We people of colour are feeling the flames of racism burning our skins again. Once more, we are being blamed and overlooked in the prevailing national narratives.
The most common of those goes like this: the country is in economic and social chaos because of undocumented migrants, legally settled immigrants and woke lefties. These enemies within must be cleared out so Britain can once again become a world dominating, great power.
Seven relatives and four old friends, all of Ugandan descent, are migrating to Canada. Two are doctors, the rest in business. One of them, aged 70, said something prescient: “They want to deport settled migrants. Like Idi Amin did to us in 1972. Some of us came here, worked so hard, paid taxes. But to them, we are nothing. Enough is enough. You should leave too.”
In the 1970s, the streets were unsafe for visible minorities, and sometimes their homes too. Thugs would start fires, smash windows. Powellites, the National Front and the British National Party incited racist attacks and abuse. The police were lackadaisical, some officers openly racist. A strong anti-racist movement emerged during these unspeakably awful years. I became radicalised and, with comrades, stood up to the far right and routine racism.
In the Margaret Thatcher years, widespread riots broke out in mixed areas, a response to the PM’s petty, nativist nationalism. United anti-racist movements, of black, brown and white activists, became bolder and bigger. Under Blair’s progressive political agenda, racism receded. Diversity became cool. The 2012 Olympics reflected the confident, rainbow nation. Yes, there were many fissures and divisions and opposition to migration was a hot issue, but we felt more together than apart.
Brexit was the first, deep cut into that optimistic, multiracial Britain. What has followed was entirely predictable.
My usual courage is leaving me. Years ago, I had a letterbox fitted with a fire extinguisher after I was warned by the police that I was a neo-Nazi target. I’ve just had it serviced.
Outside Parliament, recently, a man called out my name and then shouted: “grooming gang’s c***”. People stared. Online, everyday, racists order me to leave “their” country. Recently, in a coffee shop in London’s Shepherd’s Bush, a white couple came up to me, said they watched me on TV and asked aggressively why I was still in the UK. I am having sleepless nights, and taking herbal sleeping tablets. And no, it’s not all in my head.
Home Office figures earlier this month show that the number of recorded hate crimes in England and Wales has risen. There were 115,990 offences in the year ending March, up two per cent from the previous year. Religious hate crimes against Muslims rose by 19 per cent, with a spike following the Southport murders and riots that followed last summer.
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On Monday, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) reported a 55 per cent increase in racist incidents against nurses in the last three years. The examples included an openly anti-immigrant manager and a colleague reminding another RCN member “you’re not one of us”, and patients being openly hostile to nurses of colour. Three years ago, at night, on a hospital ward after an operation, I heard a patient shouting: “Take your filthy black hands off me.” Nicola Ranger, the RCN’s general secretary describes what is happening as “a mark of shame”.
In September, the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) criticised politicians and the media for their “active encouragement” of flag-waving and anti-immigration rhetoric, and “an assumption that reducing immigration is an incontestable policy objective [that was] adding to the already dangerous environment for children and young people”.
The NCB added: “Solutions to society’s problems cannot be reached by ignoring evidence, misplacing blame, by hatred or by division, which have deeply harmful consequences for the lives of children, young people and adults.”
Now to Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin’s racist comments about black and Asian people hogging adverts. On TalkTV she said that “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”. She added: “It doesn’t reflect our society, and I feel that your average white person, average white family, is not represented any more.”
When the black MP Dawn Butler called Pochin out in Parliament, she was asked to withdraw her words by the Deputy Speaker, and instead see Pochin’s words as racist rather than Pochin herself. When I said on TV that Robert Jenrick’s observations about not seeing another white face in Handsworth were racist, I was told off. Because now, racism is normalised, and pointing it out is considered offensive.
People of all races are getting in touch to share their panic and fear. I can offer them no comfort. I feel what they feel. The rights we won after long struggles, are being snatched. Bad times are here. And most of those with power have abandoned us.
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