Marieha Hussain: How a ‘coconut’ placard ended up on trial

The term “coconut” is instantly recognisable to many people from black and Asian communities in the UK.

It is a word with a generally negative meaning and can range from light-hearted banter to more severe criticism or insults.

What the court had to contend with was whether, on Ms Hussain’s placard, it could be considered racially abusive.

Prosecutor Jonathan Bryan argued coconut was a well-known racial slur. “[It has] a very clear meaning – you may be brown on the outside, but you are white on the inside,” Mr Bryan told the court.

“In other words, you’re a ‘race traitor’ – you’re less brown or black than you should be.”

Mr Bryan said that Ms Hussain had crossed the line from legitimate political expression to racial insult.

This was not the first time the term “coconut” has come before the courts: in 2009 Shirley Brown, the first black Liberal Democrat elected to Bristol City Council, used the term to describe Conservative councillor Jay Jethwa during a heated debate about funding for the council’s Legacy Commission.

The following year, in 2010, Ms Brown was convicted of racial harassment for the comment. She was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £620 in costs. Mr Bryan referenced Ms Brown’s case during this week’s trial.

For Ms Hussain, one of those who’s been particularly fervent in his support is the writer and anti-racism campaigner Nels Abbey.

“The word ‘coconut’ didn’t fall out of a coconut tree, to quote Kamala Harris’s mum,” Mr Abbey told me after the trial’s first day, adding that the word “fell out of our experience as former colonised people”.

The term emerged as a way of critiquing those who “collaborated with our oppressors”, he said.

“This is our language,” he said. “We share this language because we share a history, we share origins and share a community… You cannot criminalise people’s history, and the language that emerged from that.”

In court, this was echoed by two academic experts in racism who gave evidence in support of Ms Hussain – Prof Gus John and Prof Gargi Bhattacharyya.

They quoted postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon, Black liberation activist Marcus Garvey, the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah, and comedian Romesh Ranganathan, who has frequently joked that his mum calls him a coconut for not speaking Tamil.

These were citations more commonly heard in a university lecture hall than a courtroom.

The court heard that the investigating team had also contacted three experts in racism to give evidence for the prosecution, but they had all refused. One of those, Black Studies specialist Prof Kehinde Andrews, sent “quite a lengthy response” saying the word was not a racial slur, and asked that this be shared with the CPS.

Prof John told the court he was “disappointed” that the CPS hadn’t called any experts to support their case.

“I’d have wanted to be informed and educated on when coconut is a racist slur,” he said. “I would have loved to see the evidence of that. I’m not aware of that at all.”

Ms Hussain wrote in her statement that “coconut” was “common language, particularly in our culture”.

Asked by her barrister Mr Menon what she meant by that, she answered that she had grown up hearing the word used among South Asians.

“If I’m truly honest, sometimes, when I was younger, my own dad called me a coconut,” she said, prompting laughter from the public gallery.