Dr.George Barnsby : Kamaljit Rana (IWA) : John Kyte (ex-chair BCC governors)
141 Henwood Rd. Wolverhampton WV6 8PJ. Phone & Fax 01902 751888
website: pages.unisonfree.net/friendsofbilstoncollege
How Institutionally Racist is Wolverhampton City Council? The answer is VERY, we fear.
Firstly the statements it makes are Institutionally Racist e.g. Our Best Value Performance Plan March 2001 is an example. This Plan was drawn up by twelve members of Cabinet teams, all of them white. It makes no mention of the existence or needs of our ethnic minority population now about 20% of the City's population. Achievements in almost everything under the sun are recorded including maintenance to Wolverhampton's roads and footpaths, making sure new books get on to library shelves more quickly, but nothing on improving the state of race relations in Wolverhampton.
A second example of institutional racism is a Wolverhampton City Council document in three parts Part One: Performance Summary March 2002. Part Two: Summary of Council Finance and Part Three: Council Tax Explanatory Notes. It is the first part Performance Summary which concerns us here. Again it is drawn up by twelve white Councillors. Again it makes no mention whatever of ethnic minority people and their concerns about racism in the City council.
Nor do these all-white Councillors display much concern for our ethnic minority peoples. Representatives of the City Council on the committee of Wolverhampton Race Equality Council are confined to the black Councillors and an occasional non-cabinet Councillor. The result is that white talks to white, happy in their conclusion that nothing much is wrong with race relations in Wolverhampton.
But it is the actual number of visible ethnic minority councillors that is now very worrying. There are no African Caribbean councillors on the city Council. There are at present only three Asian councillors. In a Council of sixty members this is only 5%. Compared with neighbouring councils, this is poor. On Sandwell Council, for instance there are currently 11 Asians in a total of 24 Wards each with three seats which means that Asians form 15% of the Council.
In Birmingham the number of visible ethnic minority councillors is also superior to Wolverhampton. With 15 Asian councillors in a council of 117 their percentage is 12.8%. This includes one ward (Small Heath) where all three councillors are of the People's Justice Party. In addition Birmingham Asians hold two Cabinet portfolio posts whereas in Wolverhampton Asians hold none.
We are beginning to trawl all areas where there are mega numbers of ethnic minority people which we define as 15% or more. We fear Wolverhampton will come low in this category. We have at the moment only looked at Leicester. Here there are 27 wards with two councillors each. In two wards both Councillors are Labour Asians, one of whom is actually a woman! A total of 9 Asian councillors means that 16.7% of Councillors are Asians.
Another area of concern is education. Only 4% of teachers in Wolverhampton are from ethnic minorities, but 40% of the children in our schools are EM children. There are no visible ethnic minority Heads of schools in Wolverhampton and EM teachers have always, and still are, leaving for Sandwell, Birmingham and elsewhere where opportunities are better.
The only solution is for all Wolverhampton councillors and leading officials to take a course of training in Race Relations organised by an independent Race Relations Training body approved by the Home Office.
This examination of the institutional racism of Wolverhampton city council is an on going project.