Professor Gus John is the former Director of Education for Hackney and a veteran campaigner, who has been in the struggle for race equality for over 50 years. In this special episode for Black History Month Professor John reflects on his life of activism and takes the long view of the history of race relations in Britain, the state of the education system and relations with the police, bringing us to the present day with the cases of Chris Kaba and Child Q.

Yvette Williams has lived in North Kensington for over 30 years, previously having worked with the Mangrove Community Association and has served as a Trustee for the Tabernacle Community Centre. Both Yvette and her daughter witnessed the fire at Grenfell Tower, after being alerted by a family friend who was evacuated from one of the walkways. After that tragic day in 2017, she became one of the founders of Justice4Grenfell (J4G) a community-led organisation, focused on obtaining justice for the bereaved families, and survivors. In this episode we discuss the history of race relations in West London and the wider socio-economic conditions that led up to the Grenfell fire.

Qureshi is the CEO of the Migrants’ Rights Network – a charity that works alongside migrants in their fight for rights and justice.   In this interview, as well as the work of MRN we discuss attempts to separate race from migration, Priti Patel and her Rwanda Plan and how the Ukrainian refugee crisis has exposed the double standards of the UK immigration policy.

The education system has long being a battle-front in the fight for racial equality and Lavinya Stennett is right on the frontlines. Lavinya is founder and CEO of The Black Curriculum - an organisation that believe that by delivering Black history programmes, providing teacher training and campaigning through mobilising young people, they can facilitate social change. Lavinya is the youngest of my guests on the podcast so far, and her organisation was only formed three years ago whilst she was still at university. But in that short time she has made major inroads into changing our education system to better reflect the diversity of the UK’s population. In this interview we discuss her own troubled path through the UK education system, her recent interactions with government, and getting endorsement from Vogue magazine and fashion designer Virgil Abloh.

No podcast series discussing racism would be complete if it did not touch on anti-Semitism. This episode's guest is Dr Edie Friedman - Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality (JCORE).   Edie was born in Chicago. A student in the 1960s, she was heavily influenced by the civil rights and peace movements. She came in to England to study in Leeds and subsequently worked for Oxfam and the Community Relations Council in Ealing, west London. She founded the Jewish Council for Racial Equality in 1976. In this episode we discuss her lifetime of activism, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and the controversial comments about the Holocaust from Whoopi Goldberg.

In this episode I speak to Tebussum Rashid the Deputy Chief Executive at the Black Training Enterprise Group (aka BTEG). Tebs has over 25 years' experience of working in the charity and voluntary sector, helping create and develop new organisations and projects. But it was a tough climb to get to where she is today, being the eldest daughter in a Muslim family, having to overcome, not just the low expectations of her teachers, but also of her family and community. Tebs successfully negotiated her way around those barriers, and today, as well as being the Deputy Chief Exec at BTEG, she also runs her own training company – Sukoon Ltd - through which she delivers a diverse range of courses and facilitates strategic planning away days. In this episode we discuss her life of intersectionality fighting sexism, racism and islamophobia and her lifetime struggling as a Muslim woman to define her own destiny.

Missed penalties by three Black England players in the final of the Euros, brought the perennial issue of racism in football to the fore again in 2021.  From the monkey chats and bananas on the pitch that were a regular feature in the 1970s and 80’s, to the on-line abuse suffered by today’s players, it’s a problem that has never gone away. In this episode, I speak to the former head of Kick It Out Piara Powar.  We discuss British-Asian identity, being politically ‘Black’, fighting racism in football and the reasons for the lack of Asian players.

The rise of the BLM movement in 2020 also saw the fall of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol.  But while some were pulling down statues of former white heroes, Jak Beula was busy putting up plaques to Black ones. In 1994, Jak introduced the educational board game Nubian Jak (often described as "the black Trivial Pursuit”) to the world. In 1998 he self-published the first edition of Nubian Jak's Book of World Facts - subtitled "The Ultimate Reference Guide to Global Black Achievement". More recently he  is the founder of the Nubian Jak Community Trust, which since 2006 has been honouring Black personalities of the past, and also organised Britain's first African and Caribbean War Memorial, in Windrush Square.  In this episode we discuss his career of commemorating Black historical heroes, what should be done with the statues of Colston, Rhodes and Churchill and why monuments matter.

Intersectionality is a term we hear increasingly often these days - usually in reference to the double discrimination faced by Black women fighting against misogyny and racism.  But it can also be faced by men - gay Black men facing both racism and homophobia.  To examine these issues in this episode I interview Dr Rob Berkeley.  Rob has worked at the UK's leading race equality think tank The Runnymede Trust and he was previously a strategic advisor to the BBC on accountability and audience engagement before founding BlkOutUK.com in 2014. His current leadership role at Black Out UK brings together all of his interests and experiences to promoting the voice and visibility for gay, bi and queer men of African descent in the UK. We discuss homophobia in the black community, and the apparent contradiction of being a gay reggae fan. extra info https://theblakwatch.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/batty-man-fi-dead-exploring-homophobia-in-the-black-community/ 13 Black LGBTQ+ Icons Who Helped Change the World https://www.out.com/activism/2021/2/17/13-black-lgbtq-icons-who-helped-chang-world#media-gallery-media-4

Patrick Vernon OBE is social commentator and political activist. He runs his own social enterprise promoting the history of diverse communities, and is founder of Every Generation and the "100 Great Black Britons" campaign.  Patrick led a successful campaign for 22nd of  June to be recognised annually as Windrush Day,  which was officially backed by the British government in 2018.   But as well as celebrating the contribution of the Windrush generation of migrants from the Caribbean, more recently he has been fighting for compensation for the victims of the Windrush Scandal.