There is a passage in A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (as my friend Einde O’Callaghan recently reminded me) which describes democracy as people voting for a selection of lizards, that they all hate, because that’s what they think it’s all about. In Britain today, fiction has become reality. Anyone old enough to remember “V”, will have no problem in imagining May as a disguised alien from outer space, of dinosaur extraction, who likes nothing better than eating live hamsters whole!
The current administration, parliamentary opposition to whom has been sabotaged by the Labour Right, would shame even “Swamp” Thatcher with their barefaced bigotry and undisguised Racism. The Lizards are truly in control, though not all of them are Tories. It is not in any way surpising that UKIP are in chaos: May has stolen their ceremonial outfits.
The level of increased racism is really quite extraordinary: even British industry objected to the idea of being forced to keep registers of “foreign” workers in each workplace. It would be expensive, would inhibit the common practice of recruiting from abroad and it would get in the way of profits. It is only comparable.with Jim Crown segregation in America’s Deer South and Nazi German anti-Jewish measures in the 1930s. It is quite clear that something pretty extreme is going on when a Home Secretary (Amber Rudd) has to say I’m her speech.”Don’t call me a racist” in answer to heckling in a TORY Conference! This is an example of the party of big business going against the interests of its.sponsors to.appease its own “Nasty” wing. As I write this, Amber Rudd is being.forced into a humiliating climb down by her Cabinet colleagues who more accurately represent big business!
The government’s behaviour over the Calais ghetto is equally horrendous: at the moment, it is in breach of the law!. Lord Alf Dubs proposed a successful amendment in the House of Lords that unaccompanied children in the Jungle camp, who are legally entitled to join relatives in the UK, should be identified and allowed in. This was simply a reaffirmation of existing rights and would affect a few hundreds. The kids would join relatives, so there are no housing or maintenance issues here: it is a nil cost measure. So far, not a single child has been identified, let alone allowed in. To put this in context, hundreds of refugee children are simply vanishing into the murky would of enforced prostitution and abuse. That this is allowed to continue is directly at the door of the Tory government. As it currently stands, Tory MPs are more likely to use a child refugee than save one! Actually, this accords well with their attitude towards poor children generally. Child poverty in the UK has soared under the Tories. Poverty generally has worsened too, a victim of the ever-more-draconian benefits policy of this government of the nobs, for the nobs and by the nobs.
Whilst on the poor, let us visit the plight of the disabled. Never have we been treated with such contempt! Remploy abolished, DLA abandoned in favour of a far inferior PIP, and a steady erosion of sickness benefits. Government policy is directly responsible for an escalating number of suicides, as benefits are suspended and disabled people’s accommodation is threatened by the Bedroom Tax. The resulting wave of resistance and mounting hatred is precisely the reason that this government is stoking the furnace of racism. “Don’t call me a racist!” whines Amber Rudd: just blame migrants for our butchery of benefits, housing and the NHS. The answer to unscrupulous employers under- paying foreign workers is not to expel those workers, but to force those employers to pay equal wages. Workers spend a higher proportion of their income on essentials. Every working class pay increase benefits the local economy. The local economy does not recognise ethnicity or nationality, only class!
The Tory government is scared. It is scared of the hundreds of thousands of people who have joined Labour on a Radical platform. The Establishment which it represents is scared too. They were quite prepared to go along with the Racism of the Euro Election campaign because a bit of controlled racism is good for business. It divides the working class, reducing resistance, and it makes highly profitable wars much easier to foist on the population. They didn’t expect Brexit to win, and they most certainly did not expect their party, the Tories, to placate it’s dinosaurs with a hard Brexit. Employers WANT to be able to import cheap Labour, to move capital and workers around to maximise their assets. For them, racism is a tool. It is for the proles, it is a weapon. It becomes very unfunny for the bosses when the Workers start thinking. They know, despite what they tell everyone else, that the Brexit vote, whatever the racist content, was an act of rebellion. It was a signal that a large number of people, beyond the Corbynites, had no confidence at all in our limited democracy. For our rulers, this was a disaster. THIS is why the Racism stakes are being ramped up: we need to be brought back under control and the weapons are to be hatred and fear. Hatred and fear of the “other”, be that disability or race or nation.
Our response, our counter, must, therefore, be a message of love and of inclusion. We must stand with the disabled and the deportee, with gay and trans victims of discrimination, with oppressed women and minorities. However, the greatest victims of the Tory attacks on our unity are those who are most easily stigmatised and recognised: racial and national minorities. That is why we must build a massive campaign against racism. Last week, my wife and I visited the Stand Up to Racism Conference, hosted, among many others, Jeremy Corbyn. We witnessed 1600 delegates give him a standing ovation. We came away determined that a massive movement against racism must stand as the foundation of a revolt that topples the Tories. That is why Dorset Socialists will again open their next meeting to Stand Up to Racism to help build that movement. Join us at the Colliton Club on November the Fifth at 1.30pm and help us build SUTR and set off a charge that once again rocks the Palace of Westminster.
Tim Nicholls
