There is nothing new in the right wing establishments treatment of the Windrush generation of people who were invited and transported to Britain in our hour of need after WWII.
A Conservative campaign poster of 1964 read, “Face the facts. If you desire a coloured for your neighbour, vote Labour. If you are already burdoned with one, Vote Tory. The Conservatives once in office, will bring up to date the Ministry of Repatriation, to Speed up the return of home-going and expelled immigrants.” Please note the use of the completely dehumanised term, ‘a coloured’.
To quote Theresa May in May 2017, “Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed.”
The, eventual, resignation of Amber Rudd has been met with plaudits by Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove. Hunt tweeted, “Devastating news for all of us lucky enough to serve with @AmberRuddHR. In cabinet she was always a true statesman who spoke her mind publicly and privately irrespective of the politics. She will be missed until she is back which she will be!” Gove’s offering was, “I’m so sad about Amber’s departure from government – she was a huge asset – brave, principled, thoughtful, humane, considerate and always thinking of the impact of policy on the vulnerable – I hope Amber will be back soon – we need her.”
No mention of the people whose lives have been devastated by Rudd and May’s hateful campaign against those who came to Britain as UK citizens, nor of the lies and the climate of hostility that both are responsible for, although Rudd was merely following in her leaders footsteps, who is the main culprit of the persecution of the Windrush generation.
Both Hunt and Gove completely whitewashed Rudd’s complicity in the lies, deception and torment for which she is responsible and in which she willingly conspired with Theresa May.
There is nothing new in any of this, it’s business as usual for the Tories, but what this serves to brutally highlight, whether it is the DWP’s punitive sanctions regime, the privatisation of our NHS, the catastrophic cuts to front line services, the low pay, no pay, exploitation of workers in the gig economy, the loss of legal aid, asset stripping the nation, the disaster they’ve made of education, the tax give aways to wealthy people and corporations, the UN findings of “grave or systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities”, the despicable abuse of the residents of Grenfell Tower, and so much more, is the absolute contempt the Conservative government has for the lives of ordinary people.
David Cameron and Theresa May have led multiple, heinous, attacks on the lives of each and every one of us and every single one of the government by rights belongs in the International Court of Justice in The Hague for crimes against humanity and yet, like the over privileged puffed up popinjays they are, through their manifold abuses of power, they remain at liberty.
They are historic masters of conceit and deceit, relics of feudalism and Imperial conquest. They are truly despicable people, to find worse we’d have to trawl amongst the worlds most vicious tyrants and despots and still be found wanting. When we consider the tyranny of the days of the British Empire, as Johann Hari wrote in ‘The truth? Our empire killed millions’, ‘The British deliberately adopted policies that caused as many as 29 million Indians to starve to death in the late 19th century’, and that was just in India. The death toll of the British Empire is uncounted and uncountable.
Of course such facts mortally offend apologists of Empire because, of course, history belongs to the victors, not the vanquished and the dead do not speak. But we need not look so far to find the atrocities of England’s aristocracy and ruling elites, the Irish potato famine and the Highland Clearances in Scotland to name but two.
Racists scream about the Muslim threat to the world, and yet is it impossible to escape, other than wilfully and deliberately, the global rampaging of white Europeans across the globe, not least America. Though now a nation in its own right, its roots lie in Europe from whence it gets its hideous and largely unrestrained imperial tendencies and taste for invasion.
Although it is considered bad taste to mention it these days, white Australia was founded as a penal colony by Britain, one of many nations whose indigenous people, who have suffered appallingly at the hands of their white oppressors, are still struggling for recognition and basic human rights.
Facing facts is not easy these days, but those who hold the position of government in Britain are really, really bad people. They have demonstrated their casual attitude to thousands of deaths which they have procured through their bogus austerity and policies of attrition and deliberate cruelty. Holding them to account is extremely difficult because, surprise, that’s the way they planned it.
Armed insurrection would be ill advised, because guess who has control of the armed forces? But what we do have, as long as it lasts, is the Internet, social media and citizen journalism which is playing a crucial role in the fight for social justice and truth. Oh yes, there is still such a thing as truth, that which can be checked and verified and stands the test of scrutiny.
We should not fear to speak out, it is our own silence and that which keeps us silent that we should fear. If there is a time to be bold, this is it. There is no ‘right’ time, but the time is right when we wake up and comprehend our danger. Silence is slavery, speaking out is freedom, because freedom is not a goal to be aimed at, it is choice to be taken and there really is no time like the present.
Keith Ordinary Guy
Humiliation for Tories over insensitive tweets supporting Amber Rudd
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/04/austerity-disabled-people-rights-uk-un-government
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-truth-our-empire-killed-millions-404631.html
https://www.history.com/topics/irish-potato-famine
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-Highland-Clearances/
