Statement on our response to Sgt Blake's acquittal

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We have deleted our posts in relation to the acquittal of Sgt. Martyn Blake for the murder of Chris Kaba. We accept that the wording and statistics used in our original posts on X were not as carefully expressed as they should have been, and regret the furore that this caused.

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The statistics used should have been qualified by referencing the source, which itself states that people of colour “die disproportionately as a result of use of force or restraint by the police” and that 8% of those who died in custody were racialised as Black, despite representing only 3% of the population.  Full details are available on INQUEST’s website here. Our posts were making a more nuanced and complex point which could not be clearly expressed with the limitations of the X format, and so we should have refrained from making it. We accept that there was a prosecution and a trial where a jury reached a verdict and that these followed the traditional conventions of legal accountability. 

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It is the Runnymede Trust’s responsibility to highlight and challenge the disproportionalities facing people of colour at the hands of the police and criminal justice system. From Macpherson (1999) to Casey (2023) and a recent UN report (2024), independent accounts clearly highlight the deep-seated nature of institutional racism within police forces. That racism is all too often expressed in excessive use of force, particularly against Black people. Home Office statistics show that police forces in England and Wales (excluding the Metropolitan Police) deploy force tactics at a rate 3.3 times higher on Black people. This is 3.5 times higher for the Metropolitan Police which remains in ‘special measures’. 

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Whilst the UK has a legal system that is structurally and practically independent from the police, the legal system is an institution, like others, that is not free from racial bias. The Lammy Review (2017) identified evidence of ‘differential treatment’, and a recent survey by the University of Manchester (2023) found that 95% of respondents said that racial bias plays some role in the processes or outcomes of the legal system. 

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The Runnymede Trust exists to challenge racial inequalities and injustices, and to advance the case for a society that is free from the structural, institutional and interpersonal forms of racism that underpin these. In the last few years there have been increased attacks on civil society actors by politicians, with one survey of civil society leaders suggesting 64% of respondents have experienced a backlash with regards to their campaigning efforts. This has been even more pronounced for those working on racial justice and the Runnymede Trust has in recent years been actively targeted through hyper-critical political scrutiny and denigration of our work. This kind of hostile civil society culture is deeply unhelpful and undermines our democracy. 

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We are pleased that the government has opened a new ‘Civil Society Covenant’ and look forward to contributing to its development as a way to overcome the combative civil society space that has been created in recent years. 

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As a charity, we are responsible for promoting racial justice and see that as having a universalised benefit for all. We remain committed to performing that mission in good faith and with integrity for all the communities that we serve.