I
was pleased to see this comment on Peter Black`s blog. He perhaps in
losing his seat discovered his heart and soul again. perhaps all of
us at middle age have to undergo a period of learning what is
important and what is essential. The loss of peters seat in the Welsh
Assembly was directly brought about the political decisions the
Liberal Democrats took. They brought in austerity, cut backs in
welfare, a commitment to nuclear power and al of these things
overshadowed and help destroy them. The Lib Dems are on the way to
the tomb. Perhaps they will be submerged in a new SDP who knows?
I
do know though that those middle aged crises that middle class men go
through do bring you back to what is important. I learnt that with
all my stupidity and mistakes. Perhaps that is what Simon Danczuk is
learning now about that time of life..sitting in a cell brings you in
touch with who you really are. I print Peters article in detail. poor
Robert Francis has been
having a rough time on several Facebook pages promoting this and I
salute Peter Black for writing these things. perhaps I see in him a
spark of the left winger that led him to sit during the national
anthem at graduation..there is hope for us all as Oscar Wilde said
"Every saint has a past every sinner a future" As for me
Sicily beckons. See you all soon
The
racist legacy of the Brexit campaign
The
Independent reports on the views of a church minister who grew up
behind the Berlin Wall and who fears being seen as an intruder in
Scotland following the Brexit vote.
The
Rev Aniko Schutz Bradwell, who leads the Humbie with Yester, Bolton
and Saltoun congregations in East Lothian, said the rhetoric of
politicians in the Brexit campaign seems to have "made it
legitimate to use racist language". She says she is more nervous
speaking German in public since the vote.
The
Reverend Bradwell is not alone in her anxiety nor is it ill-founded.
Back in June the Independent reported that more than a hundred
incidents of racial abuse and hate crime have been reported since the
UK voted to leave the European Union. Many of the alleged
perpetrators cited the decision to leave the EU explicitly.
The
Institute of Race Relations details some, but not all incidents on
its website. They highlight a new report compiled by activists from
three social media platforms and published by #PostRefRacism which
analyses 645 racist and xenophobic incidents reported to them
following the referendum vote.
They
say that cases reported to social media platforms were largely verbal
abuse, though incidents involving physical violence or threats of
violence accounted for 14 per cent of cases, within this:
Abuse
aimed at people with non-European BAME backgrounds made up the
majority of reported incidents – nearly a third of the total –
with ‘South Asians’ reporting the most incidents (16 per cent).
Around a fifth of the abuse aimed at this group was also
Islamophobic.
The
second most affected group, with 21 per cent of victims, was the
combined Eastern Europeans and Western/Southern Europeans. The
largest nationality most often specifically recorded within this
group was Polish, making up 40 per cent of all ‘European’
victims.
In
51 per cent of incidents, perpetrators referred specifically to the
referendum in their abuse. These most commonly involved the phrases
‘Go Home’, ‘Leave’ ‘f**k off’, followed up by statements
such as ‘we voted you out’, ‘we’re out of the EU now, we can
get rid of “your lot”‘, ‘when are you going home’,
‘shouldn’t you be packing your bags’.
None
of this is accidental of course. As Miqdaad Versi says in the
Guardian:
The
EU referendum result has perhaps emboldened racists by leading them
to believe that the majority agree with their views on immigration
and legitimising such public expressions of hatred. For this, the
political elite must take responsibility, after stoking a divisive
referendum campaign that demonised immigrants by spreading fictitious
scare stories, all the while pandering to the lowest common
denominator.
Despite
Boris Johnson once saying he was pro-immigration, his campaign
focused its message on immigration, creating unrealistic and
unachievable expectations of what migration figures could be. Not
only did it falsely claim that Turkey was about to join the EU but it
also claimed that Turks were in some way a threat to our national
security, highlighting its proximity to Iraq and Syria on a poster.
There are no two ways about it: such messages must either be the work
of duplicitous demagogues or incompetent and irresponsible migration
scaremongers.
Let’s
not forget Nigel Farage’s risible anti-migrant “breaking point”
poster, which was even reported to the police for allegedly inciting
racial hatred. As Sayeeda Warsi told the BBC, “This kind of
nudge-nudge, wink-wink xenophobic racist campaign may be politically
savvy or useful in the short term but it causes long-term damage to
communities” – a prediction that is unfortunately being proved
correct.
This
xenophobia was reinforced by national newspapers, who throughout the
first six months of 2016 carried dozens of anti-immigration stories.
Leaving
the European Union is going to be traumatic but we will find a way
through. The damage to our society of the legitimisation of racism
will take much longer to heal.
