Patrick Vernon

Social Commentator, campaigner and cultural historian

About Me

BAMEStream Covid-19 Bereavement Support Service is now available

BAMEStream is an alliance of practitioners, therapists, policy specialists, organisations, activists and academia who specialise in the areas of mental health and wellbeing and who’s core purpose during this COVID-19 pandemic is to bring the mental health needs of the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic community into the mainstream. Ubele has supported the launch of […]

Black Lives Matter: ‘National conversation’ about race is needed in the UK

On May 25 2020, 46-year old George Floyd died after being restrained by police in Minneapolis, who held him down and pressed a knee to his neck. In footage posted online, Mr Floyd, a black man, could be heard telling the officers that he could not breathe and calling out for his mother for eight […]

The Observer: Paulette Wilson remembered by Patrick Vernon

I originally met Paulette when the scandal was first exposed in 2017. We were on the radio together talking about the campaign. She had been wrongly detained by the British government and endured two distressing spells at Yarl’s Wood detention centre. An ordinary, working-class black woman, she had been in Britain from the age of […]

The Guardian:The best books of 2020 – picked by our acclaimed guest authors

David Lammy Politician and author of Tribes: How Our Need to Belong Can Make or Break Society When it comes to literature on racism in the US, the market feels pretty saturated. At least, that’s what I thought before I read Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Lies That Divide Us (Allen Lane, £20). It is an […]