Don’t Hang Around: Why UK Employers Must Protect Black and Brown Staff Now

Your diversity statement won't stop the masked men. This will.

In May 2021, on Kenmure Street in Glasgow, neighbours came out of their homes, linked arms, and blocked a Home Office immigration van for eight hours. They didn’t ask the two detained men for their papers. They didn’t separate “good” migrants from “bad” ones. They saw an injustice happening in front of them, and they acted. The Home Office let the men go.

In June 2026, in Belfast, masked men smashed the windows of Eastern European and other immigrant families’ homes and set some of them on fire. They looted shops owned by Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people. They attacked a mosque during evening prayers. They stopped cars on the road to check the skin colour of the drivers. The trigger was a stabbing by a Sudanese refugee. The real cause was organised far-right agitation spread online by people living thousands of miles away.

Two events. Two ways that groups of people responded to a crisis. One is solidarity. The other is fascism wearing a mask.

Now here is the question most employers and HR leaders must ask: Which version is your workplace getting ready for?

Because here is the truth that glossy diversity statements won’t tell you. The same forces that played out on Kenmure Street and in Belfast are already present inside your organisation. The difference between protecting people and letting them get hurt is not good intentions. It is preparation. It is training. It is knowing what to do when the trouble starts.

UK employers who fail to prioritise the safety and well‑being of their Black and Brown employees are not neutral. They are choosing the Belfast model. They just have not admitted it yet, and better to err on the side of caution.

The Kenmure Street Lesson: Solidarity Needs a Plan

Here is what the nice stories leave out. The people on Kenmure Street did not wake up that morning and spontaneously decide to block a van. They had been getting ready for years. Local activist networks had been running training sessions on how to respond to immigration raids. They had first aid kits ready. They had legal contacts on speed dial. The night before the raid, activists ran a drill on how to block a vehicle and keep everyone safe.

When the Home Office arrived at dawn, they did not panic. They followed the plan.

Now translate that to your workplace. When was the last time you ran a drill for mass racial violence? Do you have a clear plan if a Black employee is targeted by a customer’s online abuse? If a far‑right march is planned near your office, do you have a work‑from‑home policy that does not punish the person who feels unsafe? If a manager makes a “joke” about someone’s immigration status, do you have a reporting system that does not force the victim to repeat their story three times to three different people?

Most employers have nothing. Maybe a mental health first aider who took a short online course. Maybe a helpline that puts people on hold for forty minutes. Maybe a diversity statement that uses the word “journey” so many times it sounds like a holiday brochure.

That is not solidarity. That is pretending. And it fails every single time the trouble starts.

The numbers: Organisations with a clear plan for handling racial incidents see half the absences and nearly 40% less turnover among Black and Brown staff. A single racial discrimination tribunal costs between £30,000 and £100,000. A training session costs a couple of thousand. The maths is simple.

The Belfast Lesson: Doing Nothing Is a Choice

The Belfast riots were not spontaneous. They were organised by far‑right influencers – Tommy Robinson, Elon Musk’s social media machine, anonymous messaging channels, who had never met a single person in the neighbourhoods they burned. They used local frustrations about housing and jobs as fuel. They poured digital petrol on real‑world wood.

Within hours, neighbours turned on neighbours. White residents who lived near immigrant families were attacked just because of their address. Eastern European families who had nothing to do with the original stabbing watched their homes go up in flames.

Here is the uncomfortable question for managers and HR leaders: What is the equivalent of those messaging channels inside your workplace?

Far‑right recruitment does not only happen on fringe websites. It happens in team chats. In “locker room talk” on factory floors. In WhatsApp groups where employees share “just asking questions” memes about immigration. It happens when a manager says nothing after someone complains about “foreigners taking jobs.” Silence is not neutral. Silence is permission.

If you have not trained your managers to recognise and stop casual racist talk, you are not preventing Belfast. You are hosting its rehearsal.

The numbers: In a recent survey of UK employees, 41% of Black and Brown staff said they had heard racially discriminatory remarks from colleagues in the past year. Only 12% reported it. Why? Because they believed nothing would change – or that they would be punished for speaking up. That is not a culture problem. That is a leadership failure.

The Government Will Not Protect Your Staff - You Must

After Kenmure Street, the Home Office said very little. Police Scotland had to explain themselves. The state learned that it could not simply do whatever it wanted when ordinary people blocked the road.

After Belfast, the government condemned the violence – and then immediately used the riots to argue for stricter immigration controls. Ministers said, “This is what happens when borders are not controlled.” They did not mention the far‑right agitators. They did not mention the burned homes of local residents. The victims paid twice: once to the mob, and once to the policy response.

This is how it works. The far‑right creates violence. The government uses that violence to justify harsher rules. And the people who look like they might be migrants - Black and Brown employees, no matter what their passport says, pay the price.

Employers who wait for the government to protect their staff are kidding themselves. The government will issue a statement. It will hold a review. It will write a report that sits on a shelf until the next fire. Meanwhile, your employee is crying in the bathroom because someone shouted a slur at her on the way to work, and she does not know if she is safe coming back tomorrow.

You are not the Home Office. You are not the police. But you pay the salaries, you set the rota, and you decide whether working from home is a reasonable option for someone who just watched their community being attacked on the news.

What Actually Works: A Simple Checklist

You are not being asked to block a van. You are being asked to do the workplace version of that. Here is what it looks like in practice.

1. Support people without playing “good immigrant, bad immigrant”

You cannot ignore immigration status completely - that would break the law. But you can refuse to use it as a weapon. Train your HR team to know the difference between what the law actually requires (right‑to‑work checks) and voluntary nastiness (calling the Home Office over a minor paperwork delay). If an employee’s immigration status changes, your first question should be “How do we keep them employed legally?” not “How do we get rid of them fastest?”

2. Make a plan before something happens

Run a drill. Seriously. Once every three months, pretend a racial incident has happened. A customer refuses service from a Black employee. A far‑right march is announced near your building. A manager is overheard using a racial slur. Who calls whom? Who writes things down? Who offers support? Who talks to the rest of the team without forcing the victim to be the spokesperson? If you cannot answer these questions in under five minutes, you are not ready.

3. Stop racist talk before it spreads

You do not need to become a spy. You do need to train your line managers to recognise and shut down racist speech when it happens. “That’s not funny” is a complete sentence. “We don’t talk about people that way” costs nothing. And when someone crosses the line into targeted harassment, you must act - not with a quiet word, but with formal warnings and consequences. Otherwise, you are telling every Black and Brown employee that their safety does not matter.

4. Measure whether people actually feel safe

Stop measuring diversity by just counting heads. Measure whether your Black and Brown employees feel safe. Use anonymous surveys. Ask the question directly: “Do you feel safe at work?” Ask it when people leave. If the scores are lower for Black and Brown staff than for white staff, you have a problem. Publish the gap. Own it. Fix it.

5. Put a price on failure

Calculate what it costs you when Black and Brown employees leave because of a racist environment. Calculate the risk of a tribunal. Calculate the lost productivity from people who show up but are so anxious they get half as much done. Then show those numbers to your finance director. They might not care about solidarity. They do care about money. Speak in a language they understand.

What Happens Next Is Up to You

Years after Kenmure Street, the two detained men are still living in Glasgow. The community still talks about that day as a rare victory. But the wider picture is grim. The Rwanda scheme (now renamed) still exists. The hostile environment is still in place. Immigration raids still happen at dawn.

What happens after Belfast is still being decided. Some families have returned to their homes. Others have not. The far‑right has claimed the riots as a success. Local community groups are trying to rebuild trust, but trust is fragile - and fire spreads faster than trust can be rebuilt.

Here is the lesson for every UK employer: Communities - including workplace communities, decide how to respond to a crisis. But that decision is not made in the moment. It is made in the months and years before. In the meetings. In the training sessions. In the relationships built across difference.

Kenmure Street worked because people had already done the work. Belfast burned because people had not.

You are not being asked to be a hero. You are being asked to be a competent, decent employer who understands that the safety of your Black and Brown employees is not an extra feature. It is the difference between a workplace that protects people and a workplace that lets them get hurt.

Choose which one you want to explain to a tribunal judge.

Or worse - to the families who thought you would keep them safe.

Solidarity is not a feeling. It is a plan. Act like it.

Sources:

CIPD Good Work Index 2024: https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/reports/2024-pdfs/8625-good-work-index-2024-summary-report-1-web.pdf

Impact HR/UK Government Tribunals Statistics: https://impacthr.co.uk/hr-glossary/employment-tribunals/#tab_4

Inclusion UK Anti-Racism Training: https://inclusion-uk.com/anti-racism-training-page-information/#content

Trades Union Congress (TUC) Anti-Racism Taskforce Report: https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/shocking-increase-explicit-racism-work-recent-years-new-tuc-research-reveals

UNISON National Black Members’ Conference Motion (citing TUC 2022 data): https://www.unison.org.uk/motions/2024/black-members/harassment-its-not-part-of-the-job-2/

HR Magazine / Research by Kline and Warmington (Middlesex University): https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/comment/hr-must-support-black-and-minority-staff-to-report-racism