Labour MP Dawn Butler opens up on breast most cancers journey – and on the battle for extra a equal system
When Dawn Butler was diagnosed with breast cancer, she remembers the scary moment she was shown photos of what her surgery scars would look like.
The senior Labour MP sat anxiously as she stared at post-mastectomy pictures of white women’s bodies as her cancer nurse swiped through them one after another.
“She was flicking through the screens. I could feel – obviously, there’s the anxiety – but I also felt quite emotional, because I thought, I’m not going to look like that because my body doesn’t look like that. I’ve got darker coloured skin,” she said.
“I hadn’t yet come to terms with my diagnosis and I had to make some big decisions. I was very tearful, quite distressed, trying to hold it all together. When you’re confronted with your own mortality and that your body is going to change, not seeing what my scars would look like added to my stress.”
She said it took “so long” before she saw photos of Black women – and only after she asked herself. “A part of me didn’t want to mention it because I didn’t want to be seen as difficult or awkward,” she said. “After a while, after wrestling with that in my head, I just said: ‘Do you have any black women’s bodies that I can see, please?’”
In an interview with the Mirror, Dawn said she didn’t want to be part of the cancer community when she was diagnosed in 2021. “I was forced into this cancer world. I wanted to get out as soon as I could and forget it ever happened to me,” she said.
But a chance meeting with Leanne Pero, founder of Black Women Rising (BWR), changed that. Now as a patron for the cancer charity, Dawn is working with Leanne to fight for a more equal system for all women facing a breast cancer diagnosis.
There is little research into racial disparities in cancer experiences in the NHS but BWR’s survey of 100 women of colour uncovered some shocking findings. It found almost three-quarters (74%) of women who use a prosthetic breast or nipple were not offered one to match their skin tone, while 78% were not offered a suitable free wig option.
‘I was let down when I went to doctors at 26’
A woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 28 said she felt “let down” during her experience with the health service.
Laura Humphry, who is currently still in active treatment for triple-positive breast cancer, was initially turned away when she went to the GP with a pea-sized lump when she was 26. A couple of months later she returned but despite being sent to a breast clinic, she only had a physical examination and no scans or biopsies, and was told it was “nothing”.
Laura said she left it longer and longer – herself starting to believe it was nothing after being “dismissed” – and was then diagnosed in October last year(2023), by which time the mass had grown to basically the size of her whole breast. She said she felt a mixture of “frustration, anger and upset” at not only her diagnosis but also her initial misdiagnosis.
The now 29-year-old, who works in corporate banking, said she also felt “a bit of guilt”, adding: “I wish I would have advocated for myself a bit more.” She added: “It’s like that double whammy of being a woman, we’re often not listened to, or your feelings or fears can be dismissed. So being a woman, and also a black woman, I just find that sometimes you can just be further dismissed.”
Laura said she doesn’t think people are all bad, nor does she think it’s racism, but that “unconscious bias” can lead to black women not being taken “seriously”. She is now an ambassador for Black Women Rising, which she described as a “sisterhood”.
She is taking “baby steps” to build herself back up physically and emotionally but said working with the charity allows her to look at the “bigger picture of life”. Asked about why she wanted to become an ambassador, Laura added: “It was just a great way to give something back and give those other people, or that person that I was three years ago that didn’t have a voice in the room, a bit of an umph – pushing them up and giving them a voice.”
Studies show Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with later stage and more aggressive forms of cancer, and are more likely to get breast cancer at a younger age. And research from America shows outcomes are much worse, with Black women having a 38% higher death rate. Those under 50 have double the mortality rate.
Leanne, a dance teacher from Peckham, said her own breast cancer diagnosis at age 31 and just six months after her mum had been diagnosed with it “completely rocked me to my core”. Initially the doctor sent her away calling her “paranoid” and “too young” to have cancer – and later when she went to a hospital support group, she was asked what she was doing there because she looked “far too young to be there”.
In 2017 Leanne set up a group for women of colour, which now runs coffee mornings and online and face-to-face support groups, where women can unpack medical jargon, share their experience and feel a sense of community. The group has grown organically – it now has 600 members and is supported by stars like Elizabeth Hurley.
Leanne, who received an MBE last year for her charitable work, said BWR tackles “the two sides of everything, what’s happening at home in the communities and medically”. She lists examples of women being excluded from family events because relatives think they can catch it, or told to pray the cancer away as it is a “religious curse” or that they have received their diagnosis because their belief in God is not enough.
“People are being told a load of myths and taboos about cancer drugs and being told not to take them or not to tell anybody that they’ve got cancer,” Leanne said. “So they’re going through these journeys completely isolated.”
If Leanne had one ask of the government, it would be for it to make a “commitment to more research” in the experiences of black and brown people when it comes to cancer. She said there are “different statistics flying around” so it’s hard to get the full picture – but what we do know, she added, is that “we have some of the worst outcomes for cancer in this country and so more needs to be done”.
Leanne is also keen to emphasise that BWR’s success is because its mission is not about “blaming” anyone. She does not want to attack the NHS, nor the government, and she praises her “superstar” doctors – as Dawn does her “phenomenal” cancer nurse.
When she set up the charity she faced vicious trolling and death threats with accusations it was exclusionary. But BWR is about understanding that black and brown women have different experiences of breast cancer and, by addressing these disparities, improving the system for everybody.
Dawn, who was the first elected Black female government minister, added: “Inevitably, we’re going to get some abuse from this. Why black women? But it’s not exclusionary. I want all women to be treated fairly within systems.
“It’s a fact that if you create a system that treats, in this situation, black women well, that system will treat every woman well because you’re raising the bar. This is what this is about making the system better and we’re stronger when we can have that united voice.”
