British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has said that not all ethnic groups should be treated the same by police in the wake of the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who died in police handcuffs after officers refused to believe he had been stabbed by a Sikh man.
Lammy, who also serves as the left-wing Labour Party government’s Justice Secretary, said that while the “starting point” should be equality before the law, it is not always appropriate to be treated “the same”, noting the disproportionate arrest rates of certain ethnic minority groups, such as Roma travellers [Gypsies] and black Britons.
“We are all equal before the law. So that is not the starting point, but it is the case. Recognising that in our country it is still the case that on arrest, prosecution, and conviction, I’m afraid in our prisons, ethnic minorities are disproportionately [represented] in the criminal justice system. So context can matter, but it cannot eclipse violence or the fact that we need our police to act to mitigate and deal with crimes in our communities, whatever the color of your skin or background,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Saturday.
The BBC presenter put to Lammy the guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council on its anti-racism policy, which states: “Our commitment to racial equity means producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups… It does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’ (racial equality).”
The leftist government minister denied that this meant that there was not equality before the law, stating that “the complexity is [that] equality does not always necessarily mean the same” and that it is important to “understand that context can be different for different groups.”
Lammy, who has long been at the forefront of pushing racialised politics in Britain, said that now he does not believe that police are institutionally racist in the country, claiming that the UK has “moved on from that period”. He also rejected the notion that there is “two-tier” policing in which ethnic and religious minorities are treated with special dispensation, often at the expense of the native population.
This was rejected by Reform UK Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf, who said on Sunday that he believes the police are institutionally racist against white people, citing the NPCC policy guidance as evidence.
“The only way we can ensure that we do not have another situation like the tragedy of Henry’s death is through political means,” Yusuf told the BBC. “That’s why we’re going to continue to make the argument. And nobody is going to guilt-trip us into not making these arguments.”
Justice Secretary Lammy also rejected comments from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who blamed Nowak’s death on the mass migration.
“He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it,” Vance remarked on Friday.
Lammy, who was born in Britain to Guyanese migrant parents, rejected this analysis by the Vice President, proclaiming that the murderer of Nowak, Vikrum Digwa, “was a Brit”. Despite his mother immigrating to the country from India, Lammy argued that Vikrum’s crimes had “nothing to do with mass migration”.
The Deputy PM, who is said to have struck a friendship with Vance despite their political divisions, said that during a recent phone conversation, he told Vance that he thought it was wrong about the case.
“I told him he was wrong. Now, we had an agreeable conversation, but we’ve disagreed. We’ve disagreed before on his perspective on Western civilisation. I don’t recognise that perspective, and actually, Western civilisation has always been open to the world, whether it was the Byzantine world, or the Levant world, the Silk Road has always influenced Western civilisation. So I don’t agree with his caricature,” he said.
Separately, Lammy told Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday that he “urged” Vance to refrain from commenting on internal British affairs, despite Lammy, Sir Keir Starmer, and other leading Labour figures all using the death of George Floyd in the United States as political fodder, with many, including Lammy, publicly “taking the knee” in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
In a 2021 video, Lammy said, “George Floyd looked like me, he could have been me, that’s why his death reverberated around the world. People said none of us can breathe while we still face the issues of structural racism in our lives every day.”
Lammy attempted to make the distinction on Sunday that his comments were made when the Labour Party was out of government and therefore do not carry the same weight as those made by the Vice President.
The word games continued, as Lammy insisted there was a distinction between the “righteous anger” he expressed after George Floyd’s death and the “rage” expressed by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage after Henry Nowak’s death, which he claimed was out of bounds of political acceptability.
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