WE WILL know in a few months, when the government pulls away its furlough safety net that has cushioned the blow of the epidemic on our pounds shillings and pence, whether Britain is REALLY now colourblind. 

Because once that government ‘free money’ goes in the autumn WE are really going to feel it. I mean really. 

The chancellor has already said as much.

He’s anticipating such a dramatic downturn in the economy that it seems inevitable that a recession looms ahead. 

In which case the removal of the furlough scheme in October, which has kept employers from officially laying staff off with the apparent intention that they will be able to re-hire them when the whole thing is over, may prove a real body blow for the country’s black community. 

It all depends on if Britain is still a racist society or whether it’s come a long way since those ‘dark’ old days when black workers were the canon fodder of UK unemployment.

Because we have felt it in recessions of the past. I mean really felt it. 

The archives of this very newspaper are a testament to how the recessions of the early 80s and 90s hit the black community the hardest. 

All the studies showed that rates of unemployment amongst black youth, especially, were staggeringly higher than those of their white counterparts. 

And when we couldn’t take it any longer, it was we who staged an insurrection known as ‘riots’. 

We couldn’t take hanging out on the ‘frontlines’ of the community from morning to night with nothing better to do than tell jokes, chirps gyal and (one or two man only, let’s not exaggerate now) ‘dip’. 

We wanted real jobs in a system in which the only way to even maintain, let alone get rich quick was to work and work hard.

Hard work

In those days our parents actually drummed into us on a regular that we had to work twice as hard as white folks just to maintain, on a level with them. That was the mantra. 

If I came second in my school exam my old man would reach for a cane. 

As far as he was concerned most of us didn’t listen to the old folks so we had to learn that if we worked twice as hard there was no way we couldn’t come top. 

Of course the cockneys had the same attitude with their kids because they also know that when recession comes it’s generally the poor that are hardest hit.

Our experience (many if not most of us black boys and girls) back in the 80s and 90s was that even when we did work hard we weren’t really getting anywhere like a lot of our white friends who we grew up with, went to school with and got better ‘O’ levels than. 

We didn’t even really talk about it too tough. It wasn’t like we were ruminating on the frontline thinking, “Woe is we”. 

We were simply resigned to that being the way it was. 

Legit jobs

From my wide circle of friends from when I was growing up in north London, I only remember one or two having a legit job. 

The rest of us were just ‘skylarking’ as Horace Andy called it on his big hit or looking a bly through the college and university and apprentice routes.

And it’s not like this was just a north London thing. I’m a man who travels all over and wherever I go in this country I always check out the black community if there is one. 

It was easier in the days of frontlines, but now you have to seek out community centres and hope you can buck up on one or two man who know the history of the place and tell you what it’s all about. 

It’s a habit from the old days when it was a matter of personal security that you knew just how racist the cops in the town were and which racist areas to avoid. 

That’s how come I know that back in dem race-hate Eighties and the nine-milly Nineties man and man were feeling it in Handsworth, Birmingham, Moss Side, Manchester and Chapeltown, Leeds. All over. 

They were feeling it same way. Same way we were feeling it on the frontline back in London. 

Equality laws

Since then, of course, things have been all sweet and rosie lea with six sugars. All sorts of equality laws have been put in place, not just to protect black folks from discrimination in the work place but to protect everybody else. 

Moreover, the economy has been relatively booming along (for rich folks, at least) and (rich folks, at least) needy of labour and, until relatively recently workplace discrimination seemed a thing of the past. 

So I was somewhat taken aback when my stepson suffered it recently in an atmosphere of redundancies in his workplace.

We are back in the “winter” of our discontent. Just last month unemployment jumped by a record amount. 

More than 800,000 people signed on. In a month! 

Taking the UK unemployment level to over 2 million. 

It does not take a genius to predict that the same thing is going to happen when furlough goes.

How can the government expect businesses to hang on to their employees when ministers have also warned us that ‘tings are come up to bump’ and if you think ‘dutty’ tuff right now, hang on to your cash because the road is just about to get duttier and tuffer.

Discrimination

 The months ahead and (perhaps) years may be the real test then of all the race relations acts and employment equality laws which tribunals hate to preside over because discrimination in the workplace is often ephemeral and impossible to prove. 

The tribunal judge would put it down to a ‘hunch’ or a feeling. Well, yes, discrimination in the workplace is sometimes a matter of a hunch or a feeling and who feels it knows it through a process of deducement. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Are we to deduce then that when labour is in short supply we are welcome. Very welcome.

As we were in the 1950s when the Health Minister, Enoch Powell, invited us over to take part in the hard work part of the economy in supporting the NHS – without applause or even a clap.

Are we also to deduce on past evidence that when times get tough and work is in short supply that welcome is not as forthcoming unless we are willing to work harder and for less, which is not right and not fair. 

We have family to support too. Just like the next man.

Can we not conclude from the above two deductions that if the furlough scheme goes it will be sufferer’s time for millions of people, but especially for black folks.