THE United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is held each year on the day the police opened fired and killed 69 people and injured 180 others at a peaceful demonstration against the South African apartheid “pass laws” at the now infamous Sharpeville Massacre in 1960.

At its general assembly in 1979 the UN agreed that each member state should organise a week of activities every year, beginning on March 21, to bring focus to the fight against racism.

Twenty years ago, after the fall of apartheid, the UN held a World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, to give fresh impetus to the struggle.

As well as world leaders, the conference brought together non-governmental organisations from across the globe, including trade unions, to meet and discuss the practical steps that could be taken beyond the speeches.

Global alliances against racism were formed during that conference and Unison was the beating heart of the delegation that I led on behalf of the TUC who I worked for at the time.

The origin of the UN Day Against Racism is important to remember. It came out of the deaths of black people standing up for their rights.

Similarly, in 1999, six years after the murder of South London teenager Stephen Lawrence, the inquiry led by William MacPherson into the death and subsequent (mis)investigation by the Metropolitan Police, turned the attention of the nation towards tackling the institutional racism that was so ingrained into many public and private institutions.

Just last year in 2020 the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in the US by the police brought a new energy to the fight against racism. They helped to capture the attention of millions of people across the world, who had been forced to stand still by the Covid-19 pandemic and could, at last, hear the voices of black people demanding action against racism.

We began to see popular movements develop that asserted that Black Lives Matter — a cry that first emerged after the murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

Trade unions were at the heart of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and globally, early supporters of the campaign for justice for the Lawrence family — and also vocal supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Unison and our predecessor unions have always been more than an ally in these campaigns. We have been active collaborators for racial justice.

The assertion of the importance of black lives cannot just be a convenient slogan to use at the appropriate time.

It is a call for real change to happen to deal with the racism that so many of us face on a daily basis; from the attacks on the street to the discrimination in the workplace; from being passed over again for promotion to missing out on yet another training opportunity.

It has never been about saying that Black Lives Matter more than anyone else’s. It is saying that all the evidence we see is that our black lives do not count as much as others.

Aside from the obvious social justice arguments we all know as trade unionists that when working people are divided against each other in any way then all of us are weaker in being able to deliver for our members in their workplaces and the communities where they live.

The Covid-19 deaths of black people are out of all proportion to our numbers in the country.

At the same time black workers have shown a hesitancy to take the vaccine because answers have not been provided into why black people have been affected this way and also out of a knowledge of past clinical experiments that have been carried out against our people over many years.

This hesitancy has led to some employers threatening black workers with dismissal if they refuse to take the vaccine.

Unison wants all members to take the vaccine for their own safety and the safety of the people they are providing public services for. We are also against employers taking a heavy-handed approach and threatening workers with dismissal.

This is clearly an issue for all workers but certainly for black workers in particular — not just in Britain but across the US and in other parts of Europe.

Anti-racism does not begin and end with the UN Day Against Racism. It is something that we must do all the time and in everything that we do. But we know that our movement can always do more. That’s what makes the newly established TUC Anti-Racism Task Force so important.

It is an opportunity for us to develop our anti-racist and black-worker organising strategies, our bargaining for race equality, our public policy initiatives and to improve opportunities for black trade unionists to work for and progress within our movement.

Racism is real. The challenge is real. Our commitment as a movement is real.

The UN Day Against Racism is a real opportunity for everyone in the trade union and labour movement to strengthen our anti-racism work, to show black and white workers together standing together against racism because we know that racism divides us and makes us weaker. In unity is strength.

Roger McKenzie is an assistant general secretary of Unison.