I sat and listened this week to Reform’s plans to lead the British population to a future of milk and honey with a mix of unease, resignation and anger. There is of course nothing new in what Farage and Yusuf announced. It is a direct lift from the National Front leaflets of the 1970s with an added sprinkle of a promise to leave the European Commission for Human Rights and other international treaties. Populist politics and its well-worn playbook of promising the earth has always been shown to fail those who most need to see positive change in their lives and communities. Working-class communities who have been cut out of opportunities for decades have been given a reason and it is not the policy failures of successive governments and the total lack of investment in these former industrial heartlands. No, the reason is, as always, immigrants, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, the Other – those who are not ‘us’ (White, British), not like ‘us’ and not from ‘here’. They may not be the cause of our social and economic problems, some having only just arrived on these shores, but guess what, their expulsion is the answer. Unless of course you’re Zia Yusuf, Reform’s Head of Government Efficiency. We all know how it starts, as the last century should have taught us well – it starts with one target group and then grows until before you know it, you’re in the group they don’t want anymore. Zia better watch out.
According to Reform, the solution to all the ills of the British people is simple; two leave campaigns – firstly the mass deportations of illegal migrants and a promise that once these people are expunged from these shores all will be well. Secondly, let’s leave the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act and disapply any international treaties that get in the way, including the United Nations Refugee Convention which he says was for another time. Was that a time when refugees looked more like him? Is it only those who look like him that deserve the protection of laws and treaties, refuge, safety from war and famine and a welcome in a new land?
Farage is the new Leader for the racists. We see this in the protestors with their Nazi salutes and threats of violence. However, there are also those buying into and desperately clinging to the message of hope that Reform promises. These people are from working class communities of all backgrounds, left behind and ignored for decades, desperate to be heard by those in power, to find an identity, to feel valued and proud. Economic decline, lack of jobs, opportunities, poor or out of reach housing, rising cost of living, lack of services and above all a lack of trust in those in power and hope for the future. Farage and Reform appeal to these people now but will use them to secure votes then discard them, as others have before, as promises of a brighter future fail to be delivered. And then what?
Leaving is so easy according to Farage. In 2016, he promised sunlit uplands once we left the EU and now with these latest leave campaigns, he once again makes these empty promises of an easily achieved bright future. A future where women and girls will be safe from ‘foreign men’ but what about the violence women and girls will and do face from British men? More undeliverable, easy promises. I have worked in violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector for four decades and know all too well that men from every community abuse and kill women and children from every community. Met police Commissioner Mark Rowley has described VAWG as endemic, systemic and a threat to society on the same scale as terrorism. Farage and Reform have exploited VAWG when foreign men are the perpetrators and silent when a case does not fit their racist framings. The irony is not lost when we see statistics confirming that 2 in 5 arrested for last summer’s riots had been reported for domestic abuse. But for Farage, this is OK, as women are being abused by their own men and not those foreigners. But he goes further, Farage, this self-proclaimed protector of women, is prepared to pay the women-hating Taliban, to take back women, children and men who have fled Afghanistan as part of his mass deportation plans!
These are scary times for many of us. I have felt the tightening in my chest and the pounding of my heart as I remember the times as a child when I would go to sleep waiting for the sound of breaking glass from our shop window below and a racist neighbor shouting Pakis Out! before running off into the night, National Front leaflets and worse being shoved through the door, racist verbal and physical abuse against everyone in my family – no exceptions for children or women, my father walking us to school with a stick to make sure we arrived safely and the final insult – setting my father’s car alight and trying to set our house on fire, with us inside, only days after my father died. It drove us away from our home in the north-east. Are these the days that lie ahead for us once more?
I fear for the future for all of us. Those that have placed their trust in this snake oil salesman and those of us who see him and his party for what it is – divisive and dangerous. However, I refuse to despair as I know that I and others like me will be brave even if we’re scared. I take comfort knowing that there is more that unites us than divides us as the late Jo Cox said. This too will pass, and we will come together to create and rebuild whatever Reform, and others destroy through their empty promises and divisive tactics and rhetoric.
And to those who seek to harm and hurt us, know this: we are the descendants of those subjects of Empire who, alongside working-class communities in those former industrialized regions, built the wealth of this nation from our blood, sweat, toil and tears. We are the descendants of those who sacrificed our lives on battlefields in countless wars for and on behalf of this nation. We are the descendants of those who were invited to these shores to rebuild the motherland after the Second World War and did as we were asked taking the worst jobs, housing and lowest pay, at a time when more than 2 million economic migrants left Britan for better lives in the USA, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa followed by the 1 million more who left for Australia and it continues to this day. For us, no television programmes marking our lives in the sun, no celebration of our courage, our resilience, our fortitude, our contributions or our loyalty to a country we made our home. No matter–here we are and here we stay.
.jpg "Fear is their weapon, Courage is yours")
