UK Black Lawyers Unite for Windrush.

Immigration: The wailing banshee of racism haunts the land where even the Queen is an immigrant.

Photo: guardian.co.uk

Immigration is the poisoned cup from which politicians in trouble love to sip.

In Britain of late we have seen the beginning of the race towards the bottom of the barrel on this issue. All parties and most disgracefully, the Labour Party have now decided that whipping up sentiment against immigrants is a price worth paying for electoral success.

Ed Miliband first “apologises” for Labour’s mistakes on immigration, followed swiftly by Nick Clegg on visas, and now the Prime Minister muscles in wanting to get his snout in the trough.

We hear of his intent to implement laws and policies that will result in the denial of welfare benefits, access to public housing and most bizarre given the public health implications, access to NHS treatment.

Lynton Crosby. Photo: Guardian.co.uk

I recognise this tactic as it has Lynton Crosby’s fingerprint all over it and I can tell after being a victim of his during the 2008 London Mayoral election where he unleashed a frenzied and racist media campaign: the man has the scruples of a hyena when it come to race and immigration. He is the Godfather of “dog whistle politics” and the calculation made by the Tories is he may, using the same tactic, do for Cameron what he did for Boris in 2008. He specialises in the politics of smear, fear and hate. It is going to get very nasty between now and 2015.

 When you examine the statements of all three party leaders all are roughly similar in tone and content. We will “crackdown” and “get tough” on “immigrants who abuse our goodwill”. This type of rhetoric reappears regularly on the British political landscape from time to time, but of late these calls, have become increasingly more bellicose.

Nigel Farage. Photograph: Telegraph.co.uk

 We could just blame this as being largely as a response to the dangerous rantings of Nigel Farage UKIP party. But there is an even more critical failure at the heart of British politics that explains this shift to the right.

The fact is the public is being conned, mugged by the deceitful and disingenuous, neoliberal consensus of mainstream parties, who have conspired to protect their friends, the bankers.

In doing so they have sought to deflect, downplay and brush aside any attempt to pin responsibility for our economic crisis where it belongs, to the voluminous backside of the fat cat bankers.

Immigrants work harder, set up more business are less likely to be involved in crime, are more likely to be educated and less likely to claim benefits than most in Britain

Yet that’s not the reality the politicians want you to hear, preferring to play to popular misinformed prejudices, so they can protect their robber barons bankers.

Why you may well ask? Because they are in league with them, in short, Miliband, Clegg and Cameron share the same economic interest.

They know that if the real truth were known, about the extent to which their friends and colleagues have robbed the country blind, they would be unable to protect themselves or their plutocratic friends from the wrath of the people. 

So in the current economic crisis, with people casting around for people to blame, each of these social democratic parties lines up the vulnerable and the weak to act as a human shield for themselves and their rich tax avoiding friends in the city.

It’s the fault of the 'feckless poor', 'disability benefit cheats', stay at home mums, foreign students and now, the immigrants.

In this context and in the absence of a clear leadership from the left, the British public have taken this poisonous bait, and fingered immigrants as the authors of many of Britain's problems.

The rise of UKIP says as much about the failure of the left as it does about the right. With nowhere to go the majority in the country are left disillusioned uninspired and simply don’t vote.

At this moment in time, UKIP are talking about Bulgarians, but we all know the sub text and the real political and social dynamic behind such sentiments. Black people have in built radar for this type of double speak: we recognise these subliminal messages.  It is an ability that comes as part of our historical DNA enabling us to smell racism, to taste it when its stench begins to first putrefy the social atmosphere. UKIP are Neo Powellites.

The Windrush arriving in England from Jamaica 1948.
Photograph: www.voice-online.co.uk

And as Black people let us not fool ourselves. Far too often of late, I hear our own people exposing similar views, conveniently forgetting our own history of racism and oppression. They forget that their parents fought the same fight and they are the recipients and beneficiaries of that struggle.

 

Any black person who supports Labour, Tory or Lib Dem policies on immigration are akin to turkeys voting for Christmas. They are quite literally black people who have lost their conscious minds.

The truth is, those that are hostile to foreigner’s, are hostile to black people, are hostile to Muslims, are hostile to lesbians and gay people. They are  the UK Twitter Tea Party Tendency, for whom every problem, jobs, wages, housing shortages, crime, the deficit, can be laid at the door of “immigrants” or Europe.

Let us remind ourselves that the UK was built on the backs of immigrants. Every piece of infrastructure, rail, roads, and bridges, our national institutions such as the NHS or education, our great cities and small towns were all built through the forced contribution of slavery and colonialism followed by wave after wave of economic migrants.

Let us not beat about the bush here; even the Queen’s family are all descendants from immigrants. Britain is a nation of immigrants and any notion of a pure indigenous Briton is today, a dangerous fiction.  
We are a mongrel nation.  

Our historic and contemporary contributions to the making of modern Britain are immense and beyond calculation. We work hard, we contribute, we start business, and we make Britain a better place to be.

Notwithstanding this, we face constant discrimination from sections of the press, criminal justice system, housing and the labour market, in public life and elsewhere.

The increasing rabid rhetoric on this issue has changed the mood music for Black people and immigrants in Britain. We no longer dance to the same beat in this country. The politicians think there are few consequences to beating the racist drum, other than short term electoral success, but the long term damages such venomous racism causes, goes to the root of British society.

There are few mainstream politicians who consistently speak out on this issueOur friends in the House of Commons such as MP’s George Galloway, John McDonald, Jeremy Corbyn and Keith Vaz are rare exceptions; the silence of the rest is deafening.

Of late a leading Labour Shadow Minister has added her valiant voice of concern to the debate. It is to Diane Abbott MP’s, credit that she has recently warned her party about the dangers of “pandering on the issue of immigration” and she is right. One wonders where are the voices of MPs Sadiq Khan or David Lammy?

Unfortunately her party has bad form in this area. We can all remember the dark days of Margaret Hodge MP, Barking and Dagenham and Labour’s disastrous capitulation to the then rising BNP.

On a personal note Diane, I don’t believe, that a leader such as Ed Miliband, who singularly fails to recognise the injustice and racism, faced by Palestinians on the West Bank, Gazza is likely to understand, or frankly care about stigmatising immigrants at home.

Blue Labour, the new inheritors of the Blair’s New Labour projects are in the ascendency. 

South Africa during apartheid. Photograph: creativeroots.org

The resurgence of anti immigrant sentiment, xenophobia and racism will mean that anyone assumed to be a migrant will be stigmatised. If you’re Black you better start walking with your passport, as once these restrictions come into to force you will be assumed to be an illegal immigrant. You never know maybe they will issue immigrants with a “passbook” as used in the days of South African Apartheid. You can see where this is going right?

Black South African showing his passbook issued by the Government.

The message for the left in general and, more broadly, the anti austerity movements is clear and unambiguous. We have to be radically, uncompromisingly, anti racist and pro immigrant if we are to successfully challenge this unholy consensus. That requires demos, campaigns and opposition to the inevitable social victimisation of immigrant and citizen alike.

 In the fight against austerity we are all immigrants now. I do hope we are ready because given the size and scale of this crisis God help us if we are not.

Lee Jasper

A tale of two politicians and their remarks: Diane Abbott MP & Richard Barnes CLA

 

A tale of two politicians and their remarks. One was vilified as a racist the other is judged to have made “ill judged remarks”.

The brouhaha over the recent twitter comments by Diane Abbott MP produced an avalanche of criticisms from the UK’s lunatic Twitter Tea Party Tendency.

Referring to the well-worn tactic adopted by some British white people of ‘divide and rule’ when dealing with black people, she was bombarded with vehement criticisms and calls for her resignation.

Acres of print, lengthy discussions on television news and radio, outside broadcasts from Parliament, all culminated in an emerging Westminster London consensus that Abbott was guilty of  ‘reverse racism’ or, alternatively, ‘how the pot got to call the kettle black’.

 This ‘reverse racism’ nonsense is a perverse concept deployed by a motley collection of largely, right wing white middle class deniers of institutional racism and those whose ignorance of history allows them to equate white racism to black prejudice.

 Such notions are deeply disingenuous and serve as a means of attacking radical, black and anti racist leadership. Black people, by and large, cannot be systematically discriminatory against whites. We don’t, hire and fire on any significant scale. We don’t write the press headlines, we don’t expel white children from schools or stop and search white people in their thousands. I think you get my point.

 So when a semantic slip, in reference to a historical fact, is caricatured as ‘reverse racism’ and is subsequently catapulted into headline news, it tells us more about the reality of racism in the UK than it does about Diane Abbott.

An article in Private Eye last week beautifully illustrated how racism distorts the mainstream political and news agendas.

The case concerns one Richard Barnes, a member of the Conservative London Assembly group. A rather dull uninspiring man of little political consequence outside of City Hall, Barnes got into trouble during last summer's riots after telling colleagues a 'joke' he said had been told to him.

 Barnes said in response to news that the police were considering  using water cannons,  ‘Why did police put Persil in the water cannons? To stop the colours running’.

Richard Barnes (left) is one of Boris Johnson's closest aides
(Photo: Daily Mail) 

An investigation last month cleared him of failing to comply with the GLA code of conduct but concluded that 'repeating the 'joke' had been 'singularly ill-judged'. Now, apart from the fact that Barnes responsibilities include ' social justice and community cohesion; equalities and diversity' there is also the fact that this story has been effectively buried while Diane Abbott gets the full establishment treatment. The reaction to this racially offensive Bernard Manning buffoonery? Complete and utter silence: not a peep.

 The power of language and in particular, racial bigotry is given meaning by the reality of the ideology of historic white supremacy contemporary racial injustice and oppressions.  The difference between a word like ‘honky’ and ‘nigger’ is best exposed in an old Saturday Night Live skit, with Chevy Chase and guest, Richard Pryor.

In this hilarious comedy sketch about a black man in a job interview, Chase and Pryor face one another and trade off racial epithets. Chase calls Pryor a ‘porch monkey’ .Pryor responds with ‘honky’. Chase ups the ante with ‘jungle bunny’. Pryor, unable to counter with a more vicious slur against whites, responds with ‘honky, honky’. Chase then trumps all previous slurs with ‘nigger’ to which Pryor responds: ‘dead honky’

(Scene referred to is at 2.30 minutes).

Pryor’s frustrated repetition signifies the reality of racism as he is forced into repeating the word ‘honky’:  such is the paucity of racial stereotypes about white men.

Sorry Richard Barnes, the largely white consensus of the London Assembly members ‘investigation’ panel that concluded you had ‘no case to answer’, is a pale reflection of wider societal racism where black leadership is vilified and white racial bigotry is dismissed as nothing more than a joke.

Well, Richard Barnes  have we got news for you: black folks are not laughing:  

‘honky’.

Lee Jasper

'NO APOLOGY' - A POEM WRITTEN BY ZITA HOLBOURNE

A POEM WRITTEN BY ZITA HOLBOURNE, COPYRIGHT JAN 2012 IN RESPONSE TO THE ATTACK ON DIANE ABBOTT'S TWEET

NO APOLOGY

CHAINED AND ENSLAVED
SOLD AND CONTAINED
NO APOLOGY

LYNCHINGS AND JIM CROW LAWS
GLASS CEILINGS AND CLOSED DOORS
NO APOLOGY

COLONIAL RULE AND CENTURIES OF OPPRESSION
RACIST ATTACK UPON ATTACK IN SUCCESSION
NO APOLOGY

APARTHEID AND SEGREGATION
INEQUALITY AND DISCRIMINATION
NO APOLOGY

POOR HOUSING, LOW PAY
RACIST ABUSE DAY AFTER DAY
NO APOLOGY

IGNORANCE AND PREJUDICE
BIGOTRY AND INJUSTICE
NO APOLOGY

BRUTAL KILLINGS WITH NO REMORSE
TREATED AS INFERIOR AND VIEWED AS WORSE
NO APOLOGY

NATIONAL FRONT AND THE BNP
FAR RIGHT POLITICIANS ON TV
NO APOLOGY

TOP GEAR AND DAVID STARKEY
OFFENSIVE NAMES LIKE WOG, PAKI AND DARKY
NO APOLOGY

STOP AND SEARCH, RACIAL PROFILING
WORKPLACE HARASSMENT AND BULLYING
NO APOLOGY

ATTACKING MULTICULTURALISM
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
NO APOLOGY


BUT WHEN A BLACK POLITICIAN POSTS A TWEET ONLINE
 SHE’S WRONGLY ACCUSED OF COMMITTING A RACIST CRIME
WHILST ALL WE’VE EXPERIENCED IS EXPECTED TO BE FORGIVEN
THIS IS THE  RESPONSE I BELIEVE SHE SHOULD HAVE GIVEN
NO  A- PO-LO-GY!


 Zita Holbourne
Copyright January 2012.
Listen to Zita perform this poem at:  http://soundcloud.com/zita-holbourne/no-apology

Zita Holbourne: website

Diane Abbott MP: The Twitter Tea Party Tendency and this Perfidious Albion.



The recent media brouhaha about a simple tweet by Diane Abbott MP is a reflection of the continued right wing drift of the current political establishment and the country as a whole.

Abbott’s crime? She used twitter shorthand to refer to the tendency of British white people in power to use divide and rule tactics against black people.

Traditionally used as a means of maintaining control and weakening political oppositions, she was making a broader political point that is factually correct and largely uncontroversial.

The response was quite simply ridiculous. The UK Twitter Tea Party tendency seized on her 140 character comment and accused her of being a racist and using racist language. The charge was puerile political posturing against the UK’s foremost black female politician whose entire public life has been dedicated to fighting racism.  

 

That such a charge could be made and gain credibility in the media, illustrates the chronic lack of diversity in the media newsrooms. Ironically, this is another reflection of the wholesale racism in the employment practices within the media industry.

That the story was quickly elevated to the top news item demonstrates the power and resilience of racism in British society. Calls for her resignation came mainly from the right wing lunatic fringe. These dangerous right wing and liberal, post racist romantics inhabit a world where all British citizens regardless of race are equal. They argue that Britain is by and large a meritocratic society where racism is reduced to a few isolated incidents.

Of course in the real world, as the Lawrence verdict the previous day so starkly reminds us, the country remains polluted with racism. The effects of race discrimination are devastating and reduce the majority of low income black and Muslim communities to the status of third class citizens in a supposed first class democracy.

The facts about the reality of racism tell us that Britain is less a meritocracy and more of a pigmentocracy. A nation where the colour of our skin can lead you to be shot dead on the streets of Salford or slaughtered on the streets of Eltham.

There have been 96 racist murders since 1993. There have been countless more who have been maimed and emotionally and physically scarred in that period. Throughout the last decade there has been millions of pounds worth of damage to property and places of worship and thousands of sacred monuments defaced by racist graffiti and vandalism.



Fan arrested as police investigate Liverpool FC after black football star breaks down in tears due to 'racist abuse from crowd' (Daily Mail)



 Deaths in custody, poor schools, adult and youth unemployment, illhealth: physical as well as mental, rates of stop and search, disproportionate jail sentencing of black people, disgraceful treatment of refugee and asylum seekers, racist attacks and racism on the football field; all illustrate the fact that racism is alive and well in the UK.

 

So let’s not kid ourselves. Racism and the tactic of divide and rule have been and continue to be, the preferred tactics of successive British Governments. Both have a long history.

Britain is the 9^th largest island in the world and the largest European island whose original name prior to Roman invasion was “Albion “ whose literal meaning is “white”.

Modern Britain is a mongrel hybrid nation, whose early populations were descended from the Celts, Welsh and Irish, Vikings, Roman and Norman peoples of Europe. Latterly because of the legacy of empire and colonialism this country has become in parts a diverse reflection of the nations it once ruled.

Our history as a nation has been traditionally characterised by war, conquest, slavery and domination of other peoples. The predator nation was the English whose political ambitions extended to the domination of near neighbours and later the British whose imperial ambitions conquered countries across the world.

There was a saying that the “sun never sets on the British Empire” and there was a time when that was true.

Central to the politics of ruthless colonial oppression was the tactic of divide and rule. This was the standard domestic and foreign policy strategy of the English and then British for centuries.

 Such was the international reputation of the British for duplicity, treachery and deceit in pursuit of power that the pejorative term ‘Perfidious Albion’ came into usage around the 17^th century.

Perfidious: a term that signifies someone who is both unreliable and incapable of keeping his word. 

Albion: the original name for Britain.

This was a policy that was devastating in its effects in Africa, India, Latin American and elsewhere hugely divisive policy that was perfected at home and exported abroad.

The negative legacy of this approach can still be seen today in both the geography and political culture of these nations.

The phrase has remained for centuries a term of abuse for what was initial English treachery and later British betrayal. Divide and rule of the poor, foreigners, Irish Catholics from English Protestants, men and women, Africans, Indians the list goes on. It remains the preferred approach of the Government in both foreign and domestic policy to this very day.

 

So both racism and the strategy of divide and rule are steeped in British political tradition and its effects, as black people know only too well, can be devastating.

Was Abbott right to point this out in a discussion with a journalist about the definition of the ‘black community’ the day after the Lawrence verdict? Absolutely.

Should she have avoided the imperfect medium of twitter? Definitely. 

Is she a racist? Don’t make me laugh!

Lee Jasper