Don’t Support the Castle Boycott

This post is a follow-up to “Why the call to boycott Nottingham Castle is wrong”   Available here/

 

Rather predictably, because I sought to throw doubt upon the validity of the call to boycott, I have been identified as a white man and declared to be a racist.

In fairness, such a charge is always a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, a bit pavlovian and there was only one such response from across the internet.

But it hurts.   I have spent a good portion of my life fighting racism.  Physically on the streets of Leicester, Loughborough, and Nottingham, and, using such advocacy skills as I have, in the courts and tribunals of England and Ireland.

I believe it is necessary to repeat the view that the boycott is unjustified and should not be followed.

The call to respect the boycott is grounded on a range of allegations against the castle.    It originates in the claim that a black grandmother and her grandchildren were the subjects of verbal and physical racial abuse while on the castle grounds and that in the follow-up to the verbal and physical abuse the castle authorities and staff displayed a tolerance of racial abuse.  The staff on the premises at the time were and still are, accused of being unhelpful and unsupportive of the victims of the verbal and physical racial attack and that they and the castle trustees failed to follow their own established and published procedures in dealing with a complaint about the verbal and physical racial attack and the follow up thereto.

It is, without doubt,  a serious set of allegations.  

 There followed a police investigation by Nottinghamshire Constabulary and two independent investigations commissioned by the Castle.    All three of those investigations have been completed.  

The police determined there was no evidence to support any prosecution of what was described, and continues to be described by those advocating a boycott, as a race hate crime.

The Charity Commissioners for England and Wales who conducted the first independent investigation found nothing untoward in the response and conduct of the castle staff and the castle Trustees.

The third independent investigation examined the full range of the allegations made by the complainant.   On the publication of their report, the black grandmother who is the principal complainant described herself as being satisfied with the findings of that independent investigation.  (Evening Post 21st February 2022)

On the allegation that the Castle staff failed to offer any support or sympathy to the victims of the alleged verbal and physical racial attack, the independent investigators specifically found that was not the case and that the staff, given the circumstances,  offered appropriate support within their abilities.

It is of course much easier, for the purposes of a boycott to ignore the independent investigation finding and paint the castle staff as heartless and being condoners of racial abuse, working in a systemically racist organisation.  

That is exactly how they are portrayed in the arguments put forward to support the boycott.

That is monstrosity unfair to the castle staff.  And probably defamatory.   In the light of the findings of the independent investigation, accepted as satisfactory by the complainant, the allegation should not be used as an argument to ground the call for an international boycott.   Yet it is.

A further argument put forward as a ground to support the boycott is that two black adults were Kettled by a castle security guard.

The independent investigators examined this allegation and found no evidence to support the claim.   Yet still, it is used to persuade the arts and cultural communities to boycott the castle.    It is also monstrously unfair for it paints the security officer as a racist, who tolerates racial abuse, when the investigation findings, with which the complaint was satisfied,  support no such conclusion.

So what did happen on the castle grounds on August the 17^th 2021

It is possible from the reports, social media commentary, and some simple research to accurately reconstruct the event.

Read it, and make your own mind up as to whether a call for an international boycott is an appropriate response.

It was the school holidays. There were children, at play in the castle playground, in the warmth of the summer weather.  The playground is of timber, in the form of a mock child size castle.  There were Black children and white children, enjoying the slides, climbing the walls, no doubt pretending to be knights and sheriffs and robin hoods.

There was an incident between the children.  No one saw the incident, no one heard the incident but it was  over in a second or two.  

The first any employee of the castle heard of the incident was when the two black children go off to find a member of staff to complain to them that they had been called nasty names and that one of them had been kicked.  

The staff member asked them where their parents were and upon being told their mother was having a coffee in the castle coffee shop, she decided the best thing for the children was to take them to her mother.

On her way to the coffee shop with the children she met another member of staff and told him what she had been told by the children and what she was now doing.   The second staff member was concerned and asked the girls if they were Ok and offered them an apology for what had happened. He also offered them a safe place to go to.

The scene now switches to the visitor centre, from where there had been a code red emergency call.

The visitor centre is a modern structure of glass and wood with a retail outlet and information desk and other such facilities of the typical modern visitor centre.  It is close to the castle gates and drawbridge.

A number of staff responded to the code red and went to the visitor centre. 

It was, as recorded in the independent investigation report,  a scene of chaos.   There is a lot of shouting.  The mother of the black children is shouting at a woman in a wheelchair who is the mother of the white child.   She is leaning over her in her wheelchair and shouting at her.   The wheelchair mother is shouting back. A security guard asks her to step back and for the parties to calm down and tell him what had happened.

Everything happening is being filmed on the mobile phones of the two black adults.

The black children are crying.   The white child is crying.  The white mother in the wheelchair begins to cry.  She accuses the black mother of kicking her.

 A member of staff seeks to comfort her, telling her he has not witnessed any kick.   Another member of staff is attempting to comfort the black children and yet another to comfort the white child.

A member of staff has left the building claiming she cannot cope with all this.

More members of staff arrive in response to the code red.    The shouting continues for a period of up to 10 minutes.  Amidst the shouting, there are threats being made to contact the media “we will close you down” and “we will have protesters at the castle gate in the morning”     The white child is constantly referred to as a hate crime preparator, a number of the witness statements record this.  There are shouts to the castle staff to detain the perpetrators and not to allow them to leave.

The white child is an eight-year-old with severe learning difficulties.

 The eight-year-old child and her parents decide to leave the visitor centre and take their child home.   They head towards the castle gates and out to the car park and their car.  Their little girl is visibly distressed and crying.

The black grandmother of the child who had been kicked by the white child, together with the mother of the child are now witnessed by a castle security officer chasing the white child and her parents across the castle grounds towards the gates, shouting “racists” and “don’t let them go” and that they are perpetrators of a  hate crime.  They are filming with their mobile phones.

A castle security officer observing the chase, not knowing what it was all about, was so alarmed that he stood in the path of the chasing grandmother and mother to stop the chase.  The security officer advised them they could not photograph children.    In his witness statement to the independent inquiry, the security officer stated that he did so to protect the child who was in obvious distress.

The two black adults ignored his request to desist filming the child and continued to film and chase the white family out of the castle and all the way to their car park

Now you would expect if the charge against the security officer is one of kettling , that the mobile phone film would prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.    You don’t need to be a barrister to see that. But when the independent investigation was at its work, the two black adults decided not to cooperate in its work and declined to attend.  They forfeited the opportunity to put their own case or to rebut or question or cross-examine the statements being made by the security officer and others.

As a result, the independent investigators never saw the mobile phone videos.   Never heard the recorded soundtrack.

Well, that’s it.  Beyond reasonable doubt that is what happened.

For me, and I am sure for many others it was unforgivable for the families to engage in a shouting match in the presence of their children.      None of the children, black or white, suffered any physical injury from the incident in the playground (its in the report) but it is obvious that they must have all suffered from having to witness the shouting match between their respective parents with accusations flying around and the shouting at the castle staff.

One of the reasons that have been advanced for calling me a racist for questioning the validity of the boycott,  is that I appear to have more sympathy for the white girl than for the black girls.

I feel for them all.  It was an appalling experience for children to have to go through. the trauma of the visitor centre shouting match.   But it is true.  I do have slightly more sympathy for the little white girl.  But its nothing to do with racism.

She is eight years old.  She Suffers from severe learning difficulties. She is called, in public, in the visitor’s centre, a hate crime perpetrator.   She is chased as a hate crime perpetrator, and will forever, or at least for as long as the boycott call continues, be referred to as the castle hate crime racist perpetrator.    And she is so referred to. Constantly.   Read the social media..

It is not possible to call for the boycott or justify the boycott call, without once again referring to the hate crime assault suffered by the complainant in the castle.  Of course, you don’t mention the hate crime criminal is only eight.  Or that she has a severe learning disability. 

The verbal and physical racial assault carried out by the eight-year-old is the font of the boycott call.   Without the hate crime perpetrator, there is just a grievance about the way the complaint was handled by the castle.

There is absolutely no question that the black grandmother, the black mother, and her children have a genuine grievance.    Their day at the castle was completely ruined.   They deserve an apology from the Castle authorities

But it is a small grievance.

It can be dealt with by correspondence, by meetings, and by employing lawyers.   It does not need to refer repeatedly, and in public to the hate crime committed by an eight-year-old.

You will be told it is not about the white child hate crime perpetrator, it’s about the systemic institutional racism of the castle staff and trustees. in their handling of the incident and the complaint.

The two independent investigations are both critical of the handling of the complaint and make serious recommendations to improve the castle’s policies, procedures, and practices.     Both investigations were critical in finding that the castle staff were mostly unaware of the Trusts policies and procedures and had received no training in the handling of such incidents as occurred in the visitors centre.

But that does not amount to racism.  It is an obvious managerial failure.

The castle has a Chief Executive Officer who must surely bear substantial responsibility for bringing the Trusts policies and procedures to the attention of the castle staff and ensuring they are adequately trained to handle such incidents.

Of course, the buck must eventually stop with the Trustees whose duties must include the monitoring of the CEO’s work to ensure its policies were being brought to the attention of its staff and that training programs are being organised.

But that is a managerial and governance failure.  Not racism.   

Children in playgrounds quite often misbehave and get themselves into trouble.    The playground incident could just as well have been between the children of two white families and led to the same kind of incident with the two families blaming each other, shouting at each other in the visitor’s centre and each family, being equally unhappy with the castle staff response.

It could equally have been between two black families.  or the children of two same-sex families., or the children of single-parent families. The failures in the visitor centre have nothing all to do with race.   It was a managerial failure.

As it happens the Trust had sacked its Chief Executive Officer just a few days before the incident in the visitor centre occurred.    She is bringing a claim of unfair dismissal against the Castle Trustees.

Her claim against them contains a smorgasbord of complaints about the Trustees and their operation of the castle attraction.

The Trustees are accused of incompetence, of being inexperienced and unskilled, of dodgy financial practices, of ignoring Charity Commission guidelines, of breaking legal obligations, of bullying and harassment, of inappropriate sexual behavior and of sexism and ultimately, of unfairly dismissing her.

There is not one mention, in all her very substantial documents filed with the Tribunal, that the Trustees were in any way systemically racist, institutionally racist, or ever practiced racial discrimination against staff, exhibitors, or visitors.   Not a whisper.

In fairness to her, in their response to the claim, the castle makes no accusation that she failed to put in place training for the castle staff or failed to make them aware of their policies and procedures.

Race is simply not an issue before the Tribunal.

But the complaint by the black grandmother against the Trustees, that they failed to train their staff or make them aware of their policies and procedures, covers the very period in which the dismissed CEO was in charge.  The CEO makes no complaint, no mention of racism.  Not a whisper.

The CEO’s claim has not yet gone to full trial and is unlikely to do so later this year.   When it does it promises to be the most detailed examination of the Trustees’ performance that anyone could hope for.

But there has s been an interim hearing of the CEO’s claims and there exists a very substantial law report covering the findings of the interim hearing.

I have read that law report.   If you’re interested it’s available online here.

The judge of the interim hearing, Judge Broughton, was required to examine the CEO’s claim and the Castle’s response in some detail and identify from the claim the legal principles and issues which the full hearing may be required to consider.

There are at least 39 such findings.

On 29 occasions the interim Tribunal finds that the claimant (the CEO) is unlikely to persuade the tribunal of the validity of the legal issue under consideration.

On 9 occasions the interim Tribunal finds that the claimant is likely to persuade the full hearing of the validity of the legal point at issue.

They are interim findings and not binding on the Tribunal that will hear the full case.

She may still win the Tribunal.   I have myself fought and won many a tribunal when the odds against us suggest failure.   The law and the procedure of Tribunals are, quite rightly, weighted against the Employer.

I wish her luck.  Some of the findings in her favour are quite important.    But my money is on the castle.

But I digress.

I did so to show that prior to this race hate incident there was no concern by the then CEO as to racism existing in the Castle, amongst its staff, amongst its Trustees, or in any element of the operation of the Castle attraction.   If there had been, you could guarantee it would form part of her unfair dismissal complaints.

We are to believe, however, that the race hate crime of the 17th of August proves, that four days after the CEO’s dismissal, on the 13th of August, the Castle, its staff, and its Trustees, become a bunch of over privileged, over entitled white boys, who tolerate hate crimes and who are riddled, and always have been,  with systemic and institutional racism.

It just does not make sense!

You must make your own mind up as to whether the boycott call is valid.    For me, it is not.

The boycott is doing untold reputational damage to the Castle and to the city.   It is designed to do so.   To deter visitors to the city. For why else would you come to visit Nottingham if not to visit the castle and see Robin Hood.   It seeks to stop performers, exhibitors, artists, poets, historians, brass bands and orchestras from performing at the castle.

Such damage is not justified. It is not justified by the findings of the independent investigation reports.  It is disproportionate to the injury suffered.    The grievance can be continued and fought in less damaging ways that do not write off the staff of the castle as racists and the Trustees as institutional, hate crime condoning, racists.

The people of Nottingham love their city.   It’s not just the Castle and its history, or the Sheriff and Robin Hood, or Brian Clough and the River Trent, or boycott scoring a couple of centuries at Trent Bridge, or Boots and Hockley, or mushy peas and Shipstones.   No matter where you’re from in Nottingham, (I was from Clifton and Sneinton) there is a deep love of the city, in all its diverse communities, rare and much stronger than you find in most English cities.   It is a tragedy that there is such a campaign of unmerited boycott designed to inflict so much damage upon the city’s reputation, when the nature of the injury suffered was, on the scale of vicious race hate crimes, of such a nature that a more proportionate response is called for.

So boycott if you want.  After all, we can’t have an eight-year-old hate crime racist perpetrator getting away with it, can we?    Never mind her mental health.  Let her know that we will all get together, artists, musicians, historians, poets, performers, and all,  to make sure she never forgets her race hate crime.