Julie Paget is Strategic Manager at Plymouth and Devon Racial Equality Council. She’s been with the organisation for 22 years and has seen many successes in that time. But, she says, the area has a long way to go to change policies and attitudes towards race. Find out more here
How long have you been at Plymouth and Devon Racial Equality Council?
I’ve been a paid employee for 20 years and I also did a year as a volunteer, plus a year as a student, so 22 years all in all. It’s a long time!
Why did you join?
I got a placement and just really loved the work and the support it was providing for people from minoritized communities. I guess I’ve always liked to try to challenge social injustice. Coming into the Racial Equality Council and seeing the actual amount of racism and the issues that people were facing, I felt that I really needed to do something about it.
What was the situation in Plymouth like when you moved here in 1991?
Oh gosh, it was really very strange because I’m from a multicultural area in the Midlands. I came to Plymouth and it was very monotone and very overtly racist and quite against changes to the demographics. At the same time, we were starting to get people dispersed to the city and I don’t think people down here were ready for the change - if indeed they are now. But it was certainly very different back then.
Did it take you a while to adjust?
It did. I was used to going to the Asian sweet centres or the Afro-Caribbean stores or other places to get different fruits and vegetables and there was nothing like that around here. People had to travel to Bristol or London to get the foods they wanted. I used to go to the Midlands and come back with bags of spices for people.
Have things changed here?
Walking around the streets now there’s such a diversity, which is great. You can see the different supermarkets, the shops that have been set up. People have come here as new communities or have moved down to the South West and made this area their home. But racism is still quite a large issue. But I think that’s true all over the country because we’ve got this rise in nationalistic ideology. Post-Brexit, people have felt it’s ok to say things that they probably wouldn’t have said before.
What’s your role at Plymouth and Devon Racial Equality Council?
My role is quite complex, in a sense. My overall job is strategic manager, which involves managing the day-to-day running of the organisation. But it’s also about planning for the future, working with the police, local authorities and other organisations to make changes from the top down. That’s an important aspect of our work. We need to look to make changes in the culture, which is a really difficult thing to do.
You must deal with some difficult and complex cases. Does it make you sad?
It does, it does. For me and the rest of the team. That’s why it’s really important that we are a good and close team. We’re a small organisation and we support each other because actually, some days it is difficult to hear what you’re being told.
What do you enjoy about your role?
When you’ve made a difference. I do some of the case work here which can involve supporting women around domestic abuse. Sometimes, we see people we’ve helped or they contact us and their life’s in a completely different position. They come back to say thank you.
Often, we don’t hear what’s happened and you can’t just go back into people’s lives because it was a traumatic time for them. But occasionally, you’ll hear something. I supported a woman around domestic abuse a long time ago and it was a traumatic case. I said to her at the time: your situation will change, you will be happy again. Then I got a call from her out of the blue and she told me she’s got two children, she’s relocated, she’s married. She’s really happy - all the things she thought she would never be. It’s nice hearing those stories.
What do you see as the challenges ahead?
The rise of the far right. You see and hear it everywhere. Racism in schools seems to be on the rise as well and there’s not enough being done around it. It’s not a constant part of the curriculum.
The other thing s is that the teachers aren’t prepared enough to be able to understand and tackle racism. Quite often, it’s not dealt with because somebody doesn’t know how to. Some young people who are the victims are put into isolation during lunch breaks for their safety but that’s not the answer. They’re not the ones who should be in isolation. They’re the victims but they’re also being punished as part of it.
What would you like to see happen?
There needs to be more action in schools. We’re looking at trying to get groups of education workers and parents together to find out what’s really going on at ground level. Not everything is reported. So often, things are trying to be tucked away, whereas we want everything brought out in the open.
More communities are moving to the South West. Will that make things better?
Personally, at the moment I think things are going to become more difficult because of austerity. It’s the blaming of the other. People will say if it wasn’t for X,Y and Z coming over here, we wouldn’t be in this state. We would have more money to spend on our own people. I’ve seen it happen before in my 20 years here. People have got less income and you then see an increase in racism. It’s going to be quite a difficult time ahead because people will get frustrated and angry.
But you’re hopeful for the future?
We have to stay hopeful, otherwise there’s no point doing this job. We have to hope that the work we do trying to engage in different communities, giving people different voices and working from the top down, will make some difference.
It’s difficult. I’ve had somebody say to me: ‘Well, as an organisation, you’ve been here nearly 30 years and you haven’t ended racism’. If our little organisation could have ended racism in 30 years that would have been amazing! What people don’t understand is that racism is for everybody to tackle, not just the racial equality council.
What we need to be doing is raising awareness, making sure that people understand the real issues, rather than just blaming other people. There needs to be a lot more work but of course with that there needs to be a lot more money. And that’s the perennial problem. Money for race related work isn’t forthcoming because it’s not often on the agenda.
What keeps you in the role?
It’s seeing the successes. Sometimes they’re hard to see but they are there. It can be difficult to listen to the issues people have. You’re often affected by it but that’s important. If you’re not, if it becomes, just another person or just another case, you shouldn’t be doing the work It’s that compassion we feel. People want to feel believed because so often they’re not.