#Merky boss Stormzy has just announced that he will be donating £10million to black charities and causes throughout the next 10 years, which will include "organisations, charities and movements that are committed to fighting racial inequality, justice reform and black empowerment within the UK." The money will be donated via the Merky Foundation, which was also behind the Stormzy Scholarship he founded in 2018.

Stormzy has always made his feelings clear on structural racism and the widespread challenges faced by the Black community in daily life; and his #Merky Books imprint has gone to great lengths to champion the work of Black British writers, including Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiyi's acclaimed Taking Up Space, Derek Owusu's That Reminds Me, and #Merky Books New Writers' Prize winners Hafsa Zayyan and Monika Radojevic.

In a statement alongside the announcement, Stormzy said: "The uncomfortable truth that our country continuously fails to recognise and admit is that black people in the UK have been at a constant disadvantage in every aspect of life — simply due to the colour of our skin. I'm lucky enough to be in the position I'm in and I've heard people often dismiss the idea of racism existing in Britain by saying, 'If the country's so racist how have you become a success?!' And I reject that with this: I am not the UK's shining example of what supposedly happens when a black person works hard. There are millions of us. We are not far and few. We have to fight against the odds of a racist system stacked against us and designed for us to fail from before we are even born. Black people have been playing on an uneven field for far too long and this pledge is a continuation in the fight to finally try and even it."