The UK’s common-sense voice on race
Our beliefs
- We should treat everyone as an individual worthy of respect regardless of race, religion or the colour of their skin
- We call this colourblind anti-racism – it is based on freedom and tolerance – and we believe it is the best way to counter prejudice where it does exist
- Today’s so-called anti-racism sees group identity before it sees a person and risks reinforcing prejudice by dividing us into a world of victims and oppressors
- Britain is a successful multi-cultural society with a positive story to tell about race relations
- We won’t benefit from importing divisive political ideas from the US that don’t reflect our history and which undermine our shared values today
“We believe that our common humanity is indivisible.”
DDU Director Alka Sehgal Cuthbert Introduces Don’t Divide Us to Andrew Doyle
DDU Statement condemning the antisemitic murders of 2 October 2025 in Manchester
DDU, with many others, unequivocally condemns the antisemitic murders of two people (four others remain in hospital suffering serious injuries) and offer our deepest condolences to the families affected.
In his excellent article, our Advisory Council member, Stephen Pollard, wrote:
horrifying as this incident may be, I doubt that any of Britain’s 287,000 Jews will be surprised that such an event has come to pass.
This could have something to do with the fact that in the first half of 2025, according to the Community Security Trust, there have been 1,521 antisemitic incidents. Yet the government thinks that a definition of Islamophobia is what is needed. According to Tell Mama, there have been 17 attacks on mosques or Islamic institutions between June and September 2025. Tell Mama is rightly critical of the government’s focus on definitions, which is unconnected to any reality on the ground and makes matters of communalist division and tension worse.
For Jews in Britain, the reality on the ground, since the pogrom of October 7th two years ago, is that the government continues to treat Israel as a pariah state. As Nigel Tobias, from the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester pointed out on Times Radio, this means Jews, too, are increasingly treated as pariah citizens.
Recognising Palestine as a state, to signal his disapproval of Israel, while also threatening sanctions of Hamas to appease America, Starmer has the moral authority and political judgment of a headless chicken. In attributing all responsibility for the war to Israel over there, Starmer green lights a deadly cultural trend over here: Jews are fair game for verbal and, increasingly, physical attack – from having excrement smeared on synagogues to yesterday’s murders.
Tobias made a really good point in response to Starmer’s offer of more security. It’s not good enough. What we need is a culture where Jews need less, not more, security. This is unlikely to happen while we have a prime minister who thinks recognising a terrorist group of a yet-to-exist state is a wise political move. Such poor political and ethical judgments from on high are unlikely to bring the peace most of us want over there. But over here, such policies encourage idiots who, on the same day two Jewish people were murdered in Britain, felt that performing their outrage about the blocking of Greta Thunberg’s flotilla, with a good measure of Viva Palestina thrown in, was a socially and morally acceptable thing to do.
There are many aspects to the rise of antisemitism in Britain today, but just as a start, did anyone from the relevant authorities contact the organisers and suggest they should postpone their protest – just out of human decency if nothing else?
Watch the report launch event
Debate in Parliament
The report was also discussed in an adjournment debate in Parliament on Wednesday 10 September 2025. Two MPs, Andrew Rosindell and Claire Coutinho, specifically mentioned and commended our report. You can watch the full Westminster Hall debate here.
Support our work
If you would like to support our work to enable us to produce more research on the impact of race policy on all of our lives, visit our Support Page.
The Equality Act Isn’t Working
Equalities legislation and the breakdown of informal civility in the workplace
12 June 2025
This new DDU report reveals that while the Equality Act 2010 ostensibly proscribes discrimination on the basis of ethnic group identity, it tacitly prescribes that the law shall identify us all in terms of ethnic group identity. The logic of this innovation is inimical to traditional freedoms and principles. The authors argue that the Equality Act is not fit for its stated purpose; it should be reviewed immediately.
Read the report here.
IN THE MEDIA
‘Equality Act blamed for surge in failed race discrimination cases’, The Times, 12 June 2025
‘Equality Act fuels massive rise in race discrimination cases‘, Telegraph, 12 June 2025
‘The Equality Act isn’t working’, Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, Academy of Ideas Substack, 12 June 2025
‘The Equality Act is poisoning office culture‘, Jo-Anne Nadler, CapX, 12 June 2025
‘The Equality Act isn’t working‘, Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, spiked, 12 June 2025
‘Racism claims have tripled and “Equality Act is to blame”‘, Rob Moss, Personnel Today, 12 June 2025
EDI AND THE NHS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
13 April 2025
Watch this New Culture Forum Locals public discussion in Norwich, with Alka Sehgal Cuthbert (Don’t Divide Us, chair), Dr Carol Sherwood (Save Mental Health) and Carol Richardson (York & Scarborough NHS Trust).
An open letter on the UK government’s proposed definition of ‘Islamophobia’
3 July 2025
Don’t Divide Us is one of a group of organisations, both secular and religious, from across the moral, political and ideological spectrum, including faith groups and secular organisations, that have written to express serious concern about the UK Government’s ongoing efforts to adopt a non-statutory definition of ‘Islamophobia’. At a time of rising tensions, deepening mistrust, and urgent social challenges, this move risks fuelling division rather than fostering social cohesion.
Read our open letter here.
‘Diversity & Anti-Racism’ and the threat to education in schools
23 August 2024
On 24 July 2024, DDU sent an open letter to a major external educational provider to UK schools, The Key – signed by a combination of scholars, teachers and parents – detailing our concerns about The Key’s Anti-Racism Curriculum Review. This review, knowingly or not, embeds significant precepts from critical race theory. In our view, these precepts are detrimental to educational goals and lack popular consent.
Read our open letter to The Key, a summary of The Key’s response, and our full statement here.
DDU statement on anti-Semitism in the UK
14 October 2023
DDU has supporters from across the political divide. We recognise that people will draw different political conclusions following the events of recent days. Nevertheless, we feel compelled to make an ethical statement. We believe that, if it ever was such, Hamas has now abandoned any claim of being legitimate advocates for Palestinian interests. Its actions seem also to have given the green light to some within Britain to explicitly voice what has, largely, remained implicit. That is to say; identity politics, or more specifically, its race-based variant epitomised by the Black Lives Matter group and other so-called anti-racist groups, is in perfect alignment with the oldest racism in town – anti-Semitism.
While some openly celebrated the massacre of Jews as being decolonisation in practice (in the process grossly insulting previous generations of people fighting for national sovereignty), some Jewish schools in London have closed to ensure their pupils’ safety on this Hamas-inspired ‘day of rage’. If reports are accurate this has already claimed a teacher in France, murdered by a supporter of the Gazan terror group. This is not the crybully calls of the seven people who said they felt psychologically unsafe in the presence of someone voicing DDU’s beliefs, this is evidence that in today’s Britain and on the continent, some people still feel they face a real threat of violence because of their religion. In a secular liberal democracy like Britain, this is unacceptable. DDU aims to expose and challenge all forms of racist ideas in Britain, whatever faux-progressive guise in which they appear.
Update: 23 October 2023
We are glad others are showing solidarity with Jewish people facing anti-Semitism here and elsewhere in the world: see British Friends of Israel.
Video
Not the Easy Way: free speech for children
Child psychologists Peter D’Lima and Claire McGuiggan discuss the psychological benefits of free speech for youth development.
Report
WHO ARE THE EXPERTS?
An investigation into anti-racist third-party organisations in schools
News and opinion
DDU Statement condemning the antisemitic murders of 2 October 2025 in Manchester
DDU, with many others, unequivocally condemns the antisemitic murders of two people (four others remain in hospital suffering serious injuries) and offer our deepest condolences to the families affected. In his excellent article, our Advisory Council member, Stephen Pollard, wrote: horrifying as this incident may be, I doubt that any of Britain’s 287,000 Jews will […]
An open letter on the UK government’s proposed definition of ‘Islamophobia’
Organisations, including DDU, from across the moral, political and ideological spectrum, including faith groups and secular organisations, have written to express serious concern about the UK Government’s ongoing efforts to adopt a non-statutory definition of ‘Islamophobia’. At a time of rising tensions, deepening mistrust, and urgent social challenges, this move risks fuelling division rather than fostering social cohesion.
Thank you
DDU petition against indoctrination in schools
Our petition, signed by Lionel Shriver, Toby Young, Claire Fox, Matthew Goodwin, Inaya Folarin Iman, William Clouston, Allison Pearson, Jonathan Sumption, Tim Luckhurst, Tony Sewell, Ben Cobley, Joanna Williams, Eric Kaufmann, Stuart Waiton, James Esses, and around 5,000 people has now closed.
Find out how we’ve used the petition.
Partners
Scottish Union for Education