Two re­cent re­ports in the UK high­light the chal­lenges that ex­ist as we seek to elim­i­nate the hy­dra-head­ed mon­ster called RACISM. First­ly, the Trade Union Con­gress (TUC) has pub­lished a new re­port “No work­er left be­hind (2026)”, build­ing on ear­li­er trade union stud­ies eg in 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2024. Ac­cord­ing to TUC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Paul Nowak, ex­plic­it racism is “plagu­ing the labour mar­ket and it’s get­ting worse …No one should be treat­ed un­fair­ly or dis­crim­i­nat­ed against be­cause of their back­ground, where they’re from or the colour of their skin.”

As the In­sti­tute of Work­ers’ Rights (IWR) re­ports: “To­geth­er, these re­ports track the ex­pe­ri­ence of Black work­ers over near­ly a decade. The lat­est find­ings demon­strate that while there have been some im­prove­ments in re­port­ing and ac­count­abil­i­ty, racism dis­crim­i­na­tion and ha­rass­ment re­main wide­spread and, in sev­er­al ar­eas, have wors­ened since 2020.”

The Polling Com­pa­ny, Hold Sway, con­duct­ed a poll be­tween Jan­u­ary 14th and 30th, 2026, sur­vey­ing 1,044 Black, Asian, and mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic work­ers aged 16 and over across the UK. The open­ing para­graph of the re­port states: “Black work­ers con­tin­ue to face racism, in­se­cu­ri­ty and un­equal treat­ment at work across the UK … de­spite greater aware­ness of racial in­equal­i­ty in re­cent years, many Black work­ers still en­counter hos­tile work­place cul­tures, struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers to pro­gres­sion and un­safe work­ing con­di­tions.”

The sur­vey found that Black work­ers face a range of un­fair treat­ment at work, in­clud­ing:

- Be­ing giv­en hard­er or less pop­u­lar work tasks;

- Re­ceiv­ing un­fair crit­i­cism;

- Be­ing kept on tem­po­rary or fixed-term con­tracts.

Black work­ers are more like­ly than white work­ers to re­ceive each type of un­fair treat­ment that the re­searchers asked about.

For Black work­ers, the most com­mon forms of racism and ha­rass­ment ex­pe­ri­enced at work are:

- Racist jokes or “ban­ter”;

- Wit­ness­ing racist ver­bal or phys­i­cal abuse;

- Racist re­marks at you or in your pres­ence;

- Ver­bal abuse at you or oth­ers;

- Ques­tion­ing about your cul­ture or re­li­gion in a way that was of­fen­sive or hu­mil­i­at­ing.

It is hoped that ur­gent ac­tion will be tak­en to im­ple­ment the TUC’s rec­om­men­da­tions, which are ad­dressed to the gov­ern­ment, em­ploy­ers and to the TUC.

An­oth­er dis­turb­ing re­cent re­port (23 April) high­light­ing the ex­tent of racism, is that pro­duced by Dame Rachel de Souza, Chil­dren’s Com­mis­sion­er, who has found that Black chil­dren are eight times more like­ly to be strip-searched by po­lice than their white peers in Eng­land and Wales. While the re­port shows that the num­ber of chil­dren strip-searched has more than halved in four years, it warns that eth­nic dis­par­i­ties per­sist and calls in­to ques­tion the use of force in some cas­es.

The re­port al­so found that black chil­dren were al­most five times as like­ly to be sub­ject­ed to force dur­ing stop and search as their white coun­ter­parts. Force tac­tics were found to in­clude hand­cuffs, firearms and tasers. And yet, as the re­port found, no fur­ther ac­tion was the most com­mon out­come when force was ap­plied. Many of us re­mem­ber the shock­ing case in­volv­ing the strip search­ing of 15-year-old Child Q—a black child, at her school in Hack­ney in De­cem­ber 2020. She “was wrong­ly sus­pect­ed of pos­sess­ing cannabis, was on her pe­ri­od and forced to ex­pose her in­ti­mate parts while no ap­pro­pri­ate adult was present.” (BBC).

We should note Dame Rachel’s words: “The in­suf­fi­cient jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for many of these search­es will on­ly erode chil­dren’s trust in the po­lice, which is es­sen­tial for their safe­ty. A much high­er thresh­old should be met be­fore a child is sub­ject­ed to a hu­mil­i­at­ing and trau­ma­tis­ing strip search.”

Dame Rachel sets out in her re­port a num­ber of key rec­om­men­da­tions. Will ac­tion be tak­en on these and on those made by the TUC? Com­bat­ing racism must be an on­go­ing shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Let us com­mit to play our part in rid­ding the world of this evil that tram­ples on the dig­ni­ty of the hu­man per­son. There will be no jus­tice or peace once racism ex­ists.

This is not a prob­lem faced on­ly by the UK; glob­al ac­tion is es­sen­tial to dis­man­tle sys­temic racism. The UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res right­ly re­minds us that: “The an­cient poi­son of racism is alive and kick­ing in every com­mu­ni­ty, so­ci­ety, coun­try and re­gion of the world ... The an­ti­dote is uni­ty and ac­tion.”

We must strive to build in­clu­sive so­ci­eties where, as the UN states, “di­ver­si­ty is re­spect­ed and equal­i­ty is up­held.” This will be achieved through “stronger le­gal pro­tec­tions, ed­u­ca­tion, di­a­logue, and co­op­er­a­tion among gov­ern­ments in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, and civ­il so­ci­ety” (UN).