2.1 Power over movement
Crucial to a person’s freedom is how easy or otherwise it is to move around space. Being able to move easily and affordably creates options for work and leisure. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that transport is an ongoing topic that is connected to racial (in)justice. In the UK, the freedom of movement gained by owning a car is disproportionately enjoyed by white over Black people. Black people are more reliant on public transport for commuting to work, leisure activities and to uphold family and social obligations.
Black people are proportionately more likely to travel by bus or rail than white people (UK Government, 2020). Therefore, expensive and/or unreliable public transport will affect Black people proportionately more than it will white people. Both the cost of rail and bus journeys continue to grow year on year, a trend that has been steady since these services were privatised in the 1980s. Although in 2023 rail prices grew less than the previous year and more closely matched the rate of pay rises for public sector workers (ONS, 2023), according to research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) the pattern between 2009-2019 was of the cost of rail growing roughly twice as much as people’s earnings (TUC, 2019a).
The TUC also showed in 2019 that the shareholders of rail companies in the UK were paid dividends of more than £1bn between 2013-2019, while passengers in the UK paid a far greater percentage of their monthly earnings on rail travel than their European counterparts (TUC, 2019b). Buses are the most common form of public transport in the UK and although the bigger picture is that of steady price rises, the situation is uneven, with commuters outside London often paying far more than in the capital (Pidd, 2019).
Stop-and-search
Power over movement is experienced by Black people in relation to the police using its powers to stop and search. Such powers are used disproportionately against Black people. For example, between April 2020 and March 2021 there were 7.5 stop and searches per 1,000 white people but 52.6 for every 1,000 Black people (UK Government, 2022). At the very least your journey on foot is far more likely to be inconvenienced if you are Black. However, the effects on Black people stopped and searched stretch far beyond inconvenience, with more than half of Black people in a recent poll stating that they felt humiliated or embarrassed by the incident (Dodd, 2022).
Power in movement can also mean freedoms to cross national borders with ease – something that enhances a person’s opportunities for work and leisure. Conversely, restricting a person’s international movements is a negative use of power. While most people accept that some restrictions on international movement are necessary to maintain national security, economic health and sustainable public services, it is also the case that Black people have experienced significant discrimination in relation to international movement. The Windrush scandal is a prime example. In 2018 it became clear that Black British people were being denied entry into the UK and deported because they were unable to prove their legal status as citizens. When the UK needed workers to help rebuild the country’s economy and infrastructure after the Second World War, people from colonised countries in the Caribbean were encouraged by the British government to settle and work in the UK. However, at the time, the administrative procedures and provision of written proof of citizenship were inadequate.
Many years later, in the 2010s, the then-government introduced a series of harsh policies aimed at illegal immigrants (known as the ‘hostile environment policy’). Such policies created a problem for many in the Windrush generation, who were unable to provide paperwork to satisfy the government that they were indeed citizens. One effect of this situation was that people who had been invited to the UK decades earlier, who had settled in Britain, starting families, were either being denied re-entry to the country or were threatened with deportation to countries they had little to no connection with. Controversies regarding compensation payments and continued discrimination against Windrush victims trying to access public services and welfare are ongoing.
While restrictions over movement certainly represent a negative exercise of power over bodies, it is also worth thinking about how power of movement can be used in positive ways through Black leadership, something you will now explore in an activity.
Activity 1 Powerful movement
Watch the following video, about the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963. The boycott is a good example of how power is used to restrict and enable movement. Movement here can be literal movement, through the spaces of a city, or social mobility, which is the ability to build a better life for yourself.
As you watch, identify one example of how power is used to restrict movement and one example of how power is used to enhance movement.
Bristol Bus Boycott video [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (open the video in a new tab or window by holding down Ctrl [or Cmd on a Mac] when you click on the link)
Comment
There are many examples you could have identified here. In terms of negative uses of power, it was clear that the informal power of a trade union at the time was used to prevent Black people gaining social mobility through employment. More positively, Black people used their power of movement to restrict the income of the bus company, forcing change. Positive forms of social mobility were enhanced through the boycott. The boycott built up confidence and self-belief, a power that echoed down the generations, from Bristol’s first Black bus driver Norman Samuels, to his son Vernon, and onwards to Amelia, the young interviewer in the film. Finally, the boycott resulted in more material security for Black British people, whose employment options were expanded.