Racial justice

MS 1579/2/18

Racial justice

1984 - 2008

See also Racial Justice Programme meeting minutes MS 1579/1/1/2/3.

Copyright: Barrow Cadbury Trust and others

Partially Closed (Data Protection Act)

Organisations involved: Barrow Cadbury Trust, Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd., Racial Justice Programme.

Previous title and/or title variations: n/a.

Related grant categories: equal opportunities.

Dates of use: 1993/1994 to 2002/2003.

Cadbury Trusts grant subject filing reference number(s): n/a.

The racial justice grant category emerged out of race relations work carried out by the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust since the 1970s. Prior to the merger of the trusts in 1994 race relations grants were made under the rubric of equal opportunities which, in addition to race, also encompassed gender and disability grants. Following the merger Trustees decided to form new grant categories out of each of these three sub-headings. The Racial Justice Programme was created to supervise grant making in this subject area under Relevant Trustees Rachel Cadbury, Richard Cadbury, Anna Southall and Charles Cadbury.

The new programme drew most of its grants from the defunct equal opportunities category but also incorporated a number of files from civil rights and social justice and policy development and local services.

In 1994 Trustees defined the aims of the Racial Justice Programme as enabling '?black and minority ethnic communities to address their needs and concerns, and enable the wider society to address its racism, and religious and cultural prejudices, including the fostering of better inter-ethnic and religious understanding'. Grant making priority was given to the fields of institutionalised racism, overt racism and fascism, as well as addressing education, training and employment issues facing Black and Minority Ethnic communities. In 2000/2001 the Trust redirected funding priorities towards Black and Minority Ethnic governed groups in the West Midlands and those working at the national level that seek to address the underlying causes of poverty and social injustice in the pursuit of racial justice.

During its first year of operation the Racial Justice Programme was the largest single programme category in the Trust with over £300,000 in total expenditure. Grants were made to fifty organisations ranging from £100 to the Wolverhampton Race Equality Council to £36,500 to Temple Training Services. By 1998/1999 spending had increased only modestly to £327,050 allocated to thirty-two recipients. In its final operational year, 2002/2003, racial justice grants totalled £488,250 distributed to twenty-one grantees. During this year the smallest grant in this category totalled £5,000 paid to the Birmingham and District African-Caribbean Community Development Association. The largest grant totalled £95,000 to The 1990 Trust, London. The vast majority of these grants were channelled through the Trust with only a handful being paid by the Fund. Recurrent racial justice grants were made to Bangladesh Community Development, the Asian Resource Centre, the Association of Black Probation Officers, The 1990 Trust and the St. James Advice Centre.

Racial justice grant files first appear in the early 1990s with many grants administered by Dipali Chandra. The preponderance of Chandra's grant files are labelled with a simply alphanumeric code, for instance, 'I/4' denotes the letter 'I'/the fourth grant from an organisation beginning with 'I' (in this case Imani Venture, Birmingham). A number of filing variations will be encountered among these files. Copy minutes from the Racial Justice Programme may appear in grant files in addition to relevant Trust or Fund minutes.

In 2003/2004 the racial justice category was deleted as part of a further reorganisation of grant categories. Most grants made under this heading, together with those from other defunct programmes including community organising, disability and gender, were transferred to the new Inclusive Communities Programme.