“It is always the poorer and excluded communities that suffer the most from inequality of power and bad decision making.”
By Shavanah Taj
Cover Image: The memorial in Ely, Cardiff, for Kyrees Sullivan and Harvey Evans (16 and 15) , who were killed after being chased by South Wales Police, voice.wales
The evasiveness of the South Wales Police about the deaths of Kyrees Sullivan and Harvey Evans in Ely this week was not a surprise. It was merely a high-profile example of a tendency towards defensiveness and a hostility to scrutiny that runs through many Welsh institutions.
This tendency is most obvious in the police. In the last few years there have been numerous incidents that have undermined public confidence. An officer in Porthmadog earlier this month repeatedly punching someone who was already restrained. The deaths of Mohamud Hassan and Mouayed Bashir. The prosecution of Siyanda Mngaza. The failings in policing during the Mayhill disturbances in Swansea in 2021. The revelations of racism, misogyny and corruption in the Gwent force.
Meanwhile the Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) – the bodies that were set up by David Cameron’s coalition government to be the voice of the public and hold the police to account – continue to be quick off the mark to act as public relations functionaries for the forces, rather than establishing the facts, before giving press statements. This was evident following the media investigation into Gwent police last year, and we’ve seen it again this week in South Wales.
It has long been the policy of the Wales TUC that policing should be devolved to Wales. But that by itself would not be enough. It would be pointless to devolve policing if we simply then sought to replicate the current system and stick a Welsh flag on it. It must be an opportunity to radically re-think the way our communities are policed – and particularly our most deprived, under resourced communities. But to take this radical step would be challenging for a Welsh civic sphere that is often rightly characterised by an excessive coziness and narrow-mindedness
The recent developments of the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan, LGBT+ and Disability Action Plan, all recognise that we have real problems in Wales with power and accountability and they extend far beyond the police. Many of the examples of lived experience, rightly highlight the pervasive arrogance and high-handedness among the powerful that comes from having a sense that we lack the kind of institutions – whether that’s media or properly financed and managed rights enforcement bodies – that will hold their feet to the fire.
It is always the poorer and excluded communities that suffer the most from inequality of power and bad decision making. There’s a weird acceptance of the fact that people in the richest wards of our city live on average 10 years longer than people in the poorest wards – like Ely, Grangetown, Riverside and Butetown. Areas then get stuck in a vicious circle where they’re not seen as “worthy” of investment. Where young people continue to report, that their postcode determines whether they will be eligible for a job interview. And after 13 years of Tory austerity and deep cuts to the Welsh Government budget, the sticky plasters are finally falling off, leaving too many people drained of hope that things can get any better.
As General Secretary of the Wales TUC I see these power imbalances play out all the time in workplaces across Wales. Only 23% of workers say they have any real say in changes that are made to their jobs. More people than ever are stuck in insecure work that leaves them at the mercy of their bosses. The state has basically given up on the idea that it will properly police working conditions and maintain employment standards.
The helplessness that people feel at work feeds into the greater sense of helplessness they feel when they see their communities neglected and see the authorities gaslighting them.
We need to do better at holding the people in power to account and genuinely empower people who feel their voices don’t matter. We need to collaborate and work with others who are interested in making their communities a great place to live and work in. We need to do this in every part of life in Wales, we need to invest in sustainable resources into doing that properly, we need to measure the results and we need to be bolder in willing to scrap approaches that aren’t working. We can’t simply sweep everything under the carpet anymore.
* Shavanah Taj is general secretary of the Wales TUC
