the times | Thursday November 11 2021 11
News
Staff at one of the country’s biggest arts
organisations say it is run by an
Oxbridge elite, non-white staff are
referred to as diversity hires and
assumptions are made that all “black
artists smoke weed”.
The claims are contained in an
investigation which reveals that dozens
of allegations of racial discrimination
and racism have been made against the
Barbican Centre.
An investigation into the centre,
which is primarily funded by the City of
London Corporation, heard of more
than 110 separate claims of discrimina-
tion against former and current Barbi-
can employees with about a third being
“complaints of race discrimination/
racism”. Two people said members of
the Barbican Centre board had “made
comments which are offensive on the
grounds of race” and behaved “in a
manner which is discriminatory or in-
sensitive/inappropriate”.
The law firm Lewis Silkin, which was
commissioned by the corporation to
conduct the review, said the two people
did not want their evidence shared
because they had not been given assur-
ances of confidentiality. Tom Sleigh,
The daughter of Ben Goldsmith, the
financier, died trying to scare a friend
by zig zagging in an off-road vehicle, an
inquest has been told.
Iris Goldsmith, 15, was flung out of
the 4x4 all-terrain vehicle when she
made a sharp turn on the Goldsmiths’
120-acre farm near Bruton, Somerset.
The Polaris Ranger, a six-seat
vehicle, flipped over and pinned her to
the ground by her neck. Her best friend,
Iris Goldsmith, who was described by her father as “a force of nature”, died on his
farm in Somerset while trying to scare a friend doing zig zags in the Polaris Rangertold that neither teenager was wearing
a seat belt when the crash happened in
July 2019.
Goldsmith told the inquest in a state-
ment: “What happened to my daughter
was an amalgamation of bad luck. The
ground was very hard after a two-
month dry spell, which may have made
the wheels skid, which was bad luck.”
He said that it was also unfortunate
that Iris was thrown from the vehicle,
which rolled on to her and no one was
around to help her. “It’s unbelievably
unfair,” he added.
PC Sharon Little, a collision investi-
gator, said the vehicle’s defects would
have played a part in the accident
because of the way Iris was driving.
No criminal charges were brought.
The teenager’s best friend, from
London, told the coroner in a statement
that they were starting their school hol-
idays when they drove off to go horse
riding with another friend. When the
vehicle flipped, the friend was trapped
briefly but she freed herself and
thought that they were both all right.
Then she heard Iris call for help. She
tried in vain to free Iris, who was face
down. The friend screamed for help
and dialled 999.
Nick Marsh, 38, the Goldsmiths’ gar-
dener, came to help but they could not
free her. He called for other staff and
eventually Iris was freed but she was
unresponsive and had no pulse.
The staff tried to save her but she suf-
fered a cardiac arrest. Paramedics spent
an hour trying to revive her but to no
avail. She died at the scene.
Astrid Peary, Goldsmith’s personal
assistant, said that she had seen Iris rid-
ing recklessly on previous occasions.
Goldsmith was playing cricket in
Surrey when the accident happened.
He said in a statement that he bought
the vehicle ten years ago to tour the
ponds and wildlife on his land. He said
that he taught Iris how to drive when
supervised from the age of eight and on
her own as a teenager but he would rep-
rimand her if she drove recklessly.
Iris’s mother, Kate Rothschild, paid
tribute to her daughter at a private
funeral in London.
“Iris was life-giving and free and fun
and wild,” she said. “But she also
worked harder than any girl I’ve ever
known and she cared, she cared so
much about living her best life.
“She had so many plans and dreams
and ambitions... Now go and live your
lives like she would have wanted you to.
And then maybe, just maybe, this won’t
have all have been for nothing.”Goldsmith’s
daughter died
in 4x4 trying
to scare friend
Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondent
who cannot be named, suffered only
minor injuries. She told the inquest in
Taunton, Somerset, that she heard Iris
say: “Please help me.”
The inquest was told that Iris had
been seen driving the vehicle, known as
the Mule, recklessly. Her friend said
that Iris had driven in that manner
before to “scare her”.
Goldsmith, 41, the environmentalist
and founder of Menhaden, an invest-
ment firm that focuses on energy
efficiency, said that his daughter was
“a force of nature” and he didn’t think“anybody could have stopped her doing
anything she wanted to do”.
Tony Williams, senior coroner for
Somerset, said that Iris died from pres-
sure to the neck. He recorded a con-
clusion of accidental death.
The coroner said that Iris’s driv-
ing caused the vehicle to overturn but
several defects, such as tyres need-
ing to be inflated, contributed to the
vehicle’s instability.
“Iris was simply having fun with
her friend when this tragic incident oc-
curred,” Williams said. The inquest was‘Oxbridge elite’ in charge of Barbican
David Sanderson Arts Correspondent chairman of the board, said “this in-
vestigation makes tough reading”. He
apologised to “any member of staff,
both former and current, who has expe-
rienced this unacceptable behaviour”.
The corporation launched the
investigation after the publication in
June of Barbican Stories, a collection of
anonymised accounts of discrimina-
tion at the centre with claims that it was
“toxic” and “inherently racist”.
The Barbican’s resident orchestra is
the London Symphony Orchestra
(LSO) and it is the “London home” of
the Royal Shakespeare Company. The
centre, with a concert hall, theatres,
cinemas and art galleries, receives
substantial funding from Arts Council
England as well as £17 million annually
from the corporation.
Lewis Silkin staff were contacted by
48 current employees, 13 of whom later
withdrew evidence or declined to par-
ticipate. It said only eight of the 35 it did
interview were “people of colour”, add-
ing that given the Barbican employed
about 350 staff “we do not know how
widely held these concerns are”.
Among the complaints were that
senior Barbican staff were predomi-
nantly British, male, white and Ox-
bridge educated, that “staff of colour”
were referred to as a “diversity hire” and
that staff often made assumptions
“about artists of colour, for instance
that all black artists smoke weed”.
There were also criticisms of the ab-
sence of “people of colour” from the
LSO and the main theatre stage.
Will Gompertz, the former BBC arts
editor is now joint interim managing
director at the centre after Sir Nicholas
Kenyon, its managing director for 14
years, left following publication of the
Barbican Stories. Gompertz told The
Times last month: “Those testimonies
ring true to me. It’s been clear to me for
years that the subsidised arts didn’t
really reflect the communities they said
they were serving.”
Sleigh said following the publication
of the Lewis Silkin investigation that
“racism and discrimination have no
place in the Barbican Centre or any-
where else in our society”. The board
has launched an action plan with “com-
pulsory anti-discrimination” training
for all staff, starting with “senior
leaders”, and the setting of “new work-
force diversity recruitment targets on
ethnicity, gender, and other protected
characteristics”. It has said that “appro-
priate action” would be taken with each
allegation it had been advised to act on.General under fire after
calling for laddish culture
Larisa Brown Defence EditorFormer servicewomen have criticised
the outgoing head of the armed forces
for “encouraging toxic behaviour” after
he suggested “laddish culture” was nec-
essary for soldiers to fight the enemy.
General Sir Nick Carter, 62, who is
retiring at the end of this month after
more than three years in the post, told
MPs on the defence select committee
on Tuesday there needed to be a “long-
term cultural change” in the military to
make it better for women.
He said: “You’ve got to keep going at
this... we do also encourage a laddish
culture. Part of the reason we encour-
age a laddish culture is ultimately our
soldiers have to go close and personal
with the enemy. What you’ve got to try
and do is square both those outputs and
that’s what we have to work on.”
Lieutenant Colonel Diane Allen,
who resigned last year over alleged dis-
crimination, said: “This comment is ex-
actly why we have a cultural problem.
His comments will encourage toxic be-
haviour.” She said Carter should define
what he meant by “laddish culture”. Aretired servicewoman who served dur-
ing Carter’s tenure as chief of the de-
fence staff said: “Carter is a dinosaur.
Future conflict is going to have far few-
er face-to-face conflicts. The army
needs intelligent and digitally compe-
tent soldiers, not thugs.”
Chris Parry, a retired rear-admiral
who led an investigation into the Deep-
cut barracks in 2003, said: “Unless our
values are centred on professionalism,
courage, decency and a fervent desire
to deter and defeat the Queen’s
enemies, we have no right to bear arms
on behalf of our country.”
Richard Kemp, a retired colonel who
commanded troops in Afghanistan,
agreed with Carter, saying: “He’s abso-
lutely right to say you need the type of
soldier and type of ethos in the army
that encourages comradeship and
closeness. That can’t be too fragile and
too sensitive. You’ve got to balance that
with a sense of inclusion.”
A spokesman for the MoD said:
“Throughout his tenure, [Carter] has
overseen a number of positive changes
to improve diversity and continues to
set an example for other senior leaders.”