Dawn Butler interview: 'I was told I'd never progress with my natural hair'

Words by Mhari Aurora

For Dawn Butler, compromise has never been an option.

Whether it’s her willingness to make people feel uncomfortable in their unconscious bias to branding the sitting prime minister Boris Johnson a “racist” on live TV, the Labour MP’s refusal to sweep things under the carpet has made her one of the more outspoken political figures in recent times.

Now, Butler is standing to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party - the results of which will be announced on Saturday. And if there’s one thing she wants to prove by winning the nomination, it’s that the colour of a person’s skin - and the nature of their hair - should never be an automatic barrier to progress.

‘I accept me and that’s enough’

Dawn Butler’s relationship with her hair changed when she watched the film Malcolm X as a young woman in 1992.

Speaking to Yahoo News UK shortly before the results of the nomination contest, she recalls a character flushing their head down the toilet to stop chemical relaxer burning their scalp.

She says: “I remember laughing in the cinema thinking it was really funny, and then I thought ‘hang on, we do that to ourselves. Why would we do that to ourselves?’ And I stopped relaxing my hair after that.”

For many black women, there comes a time when a switch is flicked and the decision is made to go natural. Butler admits “it’s the most liberated I’ve ever felt with my hair”.

She describes her hair as a form of resistance and recalls the countless times she has been criticised for her natural hairdo.

“Someone said I need to have straight hair otherwise I’m never going to progress.”

However, in response to such comments and assumptions about her natural hair and how it will affect her political career she insists: “It is perfectly acceptable, professional, beautiful and natural. I accept me and that is enough.”

As the natural hair movements gain traction and grow in size and popularity in the UK, Butler explains how much positive feedback she has had from black women and girls thanking her for being a role model to them.

“I have young girls and women commenting saying how inspired they are by seeing a black woman with locks on the front bench in Parliament every week, that it just makes them smile.”

The moment that thrust Butler into the wider public consciousness came last month when she argued with Conservative MP Laura Trott on the BBC show Politics Live and branded Boris Johnson an example of racism in the Tory party. The clip went viral.

Trott, who appears to be on the verge of tears in the exchange, called Butler “outrageous and offensive”. But Butler is unapologetic and says she stands by her comments about Johnson (who denies comments he has made are racist) and the party he leads.

“Referring to black people as ‘piccaninnies with watermelon smiles’ is a racist comment.

“What other comment is it?

“It is not an acceptable comment.

“How else would you describe it?”

Butler says she has become tired of being asked to explain the words and actions of others, saying instead we should start to focus on those who say and do them.

‘Sometimes, I will let them squirm’

The deputy leadership contest feels like a culmination of a considerable struggle for Butler, after years of feeling ostracised as an MP.

A member of parliament for almost 15 years, Butler began her political career representing Brent South in 2005 until 2010 before losing to Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather. She returned to parliament in 2015 as MP for Brent Central, which remains a Labour stronghold despite the hammering the party took in the 2019 general election.

One of six children raised in east London, Butler was born to Jamaican parents who migrated to Britain at a time where Commonwealth citizens were invited to join the workforce.

She worked as an equality and race officer for the GMB union and as an adviser to the Mayor of London at the time, Ken Livingstone.

After being elected as an MP, she recalls her shock and surprise at people’s disbelief when she told them what she did. The accounts she relays of being marginalised are numerous.

She says she was once stopped entering a lift for MPs and was told that the lift was not for cleaners. On another occasion, she says she was escorted out of the members’ tearoom by the police because they did not believe she was an MP (she was later sent a note of apology).

And she describes how she is often ignored at functions by people who initially give eye contact to her office manager – a white man – until he explains that Butler is, in fact, the MP.

So how does she react to such behaviour?

“It depends on my mood, sometimes I will walk out of the meeting because I don’t have the time or the energy to put up with it. Sometimes I will let them squirm in their own bias so that they think again next time.”

“We’re living in some kind of Alice in Wonderland world where it has become more offensive to talk about race than it is to be racist.”

Calling out racism and discrimination is one thing, creating a space for learning and improvement in British politics is an altogether more challenging task.

Most visibly, this came to the fore in February, when Marsha de Cordova, also a black Labour MP, was wrongly labelled as being Dawn Butler by the BBC.

Butler, however, says the solution to such incidents is to make sure that there are people who can tell the difference between herself and Miss Cordova “in the room” in the first place.

The emotional and mental impact of the way she has been treated during her political career has evidently taken its toll.

“As an African-Caribbean woman, to always have to justify my presence in a space either drains me or upsets me.”

She describes feeling simultaneously visible and invisible.

“As a black person you are visible when they want to see you as somebody who is doing something wrong, but you are invisible when you’ve done something right.

“This kind of injustice needs to change.”

Politics is certainly changing. The 2019 election brought about the most diverse Parliament in host and, as politicians become more representative of the people they speak for, Butler sees it as her responsibility to smooth the path for the women coming behind her and to dismantle the structural barriers that stop African-Caribbean women from entering political spheres.

Butler’s advice to other Black women entering the world of politics is simple.

She said: “Wear your armour because if you don’t politics can ruin you.

“Don’t sell yourself short, don’t compromise who you are.”