{"id":779198,"date":"2026-09-22T19:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T19:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/779198\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T19:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T19:40:10","slug":"reform-uk-led-council-ends-support-for-show-racism-the-red-card-reform-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/779198\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform UK-led council ends support for Show Racism the Red Card | Reform UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anti-racism education in some schools will be scrapped after a city council now led by Reform UK<\/a> ended its 30-year support for the charity Show Racism the Red Card.<\/p>\n

Announcing the decision last week, the Reform leader of Sunderland<\/a> city council, Christopher Eynon, said it would no longer support \u201cpolitically charged organisations with an agenda\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gary Bennett, the former Sunderland AFC captain and the charity\u2019s head coach, said he was \u201cshocked and disappointed\u201d that Nigel Farage\u2019s party had withdrawn vital funding.<\/p>\n

The move prompted a furious backlash from opposition politicians including Labour\u2019s Bridget Phillipson, who described it on Tuesday as \u201cmisguided, cruel and in no way backed by the people of Sunderland\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bennett, who became only the second black player in Sunderland\u2019s history<\/a> when he joined the club in 1984, was a founding member of Show Racism the Red Card when it was established in 1996.<\/p>\n

Gary Bennett in Sunderland\u2019s stripes in 1994. Photograph: PA\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The former centre-back, who remains a cult hero on Wearside, said he was \u201csurprised, shocked and disappointed\u201d that Sunderland council \u2013 the first local authority to have supported it \u2013 was cutting its ties after 30 years.<\/p>\n

Bennett said it would immediately disrupt the charity\u2019s ability to teach local children in schools and provide workshops in prisons and workplaces.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe\u2019re not a political charity \u2013 they\u2019re trying to say we are but we\u2019re not. Sunderland were the first council to come onboard to help fund us, that\u2019s the annoying thing. For something like this to happen now, we just want to know the reasons why.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennett said the racist riots across many English cities including Sunderland in 2024 showed there was \u201cstill lots of work to be done\u201d.<\/p>\n

While Britain had come a long way since the 1980s, he said, there remained issues to confront around attitudes towards asylum seekers and migrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got all different issues going on now. It keeps moving, it\u2019s always something else which causes some form of racism,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that is challenging every single day and we\u2019ve got to keep the fight. There\u2019s still lots of work to be done and we can\u2019t just ignore it and think it\u2019s going to go away because it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eynon, whose party gained control of the council in May, said the authority was not \u201cstepping back from its opposition to racism or discrimination\u201d and that \u201cracism has no place in Sunderland\u201d.<\/p>\n

He took issue with Ged Grebby, the chief executive of Show Racism the Red Card, describing Reform as a \u201cvery dangerous organisation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Grebby defended his right to express personal views and said the charity had support across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

Separately, Reform UK has been accused of \u201cvice signalling\u201d after its councillors in Bradford proposed to pull out of the Local Authority of Sanctuary scheme, which is intended to show a city is a safe place for migrant communities.<\/p>\n

The Reform group that runs the council said it would be putting forward a motion at the next meeting in October to end the status, which it said has meant the council had \u201cled Refugee Week engagement and utilised local libraries to celebrate all new arrivals into Bradford\u201d, adding that \u201cpublic services should instead be prioritised for Bradford residents\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Reform councillor Jayne Morgan said the move \u201cmay upset oversensitive political opponents\u201d but was firmly in the public interest.<\/p>\n

In response, Imran Khan, the leader of Bradford\u2019s Labour group, said: \u201cReform failed to deliver on various promises they made to Bradford residents this summer, so instead they fall back on their usual toxic recipe of hate, victimhood and division.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said pulling out of the scheme would \u201cdo nothing to help a single person\u201d in Bradford. \u201cThis is vice signalling from Reform and all it does is damage integration and promote division and resentment, which helps no one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anti-racism education in some schools will be scrapped after a city council now led by Reform UK ended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-779198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}