Vaughan Gething had to go because of his misdeeds not because of his ethnicity

Martin Shipton

It’s more than 60 years since Martin Luther King made one of the most significant political speeches of all time from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

The most memorable line in the speech was this: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Judging people by the content of their character – and by their behaviour – is a principle I’ve always taken extremely seriously, both as a journalist and in life generally.

Vilified

So far as my journalism is concerned, I have written about Britain’s racist far right for decades. Like many others who have done so, I have received threats and been vilified. For many years until it closed down in 2019, I appeared on the Redwatch website, run by a group of fascists who glorified white supremacy and encouraged thugs to attack and intimidate people on the left of the political spectrum.

More recently, since joining NationCymru, I have found myself working with colleagues who have endured death threats and have had to improve security measures at their homes following the publication of stories about the activities of the far right in Wales.

Understandably, we do not take kindly to being accused of racism because of our prominent role in exposing the scandals surrounding First Minister Vaughan Gething.

The events leading up to his decision to stand down are recognised by most people to relate to the content of his character and his behaviour. However, a minority has tried to attribute a racial motive to the coverage of his long-drawn-out political demise.

As one of the journalists involved in writing articles that brought him down, it’s important that my perspective is understood. Again, for most people I suspect that no explanation is necessary. But – to quote back at him an adjective Mr Gething chose to use himself – he and some of his supporters are using a pernicious smear tactic in an attempt to divert attention from his misdeeds. In essence, they are seeking to construct a myth that he has been victimised because of his ethnicity.

“Playing the race card” is a term that doesn’t do justice to what has been going on in recent weeks. It suggests something akin to a game that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. But we can be sure that those making the allegations aren’t being playful in the slightest.

They are seeking to defend Vaughan Gething by smearing with spurious and unfounded allegations of racism those who have been holding him to account.

Toxic sludge

The events that culminated in his resignation began in February when I was contacted by a source who told me that Vaughan Gething had accepted donations totalling £200,000 to his Welsh Labour leadership campaign from a business owned by a man who had received suspended prison sentences for dumping toxic sludge in the precious wetland landscape of the Gwent Levels.

On any account, this was an extraordinary revelation which raised fundamental questions about Welsh democracy.

The size of the donation was far in excess of any previous contribution to a single Welsh politician, and was very likely to prove decisive (it did) in the internal party election where he was a candidate. We therefore were to have a First Minister who was hugely indebted to a convicted environmental criminal who, it quickly became apparent, was intent on furthering his business interests with the help of the Welsh Government.

Despite Mr Gething’s constant mantra that he’d played within the rules and done nothing wrong, the great majority of people used their commonsense and came to the conclusion that no businessman makes a donation of that magnitude out of sheer altruism, and without expecting anything in return.

Horror

Labour Party members in different parts of Wales contacted me to express their horror at what was going on.

Yet so far as a small but vocal minority of individuals was concerned, I and other journalists who pursued the story were racially motivated.

We were also, for such people, guilty of racism for revealing that Mr Gething had deleted iMessages from a ministerial group chat because, by his own admission, they were disclosable under FoI legislation.

Subsequently he lied to the UK Covid Inquiry and claimed the only deletion of messages occurred when his mobile phone was refitted by the Senedd’s IT department.

A small group called the Welsh Labour BAME committee issued a statement that was endorsed by the general secretary of TUC Cymru in which Welsh journalists were falsely accused of being racially motivated in their coverage of Mr Gething’s scandals.

The BAME committee – or the two who drafted the statement – spoke of its members’ “lived experience”, which presumably led them to the conclusion that because they had suffered racial discrimination in their lives, it followed that the journalists pursuing Mr Gething were doing so because they were racists and that they would have gone easy on him if he had been white.

Dodgy donations

I refute this entirely. No other Welsh politician of any ethnicity has accepted dodgy donations totalling £200k from a convicted criminal. No other Welsh politician of any ethnicity has been found out deleting government messages because they might otherwise be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. And no other Welsh politician of any ethnicity has lied to a public inquiry so brazenly, claiming that messages were deleted not by them but by the Senedd’s IT department.

Journalists have pursued and exposed Mr Gething not because of the colour of his skin, but because of the content of his character and his behaviour.

Some of those who have cited racism as a motivating factor for journalists have done so naively, I believe – out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to Vaughan Gething. Others have been more cynical, in my view, hoping to diminish the impact of his wrongdoing by suggesting he is the victim of a racist conspiracy.

Mr Gething himself and members of his core team are pushing this line.

Irresponsible

Those who are promoting this nonsense are highly irresponsible. Our politics in Wales has never been racialised in this way, and nor should it become so.

There is something extremely distasteful – and yes, racist – about the implication that we should go easy on people from ethnic minorities who do wrong; that Vaughan Gething, for example, should be given a free pass for his misdeeds because he is from an ethnic minority. It’s almost as if we are being invited to support a narrative which says, “That’s the kind of behaviour we should expect of someone who looks like that”.

I reject that as outrageous.

Let’s continue along the path set out by Dr King in his Washington speech on August 28 1963: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”