Graham: I was trapped on the train. I was trapped in that carriage. I could have got up and walked away. But I didn't like the idea of doing that. The main reason was I'm not going to run from racists. I haven’t done that since I was seven. And I'm not going to do it today.

Alex: Today we’re telling the story of what happened when a man was racially attacked - in the middle of the day - on a busy city train.

We’ll hear how he reacted, what the other passengers did – and ask: what would you do?

Graham Campbell is a veteran campaigner and activist.

Graham: My day job is, I'm a Glasgow City Councillor. I was elected four years ago. And I was the first African Caribbean councillor.

Alex: Graham’s dad is Jamaican and his mum is from Granada. Graham also has Scottish ancestry, but he was born in London … and he’s a Rastafarian. Oh, and he’s also a Celtic supporter. Safe to say: Graham has lots of overlapping identities :)

Graham: People wonder why I talk like this, when they meet me, they can't quite get the accent going with the face and the hair, especially as I'm called Graham Campbell, they expect a white Scotsman, right? But I tell them you know, I grew up in school with three problems. I grew up in the house, where I was speaking patois, I was speaking west indian patois. Outside the house with other kids, I had to learn cockney. And then in school, we were punished for speaking both of those dialects because we had to speak correct standard English…we had to read out aloud in this voice; I learned to read in this voice.

Alex: Graham went to a multicultural school in Islington. There were racist incidents from time to time with kids in the estate – name-calling and fights. But mostly, Graham felt safe at school. The teachers were anti-racist liberals, and the other kids came from lots of different backgrounds.

Graham: I hung on to the idea that I have a right to express myself culturally. I've a right to be who I am and I have a right to not take nonsense when it's unfair and unjust and so that has been strongly ingrained in me from early days.

Graham: My attitude was always… my dad told me how he had had to fight back.They protected themselves and Jamaicans got a big reputation for fighting back. And so I lived up to that.

Alex: But as Graham grew up, he discovered that fighting back could mean different things. Like one time in 1977, when Graham was 10. He was visiting his friend’s flat when a local woman screamed racist abuse at him. Later that week, the same woman organised a street party to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee – and she banned people of colour. Graham and his friend were turned away.

Graham: We were told we couldn't– we weren't welcome. So we didn't, we didn't celebrate it.

Alex: That same year there was a reading competition at school. The prize was a silver Jubilee coin. Graham was the best reader in his class – the prize would have been in the bag.

Graham: Because I was so angry of how I was treated, I just refused to read.

Alex: Refusing to take part in the competition ……. that was a small, but important, act of resistance.

Graham: It was a moment for me because it was just me expressing my anger and frustration at the racism in an outward way, you know, because most of the time you absorbed stuff. You just took it on the chin, and tried to get on with things anyway. And that was probably the first time I publicly showed my distress at experiencing racism.

Alex: Years later, Graham’s ability to take a stand —- was really challenged.

Last September, Graham stepped on a train in Glasgow. It was a weekday afternoon during half term, and the carriage was fairly quiet. Only a handful of other passengers. Then, a group of girls got on the train. They were around 14 or 15, and wearing lots of dark make-up.

Graham: They sat down and they started talking loudly, “Oh, look, look at that guy!” And they’re meaning me and they’re talking at me like I'm an inanimate object, and I can't hear what they're saying. And this gets to the point where they decide they’re going to take a photo of themselves with me.

Alex: Graham knew the girls weren’t being curious. Their tone was malicious and mocking.

Graham: This was taking the piss out of you for sport in a public place. And I wasn't having it. And I basically said to them, “piss off. You’re not going to take photos and pictures of me. Go away”.

Alex: The girls immediately started shouting at Graham. They crowded around him, screaming and pointing their fingers.

Graham: It was [a] really appalling barrage of racist abuse telling me to “fuck up”, to.. “who the fuck are you, it’s not even your country anyway” blah blah blah, all of that stuff. N words, curse words, B words…And it was just horrible.

Alex: Graham felt trapped in his seat, in the train carriage. His options were seriously limited.

Graham: I could have got up and walked away, I suppose. But I didn't like the idea of doing that. The main reason was: I'm not going to run from racists.

Alex: Of course, Graham is an elected official at this point: he’s a city councillor. He has to act in a certain way.

Graham: So I can't swear and be horrible to people. But I stood my ground, said: “this is unacceptable behaviour, you cannot speak to people like that, especially not in a public place”. And I managed to stay polite, stay calm, stay collected.

Alex: This did not deter the girls. They were screaming louder at Graham, standing over him. Incredibly, one of them even got her phone out – and started filming her own racist hate crime.

Graham: They could have attacked me physically. They could have done, but they didn't. But I was stuck. I couldn't do anything about it. It was really humiliating.

Alex: There were around six other people in the carriage.

Not a single person said or did anything.

For three or four minutes, the girls continued shouting racist abuse at Graham.

After what felt like a lifetime, a man and a woman in their 30s stood up.

Graham: This couple sitting three or four seats away, decided to get up and intervene.

And they were telling them in no uncertain terms, that their behaviour was racist, and unacceptable. And that was good, that they made the point of calling them out publicly in the public space that they had just been humiliating me in; they humiliated them by saying what their behaviour was like, and why it was unacceptable. And they also said, well frankly, if you carry on talking like that to me, I won't feel afraid to wallop you. So that kind of did help me, it helped me out.

Alex: This finally shut the girls up.

Graham: Oh, they stepped back and they did realise that they were in trouble. And in fact, they did respect this couple; when they realised, ah a Scottish white couple is telling me I'm wrong, then I must be wrong. You could see that in their faces. They weren't expecting anybody to step in – when somebody did, they backed right off.

Alex: By this point, the train was beginning to slow down at the next station. As it happened, everyone was getting off at the same stop – Graham, the girls, and the couple.

As they were leaving the train, Graham saw his opportunity to try and reason with the girls.

Graham: I was then able to challenge them on what they were thinking. And I said to them why are you wearing so much makeup to make yourselves look like black people, if you hate black people? What's wrong with you? Why are you trying to look like us? Why are you trying to look tanned? You’ve only treated me like this because I'm a wee different colour to you. But I'm not stupid. And you know, I'm a human. And so are you. Y’know, learn something from this – don’t be like this.

Alex: Outside the station, Graham waited for his bus. Surrounded by other people, taxi drivers, shoppers – he felt safer. But he was shaken.

Graham: It made me question two things, one, that: whether I should actually go on trains on my own anymore, but also… actually for the first time it may be questioned about even being in Glasgow. Glasgow is my home, I've been there for 20 years. But if after being there that long as your hometown and thinking, alright these people don't think you belong here…it probably jolted my confidence a bit about that .

I’m a 55 year old man, I'm having to think about my personal safety and security on trains now. It's just, you know, I didn't expect to be doing that. But then obviously, for younger black people, that must be what they're experiencing. If they’re having to go to school with kids like that... then in many ways, my experience in the 1970s from 50 years ago, is still very relevant to what's happening to kids now.

Alex: The attack on the train made it clear to Graham that there’s still a lot of work to do when it comes to racism.

Graham: You hope that the younger generations are more anti-racist than the ones before. And I suppose the Black Lives Matter was a good thing in the sense that it showed that there was mass public support, especially amongst younger people, against racism and institutionalised racism. But even on the interpersonal level, there’s still a lot of progress to make, because it's pretty clear that those girls’ schooling did not prepare them, today in 21st century Scotland for: how do you behave in public, and also how do you behave towards non-white people? It was astonishing. So it's, it made me very disappointed on one level, but realising right, I'm not going to let this pass. I’m gonna do something about this.

Alex: Now Graham is able to fight back – and usually that means changing the system. As part of his job as a councillor, Graham sits on the education committee.

Graham: So one of the things I'm able to do is make the education committee’s policy and reviewing of anti-racist practices in school. So we've been training our teachers in anti racist behaviour and anti racist practice.

Alex: The committee is also looking at decolonising the school curriculum. And is giving teachers the tools to understand what racist passive aggressive and micro aggressive behaviour looks like.

Imagine you were on that train. Or on a bus. Or at work. Or any number of other places where racist abuse happens. What would you do? Would you speak up? Report it to the police?

As Graham points out – if it doesn’t feel safe to intervene, like the couple on his train, you have a powerful tool in your pocket.

Graham: Obviously in our day and age, we saw the importance of a bystander quietly filming something because if it wasn't for the bystanders quietly filming the police who killed George Floyd, George Floyd's killers would not have been brought to justice.

The fact that they know that they're being watched by other people, and it's being noticed and they’re being witnessed, that's important. That does help to de-escalate situations, and it does, in most times, would make people adjust their behaviour.

Alex: Being an active witness is crucial in tackling racism at every level of society.

Graham: Don't be a bystander. Intervene. Because nearly always, racist twits will back off when they're confronted. They acted the way they did on the assumption that I wouldn't fight back. That was their first mistake. The second assumption they had that nobody on the train would bother to intervene. Those two things happen, they back off, and they soon learn that next time there's a black person on the train, they won't do that.