We have previously written to Virgin Trains on two members of their staff who were accused of promoting bigotry whilst serving a Hijab wearing woman in the first class section of their trains. The response from Virgin was poor and whilst we suggested further training for staff on working with customers from diverse communities, the response from Virgin side-stepped the issue.
This evening, Twitter users highlighted what seems to be multiple racially aggravated incidents against members of the public travelling on a Virgin Train to Liverpool. Racial abuse was targeting at Black, Chinese and ‘Romanian’ individuals and the tweets highlighted that no Virgin staff that were on hand to intervene to stop the racism listed in the tweets.
Tweets also suggest that an Arab looking gentleman was detained by police, and it seems, no action was taken against the perpetrators.
We will be writing to Virgin Trains again to highlight racism on their trains and to push home the fact that the Company should have a zero tolerance policy on their trains to such racism and bigotry. Anyone promoting racism should be immediately reported to the police and removed from the train, with police assistance. For such bigotry and intolerance to be targeted towards passengers travelling on trains in our country is intolerable and we urge Virgin Trains and British Transport Police to review on-board cameras to identify the individuals responsible and if the racism is confirmed, then charges should be sought. Nothing less will be acceptable if Virgin is to be seen to be effective in tackling such issues.
(We would like to thank the Twitter account below for highlighting the incident on-line.)
