Dur­ing the course of the last week, the British gov­ern­ment an­nounced a ‘re­fresh’ of Ac­tion Against Hate (2016), a part of their four-year hate crime ac­tion plan, to ‘ad­dress spe­cific con­cerns across all 5 mon­i­tored strands of hate crime.’ New mea­sures like a Law Com­mis­sion re­view into whether ad­di­tional pro­tected char­ac­ter­is­tics like misog­yny and age should be leg­is­lated for, and min­is­te­r­ial round ta­bles to specif­i­cally ad­dress Mus­lim and Jew­ish con­cerns head­lined. Sadly, de­spite be­ing sub­ject to se­ri­ous vi­o­lence and hos­til­ity since 9/​11, British Sikhs have forth­rightly held that the ‘re­fresh’ has man­aged to mar­gin­alise British Sikhs yet again. 

Net­work of Sikh Or­gan­i­sa­tions di­rec­tor Lord In­dar­jit Singh has ex­pressed Sikh con­cerns in nu­mer­ous de­bates in the House of Lords. The NSO is par­tic­u­larly up­set that the de­tailed ev­i­dence to the Home Af­fairs Se­lect Com­mit­tee on hate crime and vi­o­lent con­se­quences has been pro­vided over the last two years. 

The NSO has also un­earthed data (through FOI) show­ing how sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of non-Mus­lims and those of no recorded faith are be­ing recorded as vic­tims of ‘Is­lam­o­pho­bic hate crime’ by the MET po­lice, and gone onto suc­cess­fully push for dis­ag­gre­ga­tion of re­li­gious hate crime. In part­ner­ship with Hindu groups, we lob­bied the gov­ern­ment to ad­dress re­port­ing is­sues for Hin­dus and Sikhs, and they re­sponded with a spe­cific pol­icy (an­nounced in Jan­u­ary 2017) to help both com­mu­ni­ties re­port hate crime via True Vi­sion.

The NSO, The Sikh Coun­cil, The Sikh Fed­er­a­tion UK and City Sikhs have all ex­pressed con­cerns about Ac­tion Against Hate (2016) when it was first pub­lished, the ‘re­fresh’ makes it clear the gov­ern­ment is un­will­ing to ad­dress the wider ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Is­lam­o­pho­bia on Sikhs, or the ‘Mus­lim look­ing oth­er’.

A sim­ple ac­knowl­edg­ment that Sikhs face Is­lam­o­pho­bia would have al­layed con­cerns. Like us, many will be right to ask the gov­ern­ment why min­is­te­r­ial ‘round ta­bles’ are the pre­serve of Jews and Mus­lims, and why the True Vi­sion pro­ject an­nounced in 2017 has still not been im­ple­mented.

Last week Lord In­dar­jit Singh pre­sented his view­point in a pow­er­ful speech which touched an ar­ray of an­gles on the sub­ject. 

Dur­ing the de­bate Lord Mor­row (DUP) in­de­pen­dently re­ferred to Hard­eep Singh’s ef­forts (our Deputy-Di­rec­tor) in un­earthing FOI data from the MET po­lice (2015/​16) which showed sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of non-Mus­lims and those of no recorded faith, are recorded as be­ing vic­tim of ‘Is­lam­o­pho­bic hate crime’.

In re­sponse to Lord Singh’s speech Lord Cor­mack (CON) said: ‘Lord Singh of Wim­ble­don, has given us sev­eral thoughts for the day in that rather splen­did speech, the sub­text of which was that hos­til­ity is bred from and fed by ig­no­rance.’

Wind­ing up the de­bate for Labour peers, Lord Grif­fiths re­fer­ring to Lord Singh’s speech say­ing, ‘I take the point of the no­ble Lord, Lord Singh that we must be care­ful to be more in­clu­sive when we men­tion those who are on the re­ceiv­ing end of prej­u­dice and dis­crim­i­na­tion — rep­re­sent a broad can­vas.’

He went on to con­grat­u­late the NSO’s Di­rec­tor on his crit­i­cism of su­per­fi­cial in­ter­faith di­a­logue, and said: ‘In­deed, I think it was the no­ble Lord, Lord Singh, who came near­est to where all my thoughts were as I pre­pared for this de­bate. It is true that those con­fer­ences and sym­posia, those sem­i­nars that you go to, full of blan­d­ish­ments and fine words un­re­lated to causes, are about ephemeral and mar­ginal is­sues. I am so pleased to hear that said. I would not have had the courage to say it, but I am de­lighted to have the courage to echo it. We must find a way to get to the core of the things we need to dis­cuss to­gether, the things be­neath all the things that hap­pen on the sur­face.’

Lon­don, 23 Oc­to­ber, 2018, WSN News Bu­reau