Shock at 'All Lives Matter, not BLM' spray-painted on wall of Northamptonshire underpass

'It has led me to feel unsafe and troubled by some of the racist views of my fellow neighbours'
The graffiti in the underpass below the A45 near Earls BartonThe graffiti in the underpass below the A45 near Earls Barton
The graffiti in the underpass below the A45 near Earls Barton

While the world is fighting against racial injustice, 'All Lives Matter, not BLM' was spray-painted on the wall of an underpass in Northamptonshire.

The slogan used to belittle the international Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign was discovered in the underpass below the A45 near Earls Barton in June.

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Ioana Diac reported the graffiti, which has since been painted over, to police as a hate crime after finding it while on a walk with her mother.

The graffiti was painted in the underpass at the end of Station Road, Earls BartonThe graffiti was painted in the underpass at the end of Station Road, Earls Barton
The graffiti was painted in the underpass at the end of Station Road, Earls Barton

"Finding this graffiti in my village shocked and disappointed me, and it has led me to feel unsafe and troubled by some of the racist views of my fellow neighbours," she said.

'All lives matter' has been used by white supremacists and counter protestors to the Black Lives Matter campaign which has spread across the globe since George Floyd's death in the United States.

BLM protests have been held across Northamptonshire while the county's rights and equality council has published a nine-point plan on how to tackle racial inequality.

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Ioana, 20, who is currently studying sociology at the University of Cambridge, said the 'all lives matter' slogan misses the point of the BLM movement.

"Saying ‘black lives matter’ does not mean that other lives do not matter. If all lives really did matter in 2020, we would not have to be saying black lives matter too," she said.

"In a racist society such as the UK, it is not enough for us to ‘not be racist’, we must all be actively anti-racist.

"Only when black lives are treated as equally as white lives can we truly say that ‘all lives matter.’

"Ultimately, all lives cannot matter until black lives matter."