Having different focus groups with a variety of interests and from a range of backgrounds in the Liberal Democrats brings with it many benefits. Special interest groups can;
- lead to higher membership retention rates
- educate the Party through internal events, panels, and more
- identify and help develop internal leaders by serving as a talent pipeline
- help the Party recruit underrepresented individuals
BLAC Lib Dems aims to support the Party to be representative of modern Britain. We are unapologetically pro-Black in our positioning, highlighting issues unique to Black Briton – the most underserved demographic in Britain today – but BLAC also strongly believes that when Black Briton thrives, then the U.K thrives with it. Positive changes in the lives of Black Britons will result in positive changes for all of Britain.
For all Britain’s forward movement in promoting racial equality, Black people in Britain are still disproportionately excluded from social protection systems, economic uplift, and representative democracy, while facing shorter lifespans, lower educational attainment, and dramatic over criminalisation and imprisonment compared to their White counterparts.
BLAC works to complement and support the work being undertaken by LDCRE.
National Political Landscape from a Black African and Caribbean perspective
According to the 2011 census, 19.5% of the British population is from an ethnic minority background. Jeremy Corbyn said that only the Labour Party could be trusted to unlock minority ethnic people’s talent. As the Party of fairness and equality, we in the Liberal Democrats should have been publicly affronted, but unfortunately our visible record of inclusion is letting us all down.
12% of candidates selected by the Conservative Party in 2019 were minority ethnic people, and almost 10% of Labour chosen candidates were minority ethnic, in the Liberal Democrats we picked less than 6%.
Labour received the lion’s share of ethnic minority votes in 2019 at 64%, the Conservatives got 20%, which is a rising figure, while the Lib Dems received 12%. The Conservative Party has appointed twice as many BAME people to the cabinet than Labour has ever done.
The Liberal Democrats have fallen well behind in candidate selection, local leadership, minority representation in Parliament and, as a direct consequence, ethnic minority votes. In 2018 Vince Cable criticised our party for being “very male” and “very, very white” and pledged to end his party’s “complacency” over diversity. The Alderdice report, also published in 2018, concluded that the Liberal Democrats themselves must come to understand that liberalism means diversity. Unless that can be seen in identifiable Black and other ethnic members and representatives, the electorate will not be persuaded of the credentials of the Liberal Democrats on this issue. Yet in 2019, we scrapped our own diversity targets for the European Elections after some White men complained.