But away from the big cities and the displays of solidarity in more diverse towns, Gueye and Eldridge-Tull were aware that conversation in rural areas required a different approach. She told the Sheffield Star that she had recently witnessed a case of “a family physically abusing their baby for having red hair as they equated her red hair as being the ‘mark of the devil’”.

Now 25 and on the verge of finishing her English degree at Manchester University, Gueye has become a local community organiser and is more visible than ever in the town where she was born and grew up. Khady Gueye, left, and Eleni Eldridge-Tull at Bathurst Park, Lydney, where they arranged their 2020 BLM event. Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Observer But it’s not all gloomy. There is still plenty of support and goodwill in the Forest of Dean for positive action on equality. People are largely kind to one another; community spirit is cited as one of the many positive factors by those asked about the best part of living there. Many say they are on a journey with what can be difficult and uncomfortable work.And worse, it can lead to school refusal, health problems, self-injurious behaviour and even children wanting and trying to die by suicide,” added Meleady, who was awarded an MBE in 2000 for her services to children. I think it speaks volumes that BAME people are still willing to protest for their human rights even though they are disproportionately affected by the pandemic,” wrote Gueye. “Maybe this should highlight the severity of the inequality in our society”. Halle Bailey, who will play Ariel in the new Disney live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Photograph: Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP We’re a happy community, we don’t really have an issue with racism,” said one middle-aged man, who didn’t want his name published, as he nursed a pint outside a local pub. “Outsiders bring their problems, but there’s not a lot of them here,” he said, echoing in politer terms a point that was made repeatedly to the Observer last week.

The reported incidents included doing an internet search for “gingerphobia” during a lesson, which “led to a child in the class with red hair being teased by his classmates and getting upset”. Things didn’t die down. District councillor Di Martin said she was forced to quit her cabinet role after receiving abuse for speaking at the Lydney event. Arguments raged online. But Gueye and Eldridge-Tull were determined not to give up. Within weeks, they had set up a local equality commission to ensure that work would be done in the long term through projects with schools, local charities, the police and the council. On 17 June, Harper, who may be best known as the immigration minister responsible for sending vans encouraging illegal immigrants to “go home” around parts of London, appeared to encourage an online pile-on against Eldridge-Tull, who had a tenth of his 30,000 followers, and demanded she apologise to the local community for tweeting: “The reaction to the BLM protest in Lydney has brought to light so much support, but so much hate. I love where I live, but I’m ashamed of my neighbours, and ashamed to be part of a community that has so widely endorsed and exacerbated racial hatred.” The research was published months after of a teenager took her own life after teased about her red hair. Following her death, the father of 15-year-old Helena Farrell, from Cumbria, “demanded discrimination against ginger people to be made a hate crime”, said The Telegraph.Between 1% and 2% of the global population have red hair, but the figure is much higher in England, at 6%, and higher still in Scotland, at 13%. In 2013, genetic researchers believed they had “developed a powerful tool to combat the bullying of some redheads in Britain”, Reuters reported. The Scottish team discovered that as many as one in three Britons carry red-head genes, meaning that even if they are not redheads themselves, “their future children or grandchildren could be”. Some have gone further, arguing that the UK's uniquely aggressive gingerism is indeed a form of racism, rooted in anti-Celtic, specifically anti-Irish, prejudice and therefore related to centuries-old matters of imperialism, religious bigotry and war. There may be some truth in that, but those roots are now buried as deep as the recessive genetic mutations in our MC1R proteins. Other forms of oppression are not only current, they are woven into the very fabric of our society.

Last year, Tremlett took the matter of the Forest of Dean’s BLM movement to local Conservative MP Mark Harper, who raised the matter in the House of Commons. Meleady called for action to protect young redheads, “not just from gingerism or anti-red haired prejudice and abuse from other children, but from school and other settings members who model the bullying and abuses to red-haired children”. Likewise, no one has been putting up posters recently calling for me to be executed for gingerness. There are no respected religious leaders telling me that my very existence is sinful and that I'm heading for an eternity in hell. Nobody wishes to bar me from marrying my partner, wherever and however we choose, because she has (peculiarly, I will be the first to admit) fallen in love with a ginger. Gueye was supposed to consider it an affectionate send-off; it was written by her own friends. It was 2012, the year Britain proudly celebrated its optimistic and diverse Olympic Games opening ceremony, or as Conservative MP Aidan Burley would call it, “multicultural crap”.I'm a proud ginger and I've been abused, insulted and even, as a child, assaulted and bullied for it. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but I'm pretty sure I have never been denied a job or the lease on a flat because of my complexion. I haven't been stopped and searched by police 25 times within a year because I am ginger, or casually assumed to be a threat, a criminal or a terrorist. I am not confronted by political parties and movements, some with democratically elected representatives, which would like to see me deported from the country or granted second-class citizenship. If Tim Minchin is right, only a ginger can call another ginger ginger. By the same token, perhaps only a ginger can effectively rebut the argument that so-called gingerism should be considered a form of discrimination, or even a hate-crime, equivalent to racism or homophobia. That case has been made often, most recently by Nelson Jones in the New Statesman, who in a blog post last week detailed a depressing litany of murders, assaults and suicides that have been linked to anti-redhaired prejudice. We want tangible change,” says Gueye, “and doing that with our community happens at a grassroots level.” The organisation is funded for the next 18 months by independent foundation Thirty Percy. Earlier this month, Gueye and Eldridge-Tull ran for Labour in district and local council elections respectively, determined to make change through local policy. Neither won. “But we realise that if we want to make real, systemic change, we have to do it through policy,” said Gueye. “And that involves being part of the council to push for equality.” Alastair Moffat of ScotlandsDNA, which carried out the analysis, told the news agency that showing how many Brits have the ginger gene could help end the prejudice that “blights the lives” of many redheads. On the day of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, the pair received a death threat. White powder has been sent to her, alongside a racist note, in an incident police treated as a racist hate crime. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, was loathed by the press, sure, but she never faced such threats because of her flaming red hair.