‘Open’ letter to Equity

A group of Equity members have signed an open letter complaining that the current Equity leadership have a history of mistreating ethnic minority members and engaging in "box ticking". This open letter was a response to an Equity meeting that took place on 9th April. I wasn't at that meeting so I can't comment there. That meeting was precipitated by an apology statement Equity's leadership made a few weeks ago, after Fox (who is not an Equity member) sued them over tweets the Equity minority ethnic members' sub-committee (EMEMC) made in January.


Timeline
January: Fox made racist comments on Question Time.
The EMEMC tweeted condemning those comments.
Equity accessed their Twitter account without their knowledge and deleted the tweets, changed their Twitter password, then issued a statement lying that the tweets had been sent by a "rogue tweeter".
All nine members of the EMEMC resigned. An unknown individual gained control of the Twitter account and used it to send personally abusive and trolling tweets, attacking the former EMEMC chair by name and calling him a bitter failed actor.
March: Fox sued Equity, Equity settled out of court, paid him a huge sum of money, and released a statement apologising for the EMEMC tweets.


The whole thing is a nightmare and both sides were in the wrong. The EMEMC's tweets were unwise and rash, and left Equity open to legal threat. I have many friends who declined to sign the open letter for this reason. On the other hand, Equity have really thrown the EMEMC under a bus, and a lot of the current ill will could have been avoided if they'd just talked to and tried to work with the EMEMC, rather than acting in such a high handed manner. A big part of the complaint is that Equity leadership just didn't communicate with their elected peers in the sub-committee. They went in and deleted the EMEMC's tweets rather than asking them to delete their own tweets, and they issued a statement apologising for the EMEMC without bothering to tell them ahead of time.


There's a s**tton of stuff that's happened behind the scenes which few people outside of Equity are aware of. The Fox case is the most high profile, but Equity has a horrendous record of systemic racism, tolerating and covering up abuse, and of throwing ethnic minority members under a bus.