Page 35 - Urban Kapital DECEMBER DIGITAL ISSUE

WHO ARE THEY? Do you know your Black British Politicians? // WHO
UK BLACK POLITICIANS

We have combed the list of people who belong
REPRESENTS
to ethnic minorities who have been elected as
Members of the House of Commons of the
United Kingdom, European Union, and other
British devolved assemblies and also
Members of the non-elected House of Lords. BLACK BRITAIN

Why? Because we struggled to name 10 Black IN POLITICS?
politicians off the top of our heads, and when
we looked closer, we wondered whether to
question our own ignorance – or to question
the poor representation of UK Black politicians
in mainstream media, but the figures suggest,
a slow and very recent rise in the number of
Black and Ethnic minority politicians is the
reason why many of us do not know who they
are.

In 2001, Professor Muhammad Anwar of War-
wick University wrote a paper called “The par-
ticipation of ethnic minorities in British poli-
tics”.
Among other things, the paper examined the
representation of ethnic minorities at
national levels of the British political
system. In a chapter in the book Race and
British Electoral Politics (Routledge, 1998),
Andrew Geddes, now Professor of Politics at
University of Sheffield, also explored the ques-
tion of “what factors contribute to low levels of
ethnic minority representation in the House of
Commons”
After the 2015 general election, 41 MPs from
an ethnic minority background were elected to
Parliament. 25 of the 27 ethnic minority MPs
retained their seats and were joined by 16 new
ethnic minority MPs. 23 were from the Labour
Party, 17 of them were Conservatives and 1
from the SNP.

In the 2017 general election, 52 ethnic minority
MPs were elected, including 32 Labour MPs,
19 Conservatives and one Liberal Democrat,
according to think tank British Future.

MAGAZINE // 34 Pictured Right: Lord Morris of Handsworth MAGAZINE // 35