, and ,

Gypsy and Traveller are among the . There is a of government failures in meeting these groups’ housing needs.

The of sites has resulted in a homelessness problem. Those who do secure pitches on council-managed sites often have to contend with living near potential hazards.

For our recent , we mapped local authority-managed Gypsy and Traveller sites in Great Britain. Of those sites, 39% were within 50 metres of one or more major pollutants and 54% were within 100 metres.

The effect on residents is significant. As one of our interviewees, Sarah (all names have been changed), put it: “You can’t breathe here. A lot of people have asthma. Lots of babies in the community have poor health. A lot of them have skin rashes. Nobody ever lived past about 50 here. Whatever is coming out is killing people. Lots of people are dying of chest, COPD and cancer.”

Worsening conditions

Between 2021 and 2022, we mapped 291 Gypsy and Traveller sites across Great Britain, noting their proximity to environmental hazards. These included motorways, A-roads, railway lines, industrial estates and sewage works.

To do so, we used the Caravan Count 2020, which lists all authorised local authority managed sites in England and Wales and a freedom of information request to the Scottish government, which gave us the names and addresses of all the authorised public sites in Scotland.

The study included in-depth case studies, site visits and interviews with 13 site residents (including repeat interviews with five site residents on two sites).

Local newspapers that reported on the highly contested historical and current planning processes were also analysed. Freedom of information requests were sent to local authorities to obtain planning meeting documents and 11 interviews were conducted with representatives of local and national organisations that work with Gypsy and Traveller communities.

When new Gypsy and Traveller sites are proposed by local authorities near existing residential areas, objections come from three main groups: residents, local politicians and local media outlets.

These objections often result in new sites being pushed further to the margins of towns and cities, in places that other communities would not be expected to live.

As a result, sites are often in isolated areas, quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. They are nestled in among the infrastructure that services the needs of the local settled communities, from major roads to recycling centres.

One of the sites we visited has been in use since the 1970s, despite the fact that, already then, it was located near a waste transfer station. The intervening five decades have only seen conditions on the site worsen.

A chicken slaughterhouse nearby now burns carcasses regularly. The household waste recycling centre has expanded to allow for recycling and incineration of solid waste from commerce and industry.

Lorries and other vehicles now come in and out in large numbers, just metres away from some of the pitches. Residents experience constant noise and vibrations. Mary, who lives on the site, says the sound of the skips being deposited from 5am every morning is like a bomb going off: “It drops so hard it shakes the chalet.”

The air is always heavy with dust. Residents have to keep their windows closed – even in the summer – to keep out the flies. As Jane, who is the fourth generation of her family to live on the site, puts it: “We are living in an industrial area. It’s the air quality, the sand, the dust, the recycling tip is just behind us. The noise is a big problem. There is an incinerator near the slaughterhouse and that’s really bad. And the smell…” 

Environmental racism

to the World Health Organization, housing is one of the major factors determining health. The physical conditions of a home – including mould, asbestos, cold, damp and noise – are obvious risk factors. So too, are wider environmental factors, from overcrowding and isolation from services to the relative lack of access to green spaces.

The people we spoke with, including site residents and organisational representatives, highlight the harmful health effects of living on many Gypsy and Traveller sites. This chimes with the government’s own , which have found these sites to be unsafe.

Research on health inequalities in the UK bears this out. People from Gypsy and Irish Traveller backgrounds the poorest health and a life expectancy of between ten and 25 years less than the general population. They also have of long-term illness and conditions that limit everyday life and activities.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 has further constrained Gypsy and Traveller communities by criminalising roadside stopping and forcing people on to transit sites. These are designed for short stays and are often in than permanent sites.

This poses a plain threat to , from travelling in the summer months to fairs and attending religious gatherings.

Thousands of people rely on these local authority-managed sites, located dangerously near the kind of environmental pollutants that are with poor health and premature deaths. The term “environmental racism” is used to refer to how people from minority and low-income communities are to environmental harm.

Yvonne MacNamara is the chief executive of the non-profit advocacy organisation, Traveller Movement. She highlights that the inequalities these communities face are systemic. Local authorities, she says, treat Traveller communities “like second-class citizens”.

To one resident’s mind, attitudes within local government to Gypsy and Traveller social housing are clearly . As she put it: “They wouldn’t expect anyone but a Traveller to live here.”

, Professor of Sociology, and , Royal Literary Fund Fellow, . This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

,

Dressed in a mini skirt and passionate about boys, music, dance and fashion, teenage girl is a pop culture icon, the seeming beneficiary of the ascendancy of in the west and of unprecedented social and cultural changes.

Quite how real women actually experienced – and benefited from – this era of social change is more complex. For the past six years, I have led of girls growing up in Britain between the 1950s and 1970s. In order to understand how this era has shaped women’s experiences and identities in later life, my colleagues and I conducted interviews with 70 women born between 1939 and 1952.

We also data on girlhood from Britain’s first birth cohort study, as well as the .

The current Teenage Kicks exhibition, at the Glasgow Women’s Library and until May 18, delves into eight of our interviewees’ stories. Edinburgh-based artist Candice Purwin has illustrated the striking diversity they relay: growing up in very different circumstances navigated the possibilities and pitfalls of the 1960s and early 1970s in very different ways.

Swinging London

Our interviewees were from different social class backgrounds and across both rural and urban locations. To spark memories, we played music that these women would have listened to when they were young. We talked with them about their personal photos.

One interviewee, Liz, was the epitome of a modern, mobile, young woman. At 17, she was earning an income, travelling to Europe with friends and enjoying the consumerism of . She told us about visiting clubs and shopping in new department stores. At 19, she left to work in the US.

This sense of London as a place of opportunity was a recurrent theme. Andrea embarked on a science degree in London, aged 18. Coming to the capital meant being able to escape village life and the scrutiny of her religious parents.

Andrea found freedom to engage in student politics and to come out as a lesbian. Being gay was a stigmatised identity at the time. She recalled furtive visits to London’s only lesbian club, the Gateway Club. “A crummy place really,” she said, “down in the basement, small, hot and dark.”

Another interviewee, Joyce, grew up in in an overcrowded home in central London. She said she felt like “the bee’s knees” when she started earning money. She described the pair of white boots she was able to buy, to wear when she went out dancing.

Like her peers, though, Joyce mainly spent her leisure time walking the streets with friends and going to cafés. “We sat there all night with one coffee,” she said, “sometimes two, if you were feeling rash.”

In rural areas, girls were often dependent on limited public transport to access leisure venues, shops and cafes in nearby towns. Going to the cinema was a major expedition.

Valerie, who grew up on a farm near Portsmouth on England’s south coast, said: “We couldn’t get there until 6 o’clock and we had to be on the 9 o’clock bus back.” As films were often shown on a continuous loop throughout the day, she said “you’d pick up a film half way through, watch it until the bit that you came in at, and then leave.”

For girls abroad, the capital the opportunities Britain itself promised. One interviewee, Cynthia, migrated from St Kitts, in search of better prospects. “Jobs were easy to find when I came to Britain,” she said.

Cynthia worked as a machinist in a clothing factory by day. By night, she studied typing and administration. These new qualifications helped her secure a better-paid job as a secretary in a solicitor’s office.

Unequal access

We found that access to the widening educational and professional opportunities for girls was uneven. More were going to university and into . Most, however, left school at 15 without qualifications and with limited work prospects.

Joyce thrived at school but left at 15 when her mother became ill. Later, she took evening classes and became a telephonist.

Pamela too was a star pupil but her mother thought it pointless educating a daughter. “She’s only going to get married!”, her mother would say. Once in the workforce, however, Pamela excelled and quickly progressed into management.

Like others whose education was foreshortened due to hardship and sexism, Pamela and Joyce later regretted not having been able to pursue their studies further.

In popular culture, the 1960s are associated with . Most of the women we spoke with, however, said that, as girls, they feared getting pregnant out of wedlock.

became available to married women in 1961. But access for single women until 1974. Even access to basic sex education was limited.

Pamela fell in love at 17 and got pregnant. Her mother insisted that she give up both that relationship and her baby. She eventually started a new relationship and married at 20. This was an abusive marriage. Taking control of her fertility, she went on the pill and by age 24, she had secured a divorce.

The unprecedented trend towards early marriage meant was typically short-lived. In 1965, 40% of brides were under 21. from 1969 proved an important development for many.

Women about aspects of their younger selves having stayed with them in later life. Many live with what we call “”, the feeling that they could have been a different person and had a different life if things had gone differently when they were young.

Some of our interviewees explained that it was not possible to rectify what they missed in their youth. Others spoke about using retirement to make up for missed opportunities. Most advise their own children and grandchildren to make the most of being young.

, Professor of Sociology and History,
This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The research uncovered high inequality across different neighbourhoods, as well as social isolation amongst groups and individuals within the older population. Such experiences are reflected in the provision of various services by faith spaces, these often targeting recent migrants, those experiencing isolation and/or financial hardship, and people undergoing challenging life transitions such as bereavement, divorce, health problems and relocation.

The experts are calling for a more strategic involvement of faith-based groups in public health and age-friendly agendas. Taking into consideration the existing support happening in faith spaces and the opportunities for that work to be expanded, they suggest that policymakers should explore how to enhance the role of faith spaces in contributing to promoting health and wellbeing in the community, and provide support to enhance the social function of faith spaces, both for existing users and members of the wider community.

They also appeal for recognition of the role of faith spaces in supporting isolated/newly arrived groups to the community and their potential to connect older people to age-friendly initiatives, as well as support for faith spaces to access funding and the broadening of the age-friendly framework to embrace spiritual participation and cultural diversity.

The report is available to view

Candice Purwin, the illustrator, animator and graphic novelist behind the Teenage Kicks exhibition, said: “Illustrating Teenage Kicks gave me a rare and unique opportunity to bring to life a deeply transformative period of British history for women and girls. The stories these eight women shared with us are rich in detail and experiences that deconstruct the teenage girl stereotype we are usually shown.  I’m excited for the exhibition to bring this history to a wider audience and that we get to share the work in such an iconic space.”

Caroline Gausden, Development worker for Curating and Engagement at Glasgow Women’s Library, added: “Our mission at Glasgow Women’s Library is to celebrate the lives and achievements of women and champion their contribution to society, so Teenage Kicks is a great addition to our busy programme. This generation of women, has played – and is playing - a huge part in how Britain has changed since the Second World War. We hope that visitors of all ages enjoy the exhibition, whether or not they remember the sixties themselves!”

There will be a linked to the exhibition at Glasgow Women’s Library on 18 April 2024.

Teenage Kicks is part of The University of Manchester’s , and has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

“At a time when the importance of the social sciences to addressing many pressing issues cannot be overstated, it’s a pleasure to welcome some of the UK’s leading social scientists to the Academy’s Fellowship,” said Will Hutton, President of the Academy. “Their contributions have furthered our understanding in tackling a wide range of societal challenges including mitigating health and economic inequalities, understanding the causes and effects of hate crime, the development of inclusive practices in education, and the future of cities. 

"We look forward to working with them to further promote the vital role the social sciences play in all areas of our lives.”

The paper, commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in , builds on research already completed by both institutions during the pandemic which demonstrated that ethnic minority groups were disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

The paper brings together all of the available evidence, along with international experts in the field, to summarise why people from ethnic minority groups were more likely to be infected and die during the pandemic.

Researchers highlighted that ethnic minority groups were more likely to be exposed to those who were infectious with COVID-19 because a high proportion were employed in key worker roles, making it more likely that they would themselves become infected. They also showed that certain ethnic minority groups were more likely to die once infected due to barriers in receiving adequate healthcare, such as delayed diagnosis and treatment due to job insecurity and financial issues, and in some cases language barriers.

In addition, the research showed they were more likely to suffer from social and economic consequences – for example the inability to isolate once infected and in some cases the lack of adequate healthcare to meet their needs.

The authors state that ethnic minority groups were disadvantaged from the start due to longstanding health inequities caused by systemic racism and racial discrimination. Furthermore, the reasons for ethnic inequities in COVID-19 infection, severe disease and death are interconnected.

The paper aims to provide a blueprint for policymakers and researchers to address these inequities so that they can be better prepared for future pandemics.

It states that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to intervention does not work and that cultural, social and language barriers must be overcome along with other socio-economic issues.

“This framework is the first of its kind to specifically address inequities during a pandemic,” said Dr Daniel Pan from the University of Leicester, the paper’s co-lead author who is a specialist registrar in Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine and a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Doctoral Research Fellow. “The recommendations aim to ensure ethnic inequalities in treatment do not occur in future.

“The COVID-19 pandemic won’t be the last and steps need to be taken now to reduce the inevitable consequences of the next pandemic on ethnic minority groups. We know that innovative approaches are required but if we plan for these, they can be overcome.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and amplified health inequalities for ethnic minority groups,” said Professor of Clinical Infectious Diseases Manish Pareek from the University of Leicester, the paper’s senior author.

“It is important that we learn lessons from the pandemic and this work, in collaboration with international experts and the WHO, provides guidance on how to reduce the disproportionate impact on ethnic minority groups for future pandemics.”

That same month, , a healthcare manager and senior nurse, won a case against NHS England and NHS Improvement Commissioning in 91ֱ��. She too had faced racial discrimination.

These cases follow the legal action launched in August 2022 by marketing executive against the NHS Blood and Transplant service. She provided recordings of conversations between staff members that backed up her claims that she had been subjected to racism.

According to , black and minority ethnic women are the most likely of all NHS staff groups to experience discrimination from patients or colleagues. The harms they experience due to in the workplace are compounded by their ethnicity.

My doctoral research looks at the obstacles black and minority ethnic women face in the NHS in terms of career development. In the chapter I recently contributed to the (edited by Naomi Chambers), I show how systemic discrimination is the single biggest impediment to these women being able to advance in their jobs.

The barriers to career progression

There is a notable lack of research on the workplace experiences of black and minority ethnic women leaders in healthcare. In 2021 I carried out a literature review to address this.

I identified eight barriers or drivers (often two sides of the same coin) to career progression for this group. These are: systemic discrimination; leadership and organisational cultures; recruitment and talent management; policies; training; monitoring and accountability; work-life balance; and support.

Systemic discrimination, the most pervasive impediment, refers to discrimination embedded in institutional policies, practices or processes, as opposed to the actions of individual people.

Research has long shown systemic discrimination at work in the NHS. In 2016, minority ethnic NHS staff were to enter formal disciplinary processes than white staff. More recently, a 2022 report by the Fawcett Society and the Runnymede Trust charities that women of colour are more likely (27%) to have been described as aggressive compared to white women (17%).

A , published in April 2023 looked at a large sample (37,971) of people applying for specialist NHS training posts (medical and surgical) between 2021 and 2022. It found that applicants from most of the ethnic minority groups were less successful than their white British counterparts. It pointed to recruitment policies and processes as key factors driving this inequality.

In addition to the racism and sexism often experienced by ethnic minority women more broadly, black women, in particular, also have to contend with anti-blackness.

In 2010, the black feminist scholar Moya Bailey and the writer who goes by the name Trudy coined the term “” – anti-black misogyny – to describe this compounded discrimination. It amounts, as the US legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in a landmark paper in 1989, to a form of erasure – being fundamentally overlooked by society.

shows that little has changed. Black women are subject to a wider range of microaggressions in the workplace. They are often the only black woman in any given setting. And they are three times more likely than their peers to think regularly about leaving their jobs.

Barriers and drivers of career progression for black and minority ethnic women leaders in UK healthcare. Rakhi Chand,

How discrimination is compounded

In the UK, this compounded discrimination is further exacerbated by, among other things, being a migrant or having a non-standard British accent. can lead to employees receiving poorer pay, having limited access to professional networks, or fewer chances of promotion. Here too, it can see people more likely to leave their jobs.

This often has a negative impact on an employee’s and too. The long-term physical problems it can lead to include increased blood pressure and heart rates, higher levels of the primary stress hormone cortisol, and unhealthy behaviours such as drinking alcohol or smoking.

Line managers are uniquely placed to influence an employee’s emotional attachment to an organisation. Research shows that their support – including for training and advancement opportunities – can be pivotal in decisions to leave or, conversely to stay in a role or even the organisation.

However, research has long noted the lack of diversity in healthcare leadership. A on equality in the NHS workforce found that black and minority ethnic executives were “entirely” absent, and women “disproportionately” absent, from the boards of all key NHS national bodies in 2013.

To remedy this situation, academics and practitioners alike have repeatedly called for better reporting on gender data, broken down by ethnicity, within healthcare management.

Yet, until the publication of the Workforce Race Equality Standard report in 2022, this appears to not have happened within the NHS. Not having access to such data is a problem. has long shown that when a healthcare workforce does not reflect the population it serves, patients’ health outcomes worsen as a result.

The fact that black and minority ethnic women are under-represented at leadership levels is, of course, to the healthcare sphere. It is also .

Anyone wanting to improve diversity and inclusion within their workforce must engage with the obstacles that black and ethnic minority women face. Addressing inequality benefits everyone.

, Doctoral Researcher

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

“This study shows that even small changes in what fathers do, and in how schools and early years settings engage with parents, can have a lasting impact on children's learning,” said Andrew Gwynne MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fatherhood. “It's absolutely crucial that that fathers aren't treated as an afterthought.”

During this period, over 45% of people from the Arab, Any Other Black background, Any Other Mixed background, Any Other background, and Roma groups reported being in financial difficulty.

Michaela Šť�����ٲ�á, from The University of St Andrews, said “Importantly, our data uncovers inequalities experienced by people from certain ethnic groups who are missing from, or invisible in, the Census or other national surveys, especially some of the smaller ethnic groups such as Roma, Gypsy/Traveller, Arab and ‘Other’ ethnic groups. People from Roma and Gypsy/Traveller backgrounds are one of the groups often missing from survey data. Yet this new dataset shows that they face the highest levels of socioeconomic deprivation: they much more likely to have no educational qualifications, less likely to have better paid jobs and have some of the highest rates of financial hardship.”

Professor Nissa Finney, from the University of St Andrews, said “We are excited to be able to share our unique dataset. It is a one-of-a-kind survey which goes into more detail and more depth on the experiences of people from ethnic minority groups in Britain than any other survey. We encourage all researchers and policymakers to access it and use it to reduce ethnic inequalities.”

The new dataset is from , the largest survey of ethnic and religious inequalities in Britain during the pandemic. EVENS documents patterns of ethnic inequality in health, housing, employment, income and education and the is freely available from UK Data Service.

Gemma Hakins, Acting Director of Data Access, UK Data Service, said “We are delighted to provide free research access to CODE’s EVENS Survey through the UK Data Service. These new data are a first in providing detailed evidence on how ethnicity shapes the lives of people across the UK. We welcome the insights they give researchers and policy developers to help enable greater ethnic equality in the future.”

The 1953 coup d'etat in Iran ushered in a period of exploitation and oppression that has continued – despite a subsequent revolution that led to huge changes – for 70 years. Each year on August 19, the anniversary of the coup, millions of Iranians ask themselves what would have happened if the US and UK had not conspired all those years ago to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected leader.

Iran, the Middle East and, arguably, the whole world may well have been profoundly different. Apart from rewriting the destiny of Iran and its neighbours, the coup paved the way for a series of imperialist interventions and the toppling of democratically elected governments across the global south. Perhaps Washington might have thought twice before plotting coups in , or , if they’d been unable to overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, so easily and profitably.

As the democratically elected leader of Iran from 1951 to 1953, Mosaddegh championed nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry. This had previously been in the hands of the – a British company, founded in 1909 after the discovery of a large oil field in Iran, which would later become BP.

In March 1951, Iran’s parliament . This caused consternation in the west – most notably in Britain, where the prospect of nationalisation was seen as potentially hugely damaging to the economy. Furthermore, it would have undermined Britain’s influence in the Middle East. Plotting to depose Mosaddegh began in earnest.

In the event, the coup – named – was a joint venture between the CIA and MI6. The shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had recently fled the country after an earlier plot to remove Mossadegh had failed, returned to Iran.

Within a short period, he had tightened his grip on the country’s security services and imposed a dictatorial regime which ruled through brutality and fear. Pahlavi banned all opposition political parties, and many of the activists who participated in the movement for nationalisation of oil were arrested or fled the country.

Government by fear

In 1957, the shah established an internal security service, (Savak), which essentially ran Iran at the shah’s bidding. From then until 1975, only two major political parties were allowed to operate, the People’s Party (Ḥezb-e Mardom) and the New Iran Party (Ḥezb-e Iran-e Novin), and all parliamentary candidates had to be approved by Savak.

Both parties in reality were wholly under the shah’s control. The parliament only existed to rubber-stamp his decisions, as did the prime minister – who the shah appointed.

In 1975, the shah took his domination of Iranian politics further, , the Party of Resurrection of the Iranian Nation (Hezb-e Rastakhiz), which all Iranians were obliged to join. By 1979, when Iran , it was a virtual absolute monarchy, with the shah’s will enforced by the dreaded Savak secret police.

Within months of the revolution, though, Iran’s religious authorities took control under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Islamic Republic quickly – Sazman-e Ettelaat Va Amniat Meli Iran – which used many of the same brutal methods as Savak.

‘Woman, Life, Freedom’

This week, Iranians will recall the 1953 coup as they prepare protests ahead of the anniversary of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising. This movement began in September 2022 after the at the hands of the morality police – which enforcing the laws on Islamic dress code in public – for the “crime” of not wearing her hijab (headscarf) in the approved manner.

The resulting explosion of unrest has posed the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic in its history. Although the state tried to from the beginning, the police brutality and the prospect of severe punishment, which included public executions and at the hands of the security forces.

At the same time as battling the oppression of their own state apparatus, ordinary Iranians are also suffering under the brutal US-imposed regime of sanctions. In the past five years, these sanctions – reimposed by Donald Trump after he unilaterally pulled the US out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, which had been signed by his predecessor Barack Obama in 2015 – have devastated the Iranian economy. Soaring inflation and devaluation of the national currency have caused for ordinary Iranians.

As they , Iranians clearly grasp how, 70 years after the coup snuffed out their fledgling democracy, their internal struggles are still being influenced by foreign powers.

And they ask themselves if Mahsa Amini, and also and – two other women beaten to death by members of the state apparatus for protesting – as well as hundreds of other young Iranians, would still be paying with their lives in Iran’s struggle for basic rights today if the 1953 coup had not happened.

, Senior Lecturer in Sociology,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Maybe you have one bin or many boxes. You might even have a compost caddy. Whatever your setup, chances are that at some point you’ve been left wondering what should go where and if a particular item is indeed recyclable or if it should just go in the main dustbin.

Research from Wrap, a climate action charity, has found that 82% of UK households regularly add at least one item to their recycling collection that’s not accepted locally. And data from recycling facilities shows that .

This can include electrical goods, nappies and food, though it more commonly involves packaging caked in remnants of what was – still covered in peanut butter or jam, toothpaste tubes, juice cartons, greasy takeaway packaging, damp cardboard and glittery birthday cards. Plastic pots, tubs, trays and bottle tops along with metal lids may also count as contaminants – depending on where you live.

And that’s a big part of the problem. Because what is and isn’t recyclable varies a lot from area to area. In the UK, there are 39 different bin collection regimes across . Rules aren’t aligned in terms of what is and isn’t collected for recycling or how items should be prepared: washed or rinsed, crushed or not, lids on or off. It’s different everywhere.

Our into the complexities of the UK’s found all these different rules and requirements have created a lot of confusion in terms of what should and shouldn’t be recycled. In some instances, this confusion can even result in people to recycle at all.

Breaking it down

We’re also now confronted with lots of multi-material packaging – those envelopes with plastic windows and also cake boxes and .

While some might try and “unengineer” such items to try and separate the different material components, others make a judgement based on what something is mostly made of, meaning items can then end up in the wrong bins. If indeed you even have to separate your recyclables by type where you are. Told you it was confusing.

Then there’s also the fact that many large retailers and organisations now provide collection points to recycle certain types of plastics, such as bread bags, crisp packets and pet food pouches, (which can’t usually go in household recycling bins).

Though in principle these schemes are good, they can lead to confusion, with people thinking that if these items are collected for recycling elsewhere, they can go in the recycling bin at home.

Crackdown on confusion

In response to the issue of contaminated recycling, the UK government has plans to crack down on “” by asking people to be more careful about what they put in their bins. Wishcycling is when people optimistically stick items in the recycling bin hoping they can be collected when in reality they can’t.

This forms part of a wider review of England’s recycling collection based on a consultation which was launched in 2021 by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on how to improve the consistency of recycling in both homes and businesses.

Defra has said it wants to make recycling easier and more consistent so that all councils collect the same materials. This is to be welcomed, as our research has found that across all regions alongside that people can understand would make it easier for householders to know they are doing the right thing.

We also found that people want a simpler system as they want to recycle more. As part of our research, we heard from people who held back plastic milk bottle tops to donate to schemes that promised to recycle them as they were not collected by their local authority. Others were storing plastic fruit netting for fear of it not being appropriately dealt with and ending up causing environmental harm.

Some were driving bin bags full of plastics out of their local authority areas to other locations where family members and friends could feed them into their household recycling collections. All of this indicates that there is clearly a thirst to recycle, limit environmental harm and live more sustainably.

Tackling the confusion around what can and can’t be recycled is also needed because it’s adding to plastics’ bad reputation. Waste professionals we’ve worked with have told us that negative consumer perceptions and the move away from plastics aren’t always helpful because alternatives can carry larger environmental footprints. Though a contentious point, it’s recognised that .

Sorting out our broken recycling system is an important step if we really want to be a greener and more environmentally conscious society.

, Research Associate, Sustainable Consumption Institute and Sustainable Innovation Hub, ; , Senior Lecturer in Sociology, , and , Post Doctoral Research Associate, Materials Engineering,

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The (EVENS) is a major new survey of racism and ethnic inequalities carried out by the (CoDE). It polled 14,200 participants between February and October 2021 and asked people to rate how interested they were in politics.

The results could prove pivotal in the forthcoming elections, particularly in light of how the leading political parties are positioning themselves on matters of interest to these groups. 

Whilst 60% of White British, White Eastern European and Gypsy/Traveller groups said they were ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ interested in politics, the level of political interest amongst some ethnic and religious minority groups was much higher. For example, the level of political interest was closer to 80% amongst Black African (78%), Mixed White and Black African (78%), Any other mixed background (77%), Indian (77%), Jewish (81%), and White Irish (83%) groups. Just one in three Roma people (31%) said they were interested in politics.

“The relatively high political interest amongst most ethnic minority groups clearly shows that political parties need to seriously engage with the ethnic minority electorate, and their particular needs and concerns” said Dr Magda Borkowska, University of Essex and part of the EVENS research team. “As demographic change means that the population of ethnic minorities will grow, the ethnic minority vote will increasingly matter for election results.”

“Despite many people from ethnic and religious minorities reporting high levels of interest in politics, we also know that society is not addressing the basic equality needs for many people from minority groups,” said Professor James Nazroo, The University of Manchester and part of the EVENS research team. “Our research also found many minority groups were experiencing widespread racism, and unacceptable inequalities in health, housing and employment. Now we have this data, we encourage politicians to use it as a tool for reducing inequality.”

The survey also asked if people had a preference for a particular political party. Around three quarters (73%) of White British people said they preferred a particular political party, alongside 79% of Bangladeshi and Pakistani people, and 80% of Jewish people. Rates were lower for some groups, with 62% of people identifying as Mixed White and Asian, and 63% of people identifying as White Eastern European indicating a party they would vote for. One in three (33%) Roma people indicated a party preference.

The highest support for Labour was from Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African and Black Caribbean people, at over 60% of each group. Half of Jewish respondents said they would vote Conservative, but just 14% of Black Caribbean respondents said the same. The Liberal Democrats got the highest level of support from White Eastern European, Chinese, and White Other groups (between 20-30% of respondents from each group). In comparison, among the White British respondents, 35% supported Labour, 35% Conservative, 10% Liberal Democrat and 20% other parties.

“EVENS is the first nationally representative study since 2010 that allows for detailed analysis of political interest and preference in ethnic and religious minority groups,” said Professor Nissa Finney, University of St Andrews and part of the EVENS research team. “The innovative, robust survey techniques used mean we have a larger, more detailed dataset on people from ethnic and religious minority groups living in Britain than ever before.”

EVENS, funded by the , is the most comprehensive survey of ethnic and religious inequalities in Britain for over 25 years. It is produced in partnership with 13 voluntary, community and social enterprise groups. 

Results from EVENS are available in a new open access book , which is available in print, e-book and as a free PDF. The book will be in 91ֱ�� on Friday 12 May and the full dataset will be available in June 2023.

“The EVENS survey allows us to obtain a deeper understanding of the insidiousness and persistence of racial discrimination in the UK,” said Professor Laia Bécares, Professor of Social Science and Health at King’s College London. “We clearly document that there is a high level of racism in the UK which permeates all aspects of people’s everyday lives and impacts their health, wellbeing, and socioeconomic circumstances.” 

“The innovative, robust survey techniques we used mean we have a larger dataset and detailed data on more ethnic and religious minority groups across a wider range of topics than ever before,” said Professor Nissa Finney, Professor of Human Geography at the University of St Andrews. “This makes our data a powerful tool for understanding, and reducing, ethnic and religious inequalities.”

“It can be easy to look back on the violent, explicit racism of earlier decades and think that racial discrimination is not a major problem in Britain today, but our data proves this idea wrong,” said Professor James Nazroo, Professor of Sociology at The University of Manchester. “Now we have this evidence, it is simply not acceptable to pretend racism does not exist and to carry on as before - EVENS is a wake-up call to make society fairer for everybody.” 

EVENS is the most comprehensive survey of ethnic and religious inequalities for over 25 years, and was supported by the Economics and Social Research Council (ES/V013475/1 and ES/ W000849/1). It was produced in partnership with 13 voluntary, community and social enterprise groups. 

Results from EVENS are available in a new book available in print, e-book and free pdf. The full will be made available in May.

The data showed that for children aged seven:

• Parents’ help for their children’s schoolwork, reading to their children and going to libraries had a small positive effect, while musical and physical activities with children had no effect. Going to bed at a regular time was linked to better teachers’ assessment.
• At age seven, children who received daily help with maths from their parents had only a 1.8% increased chance of being assessed as ‘above average’ by their teachers.
• 39% of the children from the highest class families were rated above average in maths, compared with 21% of those whose parents were manual workers, the lowest of five classes used in the analysis. The relative difference was even greater for those in the ‘well above average’ class: 12% for children from the highest class and 4% for those from the lowest. The three intermediate classes showed results in-between the highest and lowest classes.
• The gap was slightly less when considering creative subjects such art and design, and music: 28% of the children from the highest class were rated above average, compared with 14% of those whose parents were manual workers.
• The figures were similar when comparing children with parents from the richest class and poorest class, and those with parents with degrees and those without qualifications. The data were also similar for children aged 11.
• When aged seven, children from the highest social class spent more time in libraries than those from the lowest class, and their parents read to them more often. But parents in the lowest class spent more time teaching their children maths, reading and writing. 

Ms. Ding, who conducted this research as part of her PhD studies under the supervision of Professor Yaojun Li and Professor Andrew Miles, adjusted the data to compare people of the same gender, ethnicity and other factors in order to isolate the effects of parents’ class, income and education. She found that the effects of parents’ class, wealth and education far outweighed those of time parents spent with their children.

In response to the findings, Helen has called for an overhaul of the full plastic supply chain, as well as for the recycling system to be simplified using knowledge gained from studying consumer practices. “As consumers, we may often feel blamed for our excess packaging waste and the dirge of single-use plastic. On the contrary, our research shows that the majority of households want to do the right thing – indeed, many of the households we interviewed had found alternative routes of recycling for items the local authority would not recycle."

“However, consumers are limited by complex and unclear messaging, restrictions regarding what can and cannot be recycled and the huge array of packaging. Our trial shows that a ‘one bin’ approach across the UK would improve recycling by simplifying waste management for consumers, driven by standardisation across the system. It’s clear that the willingness for change is there – now the onus is on industry and government to capitalise on this enthusiasm with action.”

As part of the report, the team has developed an interactive tool that helps industry and policy stakeholders to think practically about what greater standardisation and consistency across manufacturing and processing will involve. It provides information and guidance on plastic waste and allows for a clear overview of the currently most sustainable choices for different plastics.

Funding for the project was granted as part of UK Research & Innovation’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund - Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging - this aims to establish a portfolio of academic-led research and development to address known problems and knowledge gaps in relation to plastic packaging.

“Our study examines COVID-19 outcomes from ethnic minority groups globally,” said Dr Daniel Pan, joint lead author and NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow from the University of Leicester. “Although now there are reductions in mortality amongst ethnic minority groups in the UK, our work is of relevance to policy makers internationally, where ethnic minority groups continue to suffer disproportionatey worse outcomes from COVID-19.”

“This latest study, now of over 200 million individuals from around the world, confirms and builds on our earlier work highlighting the disproportionate risk of COVID-19 in ethnic minority groups,” said Professor Manish Pareek, Chair in Infectious Diseases at the University of Leicester. “This work will be of relevance to UK’s independent public inequiry into the pandemic, which has committed to examining the impact of inequalities at the forefront of its investigations. Going forward it is critical that policy-makers address health inequalities to improve health outcomes for ethnic minority groups. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on the health inequalities experienced by ethnic minority groups,” said Professor Vittal Katikireddi, Professor of Public Health and Health Inequalities at the University of Glasgow. “Monitoring these inequalities in the future will be important to ensure policy responses are helping create a fairer society.”

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/W000849/1].

Today, a new development is being built on the site. A single flat-sized section of the estate was salvaged by the new V&A Museum in East London for a permanent exhibition - however, Nick and Kois are critical of it being celebrated and preserved only after it had been emptied of its working class residents. 

“Tens of thousands of council homes have been demolished in recent decades, and around 100 London estates are currently under threat of destruction,” said Nick. “Estate demolition is a tremendously damaging process - both socially for the displaced communities, and environmentally due to the carbon emissions created by demolition and rebuilding. It is driven not by need - as is often claimed - but simply by a booming construction and housing industry that reaps vast rewards from soaring land values and house prices.” 

To view the online exhibition, visit . Testimony from other residents and further social and architectural analysis of Robin Hood Gardens can be found in Nick Thoburn’s .

"Action to embed compulsory antiracist and racial bias training for all judicial office holders, which is a key recommendation of the report, would encourage a culture shift towards antiracist practice," he added.

“We welcome David’s support for our report, given his long-standing record of campaigning and policy development on these issues,” said Professor Eithne Quinn, lead academic author of the report. “His comments add weight to our central finding: racism in the justice system is corroding principles of fairness and ruining lives. Yet, our survey found that many judges and lawyers have had no recent training about racism and bias.”

“Our report calls for training that is premised on the realities that institutional racism exists in the justice system and that judges, like the rest of us, harbour biases. Without this starting point, any new training won’t work.”

When Prince Harry with ITV journalist Tom Bradby for a conversation about his marriage, his estrangement from the royal family and his tell-all memoir, Spare, one particular segment stood out. Bradby said that Harry had accused some members of his family of racism, but Harry shook his head firmly.

“The difference between racism and unconscious bias,” he said, “the two things are different.” He went on to argue that unconscious bias could become racism if it was pointed out to the perpetrator and left unchecked.

The exchange between Harry and Bradby has prompted widespread debate. In , on , and on , people have rightly questioned whether Harry’s family members really were unaware of their own biases, whether it mattered, and whether their views could be disconnected from racism.

When a person expresses racial bias, then that bias, conscious or not, is racism. But racism won’t be overcome simply by pointing out unconscious bias. Instead, anti-racism means challenging the systems and institutions that have made racism “common sense”.

Testing for unconscious bias

This is not the first time Harry has appealed to the concept of unconscious bias in order to explain individual behaviour. In September 2019, he that “the way that you’ve been brought up, the environment you’ve been brought up in, suggests that you have this point of view – unconscious point of view – where naturally you will look at someone in a different way”.

Harry isn’t the first to claim that unconscious bias can be challenged, either. From the Labour Party leader to accountancy firm , prominent people and institutions routinely respond to charges of racism by pledging to combat unconscious bias.

The concept of unconscious bias has its origins in psychology. In 1995, US psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald that unconscious attitudes and stereotypes shaped people’s understandings and, in turn, their actions. They said that a child growing up in a racist society – with racially segregated neighbourhoods and schools, racist depictions in the media and parents and teachers propagating racial stereotypes – will internalise racism without realising it. They would then go on to express racist views unconsciously.

Building on this idea, in 1998, Banaji and Greenwald worked with social-cognitive psychologist Brian Nosek to develop the implicit association test (IAT). This has since become a popular tool in classrooms and corporate diversity . On the IAT , users can test their unconscious bias with regard to a wide array of categories, ranging from race and gender to ability and nationality.

The concept has gained further traction in the fields of , and .

What unconscious bias doesn’t tell us

The appeal of the IAT and the concept itself lies in its simple design. As a tool, it demonstrates just how widely held racist attitudes are –- particularly among people who are not conscious of holding them.

It is, however, precisely this simplicity that makes the concept inadequate. The IAT presents users with a succession of words and images, including the names and faces of Black and white people, and asks them to categorise them as “good” or “bad”, as quickly as possible. The user then receives a score, which shows their level of unconscious bias.

Left out of this test is any analysis of where users’ associations might have originated. Research has long shown that pervades society at every level, from and the to the and systems.

When Harry states that members of his family hold unconscious bias, he does not situate this within the larger context of institutional racism. This is particularly concerning when we consider who, exactly, he is talking about.

The royal family is the institution at the heart of power in Britain. Members of this family derive their and from political and social institutions that are the product of racism and colonialism. But ascribing only unconscious bias to these family members ignores these institutional roots. It reduces racial prejudice to the conscious, deliberate attitudes of individuals.

Further, for people on the sharp end of racist violence, it matters little whether the people responsible were conscious of their attitudes and actions or not. Unconscious bias only makes sense from the vantage point of the perpetrator. Black people face the same detrimental consequences, regardless of whether the perpetrators of racism are conscious of their bias or not.

prescribe fewer painkillers to Black patients than to white patients, even though they report similar levels of pain. hand down custodial sentences for Black and Asian offenders that are 1.5 times longer than for white offenders. are twice as likely to deny compensation to Black fraud victims as they are to white victims.

Unconscious bias is useful as a tool for helping people who think racism is irrelevant to them – that is, people who hold power in a racist society – to understand that their biases are the product of institutional racism. But suggesting that unconscious bias is somehow less harmful than racism posits the latter as something only to be overcome at the individual level. The institutions that made racism possible, and, crucially, the people on the sharp end of its effects, remain invisible.

, Presidential Fellow in Ethnicity and Inequalities,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The briefing was also written by Professor James Nazroo and Dr Patricia Irizar of The University of Manchester, as well as Dr Richard Shaw of the University of Glasgow. It draws on a longer article published in , and is part of a by the Runnymede Trust and the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) on the impact of COVID-19 on people from ethnic minority groups.

About the Economic and Social Research Council 

The Economic and Social Research Council () is part of UK Research and Innovation (), a non-departmental public body funded by a grant-in-aid from the UK government. We fund world-leading research, data and post-graduate training in the economic, behavioural, social and data sciences to understand people and the world around us. Our work helps raise productivity, address climate change, improve public services and generate a prosperous, inclusive, healthy and secure society.  

“This important report demonstrates that the very low number of Black and minority ethnic judges poses an acute challenge to the credibility and legitimacy of the judiciary,” said Stephanie Needleman from . “It is only by creating a critical mass of diverse judges that we can ensure that our judiciary is reflective of society and begin to combat the racism witnessed by survey respondents.”  

“We welcome, and are grateful to have been consulted on, this hard-hitting report,” said former Judge Claire Gilham from the “My whistleblowing about racism was dismissed as me not understanding judicial culture, having come from the wrong background. There is no internal data keeping for equality complaints, which makes it very difficult for the judiciary to provide any evidence to deny the findings of this report. A severe shake-up of the system is needed.”  

“Even after 25 years as a Trade Union Official, I am shocked at the practices employed in the appointment and promotion of judges,” said Stuart Fegan from GMB. “The Judiciary is funded with public money, and the practices identified would simply not be tolerated anywhere else in the public sector. I am delighted that Labour have committed to review appointment and promotion procedures if they win the next election in order to ensure that judges are reflective of the public they serve.”