AS a former prosecutor, Nazir Afzal, follows the evidence. And he needed all his skills on one of the most important assignments he was tasked with in 2022. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, commissioned him to investigate the London Fire Brigade. What he found was not pleasant.
“The report paints a picture of poor behaviour and painful experiences over many years. This makes the report a difficult read for us and for the communities we serve,” said the brigade.
“It highlights that women, Black, Asian and minority ethnic, LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse staff experience poor treatment and do less well in their careers with us. Issues were also identified with leadership, and with staff fearing to speak out about abuse. Additionally, the report includes examples of behaviour towards members of the public which are completely unacceptable.”
For Afzal, he was given the freedom to follow the evidence. What the former prosecutor realised was that little, if anything, had really changed since the Macpherson inquiry into the death of the black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, in 1999.
“It's not depressing when you've been in the system, or been part of the system, as I have. There was a real momentum in the early 2000s, the new century, and there seemed to be a real motivation, we can deal with this issue. But what was happening was that the institutions, almost immediately after Macpherson, were putting their hand up and saying, oh, I'm institutionally racist.
“What they were doing was like a sleight of hand of a magician, because then you wouldn't look at them anymore,” he told the GG2 Power List. “So, institution after institution was saying, we are institutionally racist, don't look at us anymore, look at somebody over there who's in denial. So, the one that had admitted it, didn't do anything about it. Or they did the same tick box exercise, which is, develop a strategy which ends up in a filing cabinet, employ a few black and brown, EDI [equality, diversity and inclusivity] officers but don't give them any power.
“I'm glad, strangely, that I was given the opportunity to reignite this debate and to put that before people, because we've made next to no progress in 20 odd years. Of course, the situation now is worse with the fake news thing, and the culture war where people are now saying that you there's no racism and you're lying. They don't even accept your evidence anymore.”
Afzal has never been unafraid to point out injustice. He brought down a Rochdale child abuse gang when he was the chief prosecutor in the north-west of England. Most from his faith and race are portrayed as treating girls and women as inferior to boys and men. But Afzal is clear that he is a feminist.
“I pay tribute to my mother more than anybody else on this. She came to this country, uneducated mother of seven children, after I was born, after my brothers and sisters were born, she devoted herself to helping other women in the community. There is no reason why they should be treated any differently, that's basically what she said.
“Then the more I learned, the more survivor groups and women's groups and NGOs that came to see me, the more I heard, the more I realised this was and is the biggest issue facing not the country but globally. Women's rights in 2023 are under attack everywhere, and despite all the progress that we think we've made, and as I say, I'm not the expert here, it's the women's groups and the NGOs and the people who work day in day out on this, who have honoured me by sharing their stories with me, that make me want to do more for them. And why should my daughter be treated any differently than then than my sons?”
For Afzal, 2022 was a busy year. Not only did he carry out an independent review of the London fire service, he was appointed chair of the CCSA, the new national safeguarding agency for the Catholic church. Afzal published his second book, The Race to the Top: Structural Racism and How to Fight It. And if that were not enough, the University of Manchester appointed him as its chancellor. That role is often viewed as ceremonial – chancellors are usually invited to graduation ceremonies to hand out degrees and fund-raising events. But, as ever, Afzal is determined to make changes.
“I'm very, very fortunate. Manchester [university], if it did nothing, didn't do any marketing, it would double in size in three or four years. The number of applications it gets, 25 Nobel Prize winners, so I've got great opportunity. The world of universities is changing. The research that it does, 93 per cent of it is globally leading.
“Now, I've got a blank piece of paper there, and I've already begun conversations with departments about research they're carrying out and whether or not there's a gap here. Maybe we should be doing something about women's rights, for example, maybe we should doing a bit more about health inequalities, which we all know have really been exposed during Covid. So, I'm using my convening powers, for want of a better term, and whatever leverage I have from my position to tap into the extraordinary knowledge that's in the university.”
Afzal is loyal to his old boss, Sir Keir Starmer. He described Boris Johnson’s slur concerning the role the Labour leader played in the Jimmy Savile affair as “despicable”. There has been speculation that he will stand as an MP in the next general election for Labour. But Afzal told the Power List in no uncertain terms that he “was not interested”. Instead, he wanted the freedom to change the UK for the better and provide solutions to long term problems.
“I was inundated with emails, messages via my website, by DMs [direct messages] after the inquiry. People from every institution around the country were saying please Nazir, look at us. What I'd like to do if I were properly resourced, like my review that we did with the London Fire Brigade, is to run a national inquiry into institutions. Looking at the media, the NHS, another worrying area for me. I've been approached by senior consultants, doctors, nurses in the NHS, who said, Nazir, I've reached the ceiling, I can't go any higher. I can't be a chief exec, I can't go any further, it's abundantly obvious how they're going to treat me and how they're treating me. Some of them are suicidal. In an ideal world, I would love to have a team of people, resourced, to just look at everything, and then tell you first, by the end of 2023, this is what I found, and this is the state of the nation. I keep asking for a judicial inquiry or a government inquiry or a royal commission, unfortunately under this government, that's not going to happen anytime soon. So why can't we do it ourselves and I'd love to be able to do that.”
Afzal also revealed that he was working with various overseas countries on their rule of law, making sure they are more democratic. And work was continuing on turning his memoirs, The Prosecutor, into a television film after actress Keeley Hawes bought the rights for her company, Buddy Club Productions.
Just as he was when he was a prosecutor, Afzal remains infinitely brave. He suggested Boris Johnson could face prosecution for misconduct in public office over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Afzal’s older brother Umar died of coronavirus while isolating at home in Birmingham. Weeks later, his mother also passed away. Last year he launched a campaign to call for misogyny to be made a hate crime. It aims to ensure offences motivated by hatred against women would be treated on a par with crimes involving racism, religious intolerance and homophobia. He won support from several celebrities, including Michael Sheen, Jason Manford and Gary Neville. What this Birmingham-born, son of Pashtun immigrants from northern Pakistan, does is to speak unpalatable truth to power.
“I've been beaten black and blue several times, physically, by racists. In 2006-7 I was on an al-Qaeda, hitlist. After the grooming gang case, the far right attacked my house and we had panic alarms in the house. It was a really painful period. I can take it, but my family shouldn't have to take it. My children were very young, and I was teaching them about panic alarms, and they shouldn't have had to experience that. That's the closest I've ever come to quitting. And the only reason I didn't quit was the people around me. Not necessarily my family, but my networks. Once you got through that period, I felt if you want to kill me get on with it. Just get on with it and say what you feel.”
