Racist slur found on Foreign Office website days after government rejected need for review

Exclusive: This is the latest case in a string of offensive remarks found on government platforms and in official documents

Racist slurs have been visible on the UK government’s Foreign Office’s website for over a decade breaching its own guidelines, The Independent can reveal.

The word “n*****d” to describe Black people was found in the comment section of an article penned by the UK’s former ambassador to Somalia about his then-recent visit to the country in 2012.

Along with the slur were numerous other offensive Afriphobic remarks branding Somalis as “very cunning and greedy people” and claiming Somalia needs “saving from itself”. The derogatory comments contradict the government’s own online comment guidelines and appear to have evaded the scrutiny of moderators despite ministers implementing policies to ensure such comments are removed.

The Foreign Office has since removed the slur after The Independent highlighted it but it is the latest in a string of instances where racist terms have been uncovered either in official government documents or on its online platforms.

It comes after Downing Street last week said that it was “confident” the word did not appear in any other documents and rejected calls for an investigation.

The latest offending comment reads: “The number of Jerer (Bantu) and other n*****d inhabitants in Somalia before the civil war is thought to have been about 1,900,000 persons.”

“N*****d” is widely accepted as a racist slur, coined by colonialists in the 18th century in reference to people of African ancestry who were deemed as subhuman. It is not a term associated with civilised discourse in modern times.

The Independent revealed last week that the term had been included in both a report by the Met Office and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) guidance used to assess benefit claims, prompting prime minister Rishi Sunak’s official spokesperson to denounce the word as “inappropriate and offensive”.

The Independent later revealed that the slur had been further visible in the comment section of a page on the government’s own website since 2015, in a comment under a blog post titled “Equality in the Civil Service: talking about race”.

The word was removed after its presence was highlighted by The Independent, raising questions about the way the government monitors its website for offensive terms.

The prime minister’s spokesperson was forced to denounce the word as ‘inappropriate and offensive’ (PA)

Following the backlash, cross-party MPs have called for a government-wide review of official documents across all Whitehall departments.

Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton, submitted a parliamentary question last Thursday to Oliver Dowden, the secretary of state for the Cabinet Office, calling for an investigation into official documents to ensure that no further slurs or prejudiced terms were being used.

A Labour spokesperson told The Independent: “It is appalling that another document containing racist language is still in widespread circulation within a government agency.

“The minister for women and equalities must launch an urgent audit of all government departments, agencies and arms-length bodies to find out whether there are any other documents that contain this or any other racist terminology, and see that they are withdrawn immediately.

“Swift action is needed from a Conservative government that has previously refused to accept structural racism even exists. Labour is serious about rooting out the structural racial inequality that scars our society and will introduce a landmark Race Equality Act to tackle it at source.”

Throughout history, slurs such as the one used on the Foreign Office website have been used against Black people and other ethnic minorities (AFP via Getty)

The offending DWP paperwork uncovered by The Independent, first issued in 2010 to help doctors assess disability benefit claims but still in use until just days ago, referred to Black people as being of the “n*****d race”.

The Met Office study – titled “Monitoring of Mean Radiant Temperature for Man” – was published in 2012 and was also publicly available until last week.

Both documents have since been removed online. The Met Office has apologised “for any offence caused”, while the DWP has launched its own inquiry into how the document remained in circulation for so long.

Christine Jardine, the MP for Edinburgh West and the Liberal Democrats’ equalities spokesperson, said: “These revelations are truly shocking. Racist terms and racism in any form has absolutely no place in our society or our government.

“The government must now urgently review and investigate its departments to make sure we see no other occurrences.”

Political activist Professor Gus John told The Independent: “N*****d ... does not connote a geographical place or region, but a people whose standing in the human realm has been defined as primitive, undeveloped, backward and not as human as the rest of humanity, thus qualifying to be used as chattels, or for experimentation by eugenicists.”

A spokesperson from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said: “Our gov.uk moderation policy makes clear we do not tolerate offensive or inflammatory language. These comments on a blog from 2012 fall short of those standards and have now been removed.”

The Independent has queried the office about why the comment describing Somali people as “greedy and cunning” remained live while the offensive slur has been removed.