A Question Time panellist has defended the comments made by a royal aide to a Black domestic abuse campaigner, who was asked repeatedly where she “really came from” at a Buckingham Palace reception.
Ngozi Fulani, founder of the charity Sistah Space, has accused the royal family of institutional racism after the incident involving the late Queen’s lady in waiting, Lady Susan Hussey.
Lady Susan, the Prince of Wales’s 83-year-old godmother, resigned from the household and apologised after she challenged Fulani when she said she was British at the Queen Consort’s reception highlighting violence against women and girls.
But on the BBC’s flagship politics show, Olivia Utley of the GB News broadcaster said Lady Susan was “cancelled for one misspeak”.
She said: “I think it was definitely a very clumsy and surprisingly crass comment from someone who’s spent their life doing these sorts of events.
“But on the other hand I think it’s a bit sad that we live in a society where an 83-year-old woman with 60 years of public service behind her can just be cancelled for one misspeak.
“My heart really goes out to Ngozi Fulani because it sounds like a horrible experience and I can’t quite understand how it happened like that.
“But I think that everyone who knows Lady Susan Hussey says that she’s not in any way racist, she’s a very kind hearted woman, and the rest of her life is going to be blighted by that incident.
“So I worry a bit about cancel culture angle of this whole story but that’s not in any way to undermine what Ngozi Fulani went through because it does sound like a horrible experience.”
Describing how Lady Susan also touched her hair during the incident, Fulani told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “I was stood next to two other women – black women – and she (Lady Susan) just made a beeline for me, and she took my locks and moved it out of the way so that she could see my name badge.
“That’s a no-no. I wouldn’t put my hands in someone’s hair, and culturally it’s not appropriate.”
Fulani said the comments were down to racism, not Lady Susan’s age.
“I’ve heard so many suggestions it’s about her age and stuff like that. And I think that’s a kind of a disrespect about ageism,” she said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Are we saying that because of your age you can’t be racist or you can’t be inappropriate?
“If you invite people to an event, as I said, against domestic abuse, and there are people there from different demographics, I don’t see the relevance of whether I’m British or not British. You’re trying to make me unwelcome in my own space.”
The Palace moved swiftly to respond to Fulani’s tweets on Wednesday morning, saying it took the incident at Tuesday’s reception “extremely seriously” and had investigated immediately.