to my surgery? Why can't they go somewhere else?" I did not yet know there was nowhere else. Already most of the local GPs refused to see any of them. A group of us worked with the local NHS to set up a special surgery for homeless families. No appointment system. Interpreters available. Staffed by a specially trained nurse, and local GPs doing sessions paid at the standard locum rate. Excellent! Now I met the same families in a place and at times which answered their needs "appropriately and professionally". I can tell you, I slept better in bed at night. Also, instead feeling a bit sheepish and embarrassed when I met the families, I also positively enjoyed their company, and was proud that they valued me. Over the years I came to work more with my local communities outside the surgery. I got to know Caribbean people better, and became involved in their cultural activities, like Carnival. I also began to understand the pressures on Bangla Deshi Muslims. One result has been that a significant part of my grant giving goes to relieve cash-flow crises of black organisations. Where we do make grants for individuals, we take into account the particular needs black applicants have as a result of the Inverse Care Law. Cash flow problems in black organisations do sometimes arise from poor management. The response to that is all too easily to stereotype "black groups" as not worthy of support. More constructive is to recognise that voluntary organisations which are formed by people who are disadvantaged are not likely to find people from among their number who have experience of running organisations. So the appropriate thing to do is not to pull out funding. Better to put in limited funding to keep the organisation going, while sending the Director off on management training. Or perhaps funding a consultant to do a review of what support is needed, preferably a consultant with a similar background. I arrived, a few years ago, late for a meeting of the Officers of the Association of Charitable Foundations. I explained that I had had to tuck in an emergency meeting of an organisation of which I was a trustee. We had to decide what to do because the Director had walked off with £14,000 of the trust money "Ah", said the chair of ACF, "I know all about that sort of thing". The chair of ACF was, of course, Tessa Baring. Her husband's bank knew of theft which put my voluntary organisation in the shade. It did not seem relevant to make any distinction between my organisation which was black led, whereas her husband's bank is not. The title of this lecture is "Do People Like Us get the best out of grants?". My argument today has been that neither our beneficiaries, nor we as grant givers, can get the best out of our grants if we and they are members of a cosy closed circle of PLUs. I have concentrated on the disadvantages faced by people because of colour prejudice. The discrimination which we are all bound to operate, even with the best will in the world, applies of course to many other grounds for discrimination. Read Fairness in Funding and you will find out, as I did during the research for it, about problems faced by people with physical and mental disabilities, those facing HIV and AIDS and so on. We have a wide discretion in deciding who will benefit from our grant giving. It does not actually matter too much if we are all similar in our backgrounds – PLUs. What matters more is that we acknowledge that, and deal with the cosy narrowness of thinking that can result. If we are to give our money away "appropriately and professionally" we must avoid stereotyping our beneficiaries. We have to work hard to examine our methods to look for bias towards PLUs, and get it right next time. For me, it's a relief to find out when I am still being institutionally racist. It means I have an opportunity to be more professional in my work. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry recommended more black police officers as a way to address institutional racism. For family charitable trusts, like mine, it is not appropriate to recruit new trustees from minority communities. However, one practical step which a number of trusts have done is to find good quality staff from minority communities. Most of all, we need to recognise that there are good and bad in all communities. The distinction we should be making in our judgements on how to get the best out of our grants is not whether applicants are easy to connect with and to understand, and so have presented applications which are the sort we like. No, we will have been more effective in our choices if we have clearly taken into account the needs of applicants, no matter what their background. We will be more satisfied, and so will they. Mrs Lawrence told the Inquiry about Stephen "… had he been given the chance to survive maybe he would have been the one to bridge the gap between black and white because he didn't distinguish between black and white. He saw people as people." |