North Lanarkshire Council holds groundbreaking event for Black Lives Matter movement

Building on the work of the council’s cross-party Black Lives Matter Working group, the conference was chaired by Councillor Heather Brannan-McVey (Labour, Kilsyth) who is the council’s equalities champion.

Councillors Paul Kelly (Labour, Motherwell West) and Junaid Ashraf (SNP, Cumbernauld South), both also members of the BLM working group, also participated as did the councll’s chief executive Des Murray.

Keynote speakers included Scotland’s first black professor Sir Geoff Palmer and Bushra Iqbal MBE, founder of the North Lanarkshire Muslim Women’s Alliance.

Representing young people at the conference were guests from Cumbernauld Academy who spoke about their experience of racism and racial tolerance in North Lanarkshire. They introduced a short film featuring fellow pupils sharing their experience and the effect of the BLM movement.

Co-Chair of the group, Councillor Junaid Ashraf, said: “Our aim is to tackle all forms of racial injustice and discrimination across North Lanarkshire. We started by carrying out research into the experiences of the area’s BAME people across different areas of life including employment, housing, discrimination, hate crime and wellbeing.

“Our priorities are promoting diversity and challenging discrimination through the school curriculum, and pro-actively improving equality in employment for current and potential council employees. We’re encouraging everyone – especially representatives from minority ethnic communities, to ensure we meet their needs in future policy and services.”

Another aspect of the council’s work to support BLM is the development of support materials and learning resources for schools which looks at the history of slavery and its connections to North Lanarkshire.

As we reported back in August 2020, councillors unanimously endorsed a motion supporting BLM, becoming one of the first local authorities in the UK to formally back the movement. The motion also reaffirmed the stance that racism cannot be tolerated while acknowledging that many residents of North Lanarkshire suffer racism daily.