Section:GDN 1N PaGe:12 Edition Date:190815 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 14/8/2019 21:01 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Thursday 15 Aug ust 2019
(^12) National
Anti-knife
chicken
campaign
‘racist or
stupid’
Mattha Busby
The Home Offi ce has been accused
of possible racism by opposition MPs
over a scheme to send hundreds of
thousands of chicken boxes branded
with #knifefree to chicken shops in an
eff ort to dissuade young people from
carrying the weapons.
The policing minister, Kit Malt-
house , said yesterday the chicken
boxes would help emphasise the dan-
gers of carrying a knife and challenge
the idea it makes you safer, but Labour
MP David Lammy said the government
was stereotyping black people.
“The Home Office is using tax-
payers’ money to sponsor an age-old
trope,” he told the Guardian. “Boris
Johnson has already called black
people ‘piccaninnies with water-
melon smiles’. Now his government
is pushing the stereotype that black
people love fried chicken. This ridicu-
lous stunt is either explicitly racist or,
at best, unfathomably stupid.
“I know it might cost a bit more
time, eff ort and money, but I would
love it if you would announce a pro-
gramme of investment in our local
communities instead of spending fi ve
minutes on a harmful gimmick.”
The shadow home secretary, Diane
Abbott , also criticised the government.
“Instead of investing in a pub-
lic health approach to violent crime,
the Home Offi ce have opted for yet
another crude, off ensive and proba-
bly expensive campaign,” she tweeted.
“They would do better to invest in our
communities not demonise them.”
More than 321,000 of the boxes
are to replace the usual packaging at
210 chicken shop outlets including
Morley’s, Dixy Chicken and Chicken
Cottage in England and Wales, follow-
ing a pilot at 15 branches of Morley’s
in March. Stories about young people
who have pursued boxing and music
rather than carrying a knife will also
be printed inside the boxes.
The #knifefree campaign will be
shown on screens in many of the
shops, and will also be running at
Notting Hill carnival.
Malthouse said: “These chicken
boxes will bring home to thousands of
young people the tragic consequences
of carrying a knife and challenge the
idea that it makes you safer.
“The government is doing every-
thing it can to tackle the senseless
violence that is traumatising commu-
nities and claiming too many young
lives, including bolstering the police’s
ranks with 20,000 new police offi cers
on our streets.”
Morley’s managing director, Shan
Selvendran , said: “Morley’s are proud
to support the #knifefree campaign.
We have been saddened by the recent
increase in knife crime. We want to
promote being knife free by using
custom chicken boxes to deliver the
message and start conversations
amongst all of our customers.”
On Facebook yesterday, Johnson
appeared to endorse people from eth-
nic minorities being targeted by police
conducting stop and searches.
Abbott said that discriminatory
searches were “a reckless disregard
for civil rights”.
▲ The Home Offi ce plan to send a #knifefree message on boxes to chicken shops
around the country has been condemned PHOTOGRAPH: MATTHEW CHATTLE/ALAMY
Encore for
the theatre
where young
Shakespeare
performed
Esther Addley
One needs to hunt very hard to spot
the traces of the Shoreditch that Wil-
liam Shakespeare would have known.
Still clinging to its hipster reputation,
the east London neighbourhood has
been under threat in recent decades
from the encroaching tower blocks of
the City of London. Almost nothing
remains of its rich 16th century history.
But a metre or two below a new
building, a hole in a concrete fl oor
permits a glimpse of the Tudor brick
foundation on which the Theatre was
built in 1576. It was probably the fi rst
purpose-built playhouse in London
since Roman times and where the
young actor and playwright began
earning his reputation.
A new exhibition space dedicated
to the history of the Theatre will open
on the site in next spring. The Thea-
tre Courtyard Gallery is staging a
two-day festival in Shoreditch on 23
and 24 August to highlight the area’s
connections to the playwright. Caro-
lyn Addelman , the exhibition project
manager who has co-curated the fes-
tival, said: “Shoreditch has this rich
theatrical history but until recently, I
don’t think people associated it with
this formative Elizabethan and Shake-
spearean history.” The foundations of
the Theatre – which stood only until
1598, when it was dismantled and its
timbers taken south of the river to
build the Globe – were found in 2008.
Four years later archaeologists
found the site of the Curtain – a the-
atre where Shakespeare is thought to
have premiered a number of his most
famous early plays – a few hundred
metres away. That site is being devel-
oped into a 37-storey luxury apartment
block. Like the poet’s life and career,
the physical evidence of Shakespeare’s
Shoreditch is patchy.
Blue badge guide Katie Wignall ,
who will lead walking tours as part
of the festival, said: “ In this part of
London you expect these glass sky-
scrapers, but nestled in among them
are these tiny pieces of history. It
almost adds to the excitement.”
The Shake It Up! festival : Shoreditch,
east London, 23-24 August
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