We can only tackle racial harassment by working together

Everyone has the right to feel safe and live a peaceful life. Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone in our city.

Here in Brighton and Hove, where we are a City of Sanctuary, the Racial Harassment Forum (RHF) has developed strong working relationships with Sussex Police, Brighton and Hove City Council, Community Works and the Trust for Developing Communities.

The RHF is a community-led association that aims to identify and address the safety needs of black and minority ethnic (BME) and faith communities who experience and fear hate crime incidents that are religiously and racially motivated.

It was a privilege to be invited to speak at their AGM this week. I listened to the thoughts and experiences of members of our BME community and it was saddening to hear some of their stories.

Concerns were expressed about the increase in hate crime incidents nationally and locally that are racially and religiously motivated, which I believe is in no small part down to the government’s hostile environment policy.

This reduces trust and confidence in statutory bodies such as the police, council and others and risks driving down reporting of hate crimes.

We need to reverse this and the RHF came to the meeting armed with a list of actions and solutions for all of us to support. We can only tackle racial harassment by working together.

There were ideas for all of us to consider such as creating more inclusive cultures in community and young people’s centres and training for the media in how to make unbiased and non-inflammatory reports.

For public organisations, the RHF suggested addressing under-representation in employment and it was felt schools and universities could address bullying.

The RHF is a small but hard-working group who have achieved great things already by dealing with casework and tackling institutional barriers to reporting hate crime.

There was a tremendous feeling of solidarity at the meeting and a clear determination to tackle hate crime by bringing people together.

If you want to get in touch with the RHF to get help or offer your support, then you can find out more about them at https://www.safeinthecity.info/racial-harassment-forum.

Councillor Nancy Platts is the Labour leader of Brighton and Hove City Council.