Report for City Hall finds racial bias in how London music events are licensed

Music events run by black organisers in London are blocked more often than those run by white organisers because of racial bias in licensing and policing, according to a study commissioned by the Greater London Authority.

Black Lives in Music carried out the research, titled Race Equality in Music Event Licensing (REMEL). It said events led by South Asian organisers had also faced restrictions.

Drill and dancehall nights were labelled “high risk” as a matter of routine, the study said. Afrobeats, hip-hop and R&B events got the same treatment, while indie, pop and rock nights drew less scrutiny.

How licensing decisions affect London music events

The authors wrote that decisions on live music were driven by risk and by “racialised assumptions about culture and safety”. In their view, this meant institutional racism was carried on through everyday procedures rather than through open bans or written policies.

Cameron Leslie, chair of the mayor’s London Nightlife Taskforce, welcomed the report, including its recommendations. The Metropolitan Police said it understood the “concerns and differing views” and would “carefully consider the report’s findings”.

Industry bodies also backed the findings. The Night Time Industries Association and the Music Venue Trust were among them. UK Music and the Musicians’ Union welcomed the report too, as did LIVE trust.

Gaps in the data and the legacy of Form 696

The researchers held interviews and focus groups and ran workshops. A survey and online research added to the evidence. Most Freedom of Information requests the team sent were turned down or only partly answered, and without licensing data broken down by race, some patterns could not easily be measured.

South Asian music was “largely invisible within licensing records”, the authors said. Those events often went ahead once their hours or conditions had been changed through negotiation. The evidence did not show they were cancelled out of proportion, though gaps in the records made firm conclusions hard to reach.

The study also looked at the legacy of Form 696, a Met risk assessment introduced in 2005 following a run of shootings at London club nights. It had been labelled “racist” and was dropped in 2017, having shaped similar forms at other police forces in England.

Dr Hakeem Stevens, co-author and lead researcher, said the team looked as far back as the late 1800s and found race-related licensing problems dating to the 1900s and 1910s. Those older cases do not appear in the report.