About us
At Black Lives Matter UK, we are committed to ending racist violence and dismantling the colonial structures that sustain it.
Our goals & values
Fund Black futures
Austerity has decimated communities across the country. We want to see an immediate reversal of all cuts made. In addition to this, we advocate for meeting the material needs of our communities through: the establishment of safe, secure, unionised and well paid green jobs, secure and decent housing through social housing and rent controls, protection, reinvestment and reversal of privatisation of the NHS, and funding for community land trusts and co-ops.
Transform education
Black children have long been subjected to unequal treatment within our education system. We want to see an end to policies such as exclusion and off-rolling, as well as an end to school–police partnerships, including Prevent, hostile-environment measures, and anti-gang programmes.We call for the establishment of a curriculum that includes colonial, Black, and Global South histories. We also want increased mental health support, social care, and youth services in all schools, greater investment in SEN services, and free education with student debt relief for all.
Black arts and culture
Black cultures have always been an integral part of our political movements, from dance to literature, film-making to spitting bars. The diversity of black cultures is one of our movement's strengths, and we conceive of culture in its broadest sense.
We are particularly interested in supporting cultural and artistic projects that are making political interventions which align with our values and platform.
Defund the police and invest in communities
Calls to defund, with a view to abolishing the police and prison system, is one of the core political principles of UKBLM. But this vision can only be achieved if we can create the alternative structures of harm reduction and care that make people less likely to come into contact with the police and prison system. We are calling for an: End to prison and police expansion; immediate dismissal of any police officer who is discriminatory, corrupt or uses excessive force; a halt to police surveillance and data-collection technologies; scrapping ‘Prevent’ and ending the surveillance and criminalisation of Muslim communities; an end to the incarceration of children, including in so-called ‘secure schools’; an end to the use of tasers, spithoods and firearms.
International solidarity
As members of the diaspora, we stand in solidarity with our family across the globe. We stand against imperialist forces and racial capitalism that facilitates the exploitation of Black and Brown people globally. Over 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) have African mining operations that control over $1 trillion worth of Africa’s most valuable resources. We want to see an end to British militarism, corporate exploitation, and support for oppressive regimes across the Global South. This means halting arms production, withdrawing from foreign military operations, ending all occupations, cancelling Global South debt.
Over 130,000 people were deported from Britain in the last ten years. As migrants flee underdevelopment, war and climate change that they did not cause, justice doesn’t mean border controls, it means reparations for slavery and colonialism, and safe passage. We want an end to immigration enforcement and the hostile environment, including raids, detention, deportations, NRPF policies, and the use of public services as border control, alongside equal status through accessible regularisation for undocumented people, and repatriation and reparations for all deportees.
Our campaigns and projects
Our approach
Relief: Material relief and improvement from structural violence
We organise support to individuals and communities facing structural racist violence. Our teams coordinate material, legal, and community resources to meet immediate needs, offering respite to those who are most vulnerable. Whether it's community food kitchens, providing legal defence, or working with migrant organisations to meet material needs, we are there to ensure no one is left to fight alone.
Repair: Rebuilding solidarity in working-class communities
Racial Capitalism exploits and atomises the lives of Black and racialised people. Community organising enables us rediscover our sense of community and our ability to improve our conditions. Through realising our collective power, together we repair bonds with our neighbours broken by state enforced poverty and scarcity. Our community programmes are designed to cultivate trust, mutual aid, and collective resistance to develop Black power. We believe that as Black working-class communities rediscover the power of collective action through building community institutions, we can achieve meaningful change.
Restructure: Organising for structural transformation
Beyond immediate relief and repair BLMUK is committed to revolutionary change. We believe that the structures perpetuating racism must be dismantled. Our long-term goal is to build collective strength that can transform a racist society into an anti-racist and anti-capitalist one. Through education, mobilisation, and sustained organising for community power, we are working to overturn the policies, institutions, and ideologies that uphold systemic racism.
Get involved
Support the movement
We have distributed £600,000 to grassroots and small community organisations, which are either Global Majority run or dominated. We have organised with the Free Palestine Coalition to disrupt capital and the state to end the genocide. We have defended racialised people seeking asylum in Home Office hotels facing racist violence by stopping forced relocations. We continue to organise in communities deeply affected by structural inequalities.
Together, we can create a world free of racist violence and oppression..
