A new species of white nationalism is propagating across the UK. It’s a fast-growing weed, resistant to herbicides, and assiduously nurtured by Reform and its green-fingered head gardener Mr Nigel Farage.
Such noxious undergrowth has always been there. It got out of control at times and was dealt with effectively. But now, it seems inexorable. Those who should be cutting it down and back are fatalistic. Or lazy. Or defeated.
I often wonder how Farage and his patriots would react if Zimbabwe and South Africa declared that whites were strangers in their land and their presence was unsettling native cohesion.
We learn that Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman have been appointed to what Farage calls his “shadow cabinet”. The first is a known white nativist who complained that he “didn’t see another white face” during a trip to Birmingham. The second – like Zia Yusuf – I believe was appointed for a purpose. In my view, they are useful alibis, tokens to parade racial inclusivity. Both are smart, but not politically sophisticated.
In 1994, my book No Place Like Home was published. I wanted my newborn daughter to know my life story, in case I died prematurely. I described life in Uganda. We Asians were deplorably racist towards Black Ugandans, who resented our presence and advantaged lives.
I felt like an outsider there. Empire-builders had brainwashed me into believing Britain was my motherland. In the years after I arrived here in 1972, I learned it never was nor could be. Racism was red, livid and out there, and well stoked by right-wing politicians.
Enoch Powell warned Britons of race battles and rivers of blood. In the seventies, Tory MP Harvey Proctor and some other Conservatives joined the Monday Club which supported Apartheid and repatriation. In her time, Margaret Thatcher spoke of the UK being swamped by too many cultures. And Norman Tebbit suggested that ethnic minorities could never be British – his comments about my own Britishness in September 2000 on Radio 4’s Today programme made this clear.
After the mid-nineties, millions of Brits began to take pride in diversity and to support equality. By the 2000s, I felt I had found a place I could belong to, London, my home. Other incomers whose skin colour had made them visible and vulnerable felt the same way. And the transformation was welcomed by white Britons who had moved on from imperial nostalgia and developed internationalist sensibilities.
Farage set about destroying those fields of hope. He is different from previous divisive, white nationalists. He and his trusted guys use the universal, profound meaningfulness of home and belonging to pull the heartstrings of nativist voters. They are fed a sentimental, moving, and shamefully manipulative narrative which goes like this: their white homeland has been invaded by dark hordes; they have had their birthrights snatched; their attachments to the green and pleasant land have been broken and even criminalised.
Some immigrants do behave appallingly, have hideous values and cause societal fractures. I despise them and have written about the harm they do. But to hold us collectively responsible for them is reprehensible. Besides, white Britons are not all perfect citizens.
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Farage continually insinuates elegiac jingoism. Ex Tory MP Danny Kruger espouses it with passion, and sprinkles it with Christianity, claiming that Islam is to blame for a segregated society and that it has lead to communities living an “un-British” life. Matthew Goodwin, the Reform candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, masterfully finesses the cunning messaging. Once an academic, the reinvented Goodwin has moved further and further to the right, and now skillfully exploits the despair white people feel about their futures and their beloved country.
He has publicly stated that “more diverse societies are also less trusting societies….”
This is unfiltered Farageism. God help us all.
The lawyer Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented victims of the Windrush scandal, rightly believes that we are living in “very dangerous times”. Her father came over in 1951, to make this country great again. Now we of migrant heritage are again walking through the fires of white hatred, expressed in foul words, deeds and actions. I have experienced two of those recently.
My sense of belonging has been snatched away by Reform and the two main political parties. Like countless other Britons of colour, I feel panic, and anger at those who ask us to “understand” why white people are racist. If Reform does get to power, it will extinguish much of what is bright and beautiful in Britain. People will, eventually realise that. But far too late.
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