Vaughan Gething had to go because of his misdeeds not because of his ethnicity
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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.”
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Diverting attention from the grubby donation onto race, quite insulting to the Welsh public, media & Senedd
‘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.’
Outrageous it is. Not only that, it seems to me to employ the very same racism which those proffering the narrative affect to deplore.
As one of the diaspora in London, I have followed the VG saga through Nation Cymru and I have been saddened by the way in which VG and his supporters in the Labour Party have failed to decide that VG falling on his sword very early on was the right thing to do. So, I commend your colleagues and you for your brilliant journalism that proves to me that there are honest and upright individuals in Wales of which all of us should be proud. Diolch
Glynn Alwyn-Jones
I shan’t attempt to quote Alun Michael from my recollection of his interview I saw on Welsh tv, but it appeared he’d been making the kind of insidious accusation you mention. Gething, as you say, was not ‘hounded’ out by journalists but by his own actions – and, it must be said — members of the Labour Party who did not think these actions fit nor their concealment ethical. What concerned me greatly in Michael’s intervention were his parting remarks, that left me with the impression that he felt the ‘press’ (i.e. Martin et al) were the ones acting beyond… Read more »
Reminds me of this article by the late, great David Graeber. Fake allegations of racism only emboldens real racism
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/first-time-my-life-im-frightened-be-jewish/
Well said and well done, Martin and your colleagues.
Journalism at its finest. Just what we need in Cymru!
For ‘previous’ read ‘precious’
If these allegations are being made, shouldn’t they be backed up with evidence?
Vaughan Gething was held to account because he was a corrupt-as-hell Yes Man. Anyone claiming otherwise is a Blairite hack
It comes from a mindset, fed by social media culture, where all that matters is winning today’s petty partisan squabble, and everything – people, principles, issues, institutions – is just a weapon to be used in that contest. Gething’s defenders were prepared to say anything if it kept him in his job for a few more days. Yes, unfounded allegations of racism make it harder to fight real racism in the long term; but the long term doesn’t matter. In the same way, seeing politicians explain why it’s totally OK for them to accept money from dodgy people, but completely… Read more »
Brilliant article, thank you.
Well put Martin. Gething made the judgement calls he did & you guys exposed it. Well done and respect to you all for doing it. Racism is alive & well, but is almost impossible to raise nowadays. The term is bandied about so much that it has almost become meaningless.
The majority of people now get their ‘news’ from social media, as horrifying as it is. Nation Cymru is a beacon in the darkness and I think 95% of the readers on here are grateful for the work you do.
Our alternative sources of Welsh news are Wales Online, which pumps out articles about Greggs, Love Island and slimming world. BBC Wales will report a news item but won’t dig into or undertake investigative journalism. We are so lucky to have NC
I don’t disagree with your main point about Wales Online Alun. However, it is a tad unfair on Will Hayward, who also did excellent work on this story.
You should see Cornwall Live then. They actually have a category tag specifically dedicated to Gordon Ramsay.
Exactly right. No one should be either disadvantaged or advantaged by their melanin count. Welsh democracy is too fragile for it to be led by a man like Gething.
We’ve been told for some time now as a result of genetic studies on populations worlwide that race doesn’t actually exist as such ie. there is only one, single race, namely the human race. Differences within the human race are now consiered to be nothing more than a ‘social construct’. OK, fair enough; I’m happy to get on board with that if that’s the truth of it. Bizzarely though, racism still appears to exist when independent journalists have reason to question the ethics and behaviour of people in power. How very convenient. Please keep up the good work Mr Shipton,… Read more »
I dare say there are people who are racist in journalism and politics (Trump, looking at you mate!). However, in this case Getting was clearly guilty of the accusations thrown at him. He could have defused every issue by using some honesty on every account but chose not to. By, pretty much, digging his head in the ground, he made everything 100 times worse for himself. I don’t think he’s a bad guy, he just made the wrong decisions.
Race card racism shows up an individual for being narcissist, someone who uses it to promote himself or to avoid accountability, at the expense of ‘his people’ (as he calls them) who then suffer the wider consequences. This particular individual has used it continuously, to the extent that his unacceptable conduct may be because he believed his race card would let him get away with it.
Martyn you are a torch in the dark.
Vaughan Gething playing the race card was the last desperate throw of the dice. Being a recipient dirty money and arrogance in office dealt the fatal blow not that he was a black politician of mix heritage. It’s sad as he was Europe’s first black leader of a country who could have inspired those normally excluded to feel included and he threw it all away.
The race card was used to get VG opponents to back off and it did not work because it was never about race.
For what it’s worth I commend you and your colleagues for being real journalists and getting information that affects a lot of people out Into the open. We are constantly being told by people like Neil Kinnock that we must get out and vote but to be able to decide who or what to vote for we need to have information. People like you provide information that the establishment don’t what us to know. Once we have that information we can then debate and decide. Isn’t that what the ‘free world’ is about? From the work that you and your… Read more »
It is disappointing Gething supporters have promoted a fake narrative when trying to counter the legitimate concerns reported on by Nation Cymru. They underestimate the intelligence of Welsh people to see through their fakeness and lies.
Well done Martin and Nation.Cymru for holding this shower to account. They insult our intelligence at every turn but increasing numbers of people are starting to wake up at last. At least they can’t now blame the Tories in Westminster for all our woes.
When did anyone ever suggest he should be sacked because of his race? He should have been sacked because of his wrongdoings.