Peter Black, Simon Danczuk, mid life and learning what is important.........

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.