August 7, 2024
The series of
race and anti-migrant riots that have been sweeping across England’s vast
deindustrialised regions in the North West, North East, Midlands and Yorkshire
have been ineffably ugly to behold.
Gangs of masked
up men attacking hotels occupied by asylum seekers and trying to set them on
fire, launching missiles at thin police lines, burning down libraries,
attacking businesses owned by black and brown people, throwing Nazi salutes and
launching broadsides against mosques: this is not Germany circa 1934 and ’35,
it is England in 2024.
That the far
right has been emboldened across England by Brexit in 2016 is now not in doubt.
Brexit was never about democracy; it was about identity. It was about who is
really British and who is really not. It was about who really belongs in
England and who really does not. And it was about what it really means to be
British and what it really does not.
Millions of poor
working class whites in beleaguered communities across the North and Midland
were told and believed that Brexit would solve all their problems. They were
bombarded with anti-migrant and xenophobic propaganda by a clutch of rich white
hate preachers and opportunists — Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson,
etc. — and they believed it.
They were lied
to.
Used as
electoral fodder by the most reactionary section of the British ruling class
and political elite, their focus was turned to an enemy they could see in front
of them, among them, visible to the eye. Add to the mix a large sprinkling of
base English nationalism and obscurantist tropes regarding the legacy of
Winston Churchill and World War II, and what we are witnessing now was a crisis
just watching for a spark.
This spark came
with the horrific mass stabbing attack at a children’s play centre in
Southport, just north of Liverpool, on July 23. The result was three infant
girls killed and a community and country understandably and justifiably
enraged. That the alleged attacker turned out to be a 17-year-old
second-generation Rwandan migrant merely added to the rage already induced by
the belief that initial police refusal to reveal his identity was down to him
being a Muslim — someone who’d arrived on the shores of England on one of the
migrant boats, whose existence has been cynically and effectively weaponised.
Is there a
migration crisis in England? Yes, there is. Is it the fault of the migrants?
No, it is not.
It is, this
migrant crisis, the fruits of Western foreign policy stretching back decades.
In other words, we, the West, destroy and destabilise countries across the
Middle East and North Africa and those affected come to the West to escape the
destruction. In this, these desperate and traumatised people are doing what any
one of us would do under the same circumstances.
Migrants and
asylum seekers are not pets to be lavished with the sanctimonious guff so
beloved of a liberal intelligentsia the denizens of which have never known a
day of economic insecurity. They are people whose arrival in increasing numbers
has posed a challenge socially and economically for working class communities
that have been forced to endure 14 years of brutal and unremitting austerity.
This said, the
demonisation and dehumanisation of migrants and Muslims, both lumped into the
same racist box, is the devil’s work. The real issue all right thinking people
need to contend with is a capitalist system that has fashioned a utopia for the
few and a dystopia for far too many. The result is millions of poor working
class indigenous people being left afraid for the future and angry at the
present. Living in communities that are screaming out for investment, dealing
with under-funded public services, their anger is entirely justified. The
problem is that it is being directed at the wrong target.
The
amplification of cultural differences between different ethnic groups as a
wedge issue by the right conceals the dire economic plight shared by all.
Asylum seekers sitting in hotels are victims of the self-same neoliberal and
colonial system as those who’ve been attacking them. The result is a ruling
capitalist elite being able to sleep nights, knowing that their wealth and
power will remain intact.
Poverty is the
worst crime. Not only does it attack the body, it violates spirit. It sows
despair and cultivates anger. That anger when directed at the actual source
becomes a material force for good. When directed at the wrong source, as it has
been these past few ugly weeks across England, it results in mindless thuggery.
The far right
has never had it so good and learning the lessons of history has never been
more critical than now. The far right has been confronted and defeated on the
streets of England before and it needs, as a matter of urgency, to be
confronted and defeated now. But in so doing, it is imperative that we do not
let capitalism and its wealthy and privileged disciples off the hook.
They,
ultimately, are the handmaidens of this crisis. We are reaping what they have
sown.
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