The
Northampton Borough Council International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHo) on
Thursday was an uplifting experience. To see over the years the growth of the
event can’t help but give a sense of optimism for the future.
One of the
highlights of the event was hearing Ben Cohen’s personal video message for the
event. It was the first time that I had heard him speak about his motivation
emerging from the murder of his father and his drive to take action to achieve
something positive about the experience.
Northampton
Borough Council has come quite some way over the past couple of years. In 2010
I suggested that they look at Hate Crime as a piece of work for their scrutiny
committee. Part of my reasoning for doing so was to draw attention to culture
of the Borough Council in dealing with hate crime.
This culture
was no more clearly demonstrated by the failure of the Borough Council to deals
with hate incidents reported by residents who had the misfortune to live near
Gavin Kerr, one of the individuals that was convicted of killing Peter Cohen,
when he lived on Kings Heath up till two years ago. People were obviously unwilling to
report the incidents and so the homophobia and the racism continued. The Council at the time refused to deal with
the issue and did not bring the case for discussion at multi-agency groups
designed to review such cases. Gavin has
now moved and I’m not sure what he is doing now but for the black families and
young gay men that had to endure his offense verbal diatribe on a regular
basis, life is better.
Northampton
Borough Council has bravely included taking more action on Hate crime as an
equality objective that it commits to make progress on. It is indeed brave but
it will have to be so much more than making noise. It will be getting to the
bottom of hard issues and really making a difference rather than working hard
and making noise.
