'A united community is a confident community'

22nd October 2002

I was delighted to spend Saturday morning meeting the people behind this year's South Tyneside Asian Film Festival at the Customs House. Also known as the 'Masala Weekend', the event combined some of the best of the recent Asian films such as Monsoon Wedding, with dance and saree workshops, face-painting, and delicious Indian food. We have some committed and talented people from all ethnic backgrounds, but the film weekend was particularly exciting because it appealed to people from all parts of the community.

When built upon clear values of tolerance and mutual respect, multi-culturalism can deliver something to benefit us all. South Tyneside gains substantially from a dynamic blend of arts, cuisine, histories, and commerce produced by our ethnic minority communities. Our Borough is strong and we should have confidence in what we can achieve through working with all ethnic communities. This is of course is a challenge, but there are enough examples of success for us to take heart from.

South Tyneside College serves 16-18 year olds from, adult learners, but is famous for attracting students from all parts of the world. However a year ago, after September 11th, people were genuinely worried that the College would lose students from Africa and the Middle East and that there would be a racist backlash. There are always big gains for any community that remains united. In South Tyneside we made a clear signal that we would stamp on any islamophobia and racial discrimination. As a result we continue to attract outstanding students from all parts of the globe and South Tyneside College remains at the forefront of marine education. Of course it doesn't take catastrophic events like September 11th to provoke racism and division. Racism can exist in every part of society, in any part of the world.

Ten days ago the England football scraped an important 2-1 victory on a boggy pitch in Slovakia. A gutsy performance turned a likely defeat into an improbable victory, yet it was hard to be in a celebratory mood. Throughout the entire match, England's black players received some of the worst racial abuse from football fans ever witnessed. The sight of vast numbers of Slovakian fans screaming monkey noises each time Emile Heskey or Ashley Cole touched the ball must have sickened all who watched. After the match, Heskey said the racial abuse was the worst he had experienced throughout his career and that even the Slovakian stretcher-bearers were taking part in the abuse.

The only way to defeat racial discrimination is to challenge it head on. This week the Kick Racism out of Football campaign are running high-profile events to raise awareness of how racism manifests itself and how we need to educate people to combat it. They've brought together the Professional Footballer's Union, trade unions like Unison and anti-racist community groups to work for a common cause. Footballers such as David Beckham, Niall Quinn and Nol Solano are so important to campaigns like this because kids listen to their idols. Whether they watch football matches at the Stadium of Light, St James' Park or Filtrona Park, it's important that they are educated to make a stand against racism. If we can all get young people to think about the message behind the 'Kick It Out' campaign, we are on to something.

We know that people from Yemen, Bangladesh and the Punjab have given great service to South Tyneside for generations. The Comedia Report was published just over a hundred days ago as part of South Tyneside's Transformation process. It gave an indication of the scale of work needed doing but gave us confidence that we had the right tools to achieve success. It's my belief that we will need to use every piece of talent available to us in order to achieve our potential. We must forge genuine partnerships with people from ethnic minority communities, and remove anything that tries to divide us. The lessons of the past show we're stronger when we stand together. Our future is going to depend on it.