Dan De’Ath: ‘You Can’t Be What You Can’t See’

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Dan De’Ath, I’m a City Councillor in Cardiff, representing the Plasnewydd area – commonly known as Roath – on the Council. I’m also the Cabinet Member responsible for transport and strategic planning in the city, but I’m probably best known for being the first Black Lord Mayor of Cardiff, a role I held a few years ago.

How do you describe your cultural heritage?

I’m mixed race, I’m half white but my father came from the Caribbean island of Antigua. He came to Britain in the 70s and I think he is part of that Windrush generation of people who came over from 1948 to 1971. My father though was a restaurant chef, where traveling internationally wasn’t unusual, and he worked in several hotels in various different parts of the country. He doesn’t live in the UK anymore though, which I think is worth noting. You often get the sense that a lot of people think that it's the highest aim of all Black people in the world to come and live in Western countries when, in fact, it really isn’t and I think, generally speaking, Black people’s thoughts and feelings and hopes around things like migration are far more complicated, and more nuanced then is often understood.

What do you think Britain would look like without migration, such as the Windrush?

I think migration is something that’s been happening for centuries – in both directions – and the country would be unrecognisable without it. Migrant labour, in particular, is a cornerstone of the economy and it’s obviously also had a major social, cultural and artistic impact on the nation, as Britain has had on other nations. It’s how the world works. They say that no man is an island, but, really, no island is an island either.

I think migration is something that’s been happening for centuries – in both directions – and the country would be unrecognisable without it.

What inspired your interest politics?

Really, I think it’s the issue of inequality that brought me into politics. I grew up in a part of the country where there were some very disadvantaged places, like the former mining town where I lived, a few miles away from some considerably more affluent areas, which put the issue into quite stark perspective. I obviously think issues like race, gender and sexuality are important, but social class is a key determinant of how your life will work out and people are heavily influenced and affected by economic forces outside of our control and by the way society is structured, so for me it's key. With the Windrush generation, for example, what held them back wasn’t just racism, it was the fact that they were, in the main, working class – doing working class jobs that white Britons “didn’t want to do” - with few or no assets. At the moment it feels like social mobility has ground to a halt, if not started to go backwards, and it’s hard to ignore the massive, yawning inequality in Britain, and I think more and more people are no longer prepared to tolerate it. In Wales, there is generally a positive attitude towards migrating people. However, on occasion, especially in relation to the labor force, some people feel uncomfortable about the availability of jobs. This narrative appears to echo the experiences seen during the post-war Windrush era.

How can we do better in conveying the reality of immigration, including the enormous benefits it brings?

Well, after the war there was a huge demand for labour to help rebuild the country. Later, the Health Secretary that encouraged people to come from the Caribbean to work in the NHS was actually Enoch Powell, hard as that is to believe. I think in following decades there was certainly a strong and almost all-pervasive narrative that immigrants were taking Britons’ jobs, driving down wages, taking council homes etc. It’s a narrative that, of course, helped pave the way for Brexit but, at the moment, Ministers are scrambling around to unpick the Brexit restrictions on immigration sector by sector. They’re one of the drivers of the record inflations we’re currently experiencing. Immigration is used to play on people’s fears and as a scapegoat for unrelated problems, and I think that’s becoming more and more obvious.

Could you please tell us a little about some of the highlights during your tenure as Lord mayor?

Well, it was a great honour being the Lord Mayor of Cardiff. I was also the first non-white person to take the role, and it happened to fall over the period of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the centenary of the 1919 Cardiff Race Riots, and covered the first ever Windrush Day, so it all felt quite providential. I also called for the removal of the statue of the slave trader, Thomas Picton, from Cardiff’s City Hall, which saw me on the news and whatnot, which was obviously a highlight too.

Since the Welsh government introduced the anti-racism action plan, we have witnessed significant evidence of numerous changes, especially in the curriculum, where it is now mandatory to include the histories and contributions of Black and Brown people. How do you believe these changes will impact the future?

I’m really glad these histories are finally being taught. I hope they’re done so fully and meaningfully, and I hope they lead to wider conversations about race and Britain and Wales’ history of colonialism and imperialism. I know a lot of people don’t like that and find it quite threatening, or think it’s talking the country down or whatever, but I think it’s a sign of strength and confidence for a nation to be able to address these kind of issues and have these debates, which are based on historical facts, and I think that’s part of the process of moving towards reparative justice.

What are the plans for your future?

I think people often feel that politicians are fixed on their personal progress and see whatever their currently doing as a springboard onto something else, but that’s genuinely not how I feel about it. It’s a huge privilege to be a member of the Cabinet in the capital city. My plans for the future are to do my best in helping to combat the seismic challenges we face as a city and as a society – especially as we’ll be in office in the crucial period leading up to 2030, whereby we have to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions. We’ve been talking about Windrush – many of the islands that generation of people sailed from will be literally devastated by unchecked global warming.

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has spoken fiercely about how even a two degrees rise would be catastrophic for Small Island States like hers, and others in the Caribbean and Pacific. So, addressing climate change is something that’s important to us and we want to do that in a way that improves sustainable transport in the city, creates well-paying green jobs and opportunities, and is fair to working people. Other than that, who knows what the future has in store for me, it’s a funny old world we live in, isn’t it?