Predictable History, Unpredictable Past: Are We All Racists Now?

29 May 2014

Are We All Racists Now?

Gordon Brown is confronted by angry resident Gillian Duffy..Gordon Brown is confronted by angry resident Gillian Duffy during a visit to Rochdale. Brown was then escorted to his car still wearing the TV microphone on his lapel following the encounter. Unaware that he was still miked up to a working microphone he made comments on the encounter. Pic: Richard Pohle

As a survey of British social attitudes reveals a shocking upturn in prejudice, Allison Pearson argues that the political elite’s desire to advance multiculturalism with mass immigration has backfired

By Allison Pearson

With impeccable timing, the children chose Mother’s Day lunch to tell their grandmother she was racist. And what vile abuse had my poor mother bandied about? She had asked her grandson if his choir sang Negro spirituals.

“Raaaa-cisst,” chorused my junior Thought Police with more than a hint of witchfinder glee.

Four years ago in Rochdale, when Gillian Duffy challenged Gordon Brown on immigration, the affronted prime minister shied away and muttered darkly about that 'bigoted woman'. It is quite clear now who was the bigot.

“I’m not racist,” said my mother, clearly shocked. “What did I say that was racist?”

“You’re not allowed to call them Negro spirituals any more,” my Daughter informed her.

“What do you call them, then?” asked Grandma.

“African-American spirituals,” announced Daughter, a creature of such impeccable liberal certitude that she makes Nick Clegg look like Oswald Mosley.

“People of Colour spirituals,” hazarded the Boy. He obviously didn’t have a clue, but was enjoying his generation’s favourite baiting game: More Politically Correct Than Thou.

“Grandma is not racist,” said Himself. “Heinrich Himmler is a racist. Grandma, not so much.”

“Who’s Henry Himmer?” asked the Boy.

“Heinrich HIMMLER,” said Himself, “was a foul, Jew-exterminating, Nazi fiend whom your grandmother’s parents and their whole generation fought a world war to defeat in order that she could sit here 70 years later and be called racist by her sanctimonious and ungrateful grandchildren. Anyone for crumble?”

When my mum had gone for a nap, I explained to the kids that racism was not as black and white as they seemed to think. During their grandmother’s lifetime, the UK had seen vast social changes. Certain words once in common usage were now regarded as toxic, and rightly so. I blenched to think that, as a child myself, I went down the “Paki” shop to get some Blackjacks (inky toffees in a wrapper decorated with the faces of, then unremarkable, golliwogs). Miss Leyshon, my lovely primary school teacher, taught us to count with the help of three toys, Teddy, Dolly and Golly. In 2014, she would be considered guilty of inciting racial hatred.

I told the kids that, over the past 15 years, my mother’s town in South Wales had seen a huge influx of Eastern Europeans. It was possible for Grandma and her friends to note that the character of their birthplace had changed, and express some unease about it, but also for them to enthuse about their excellent Romanian dentist. Tolerance was not a one-way street. Tolerance meant treating elderly people who used outdated language with understanding, not finger-pointing and yelling “Raaa-cisst!” Real racism – the ugly, frightening, visceral kind – would flourish if people’s tolerance was taken for granted, and their communities changed too fast without any regard for the consequences.

That was two months ago, and I wish I were more surprised to learn that a new British Social Attitudes survey has found that more than a third of Britons admit they are racially prejudiced. Prejudice fell to an all-time low in 2001, but the latest figures show that the problem has returned to the level of 30 years ago. More than 90 per cent of those who say they are racist want to see immigration halted. More interestingly, 72 per cent of those who do not consider themselves racist also want to see immigration cut drastically.

As shell-shocked politicians from the main parties struggle to discern the causes of Ukip’s deafening electoral success, here’s a tip: look in the mirror, chaps! It is politicians, not the British people, who are to blame for a resurgence in racism; politicians who have ignored public opinion and created the conditions in which resentments fester and grow. Specifically, though not exclusively, it is New Labour who welcomed workers from the new, accession countries of the EU at a time when countries such as France and Germany wisely exercised their right to keep them out for another seven years. According to Jack Straw, this was a “spectacular” error. And Jack should know, because he was Home Secretary at the time. The plan of Tony Blair’s government, as laid bare by Andrew Neather, then a Blair speechwriter, was to banish that old, hideously white, retrograde England and usher in a new, vibrant, multicultural country which, rather conveniently, would vote Labour. Mr Blair now works in international conflict resolution, having stored up enough conflict in his homeland to keep future generations busy for centuries.

As Frank Field, that admirably plain-speaking Labour MP, told Wednesday’s Today programme on Radio 4, it was different when you had a European Union comprised of countries with very similar standards of living. The minute you gave drastically poor countries free entry to the UK, the inevitable happened. Since 1997, four million people have come to Britain – the equivalent of a city the size of Birmingham – yet there has been no concomitant expansion of roads, schools or hospitals. It explains why it is now easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to buy a coffee in England from a native English speaker.

It also explains why regions such as my own East Anglia voted Ukip so overwhelmingly last week. If places such as Peterborough turned purple with apoplexy, it is not because its residents are necessarily racist or because they saw in Nigel Farage the finest statesman since Winston Churchill. It is more likely to be because women in labour are often turned away by one of the region’s major maternity units, which has several times actually locked its doors, so difficult does it find a soaring, immigrant-driven birth rate. A midwife friend who was seconded there described conditions as “third-world”.

Until recently, it would have been “racist” to point this out. Four years ago in Rochdale, when Gillian Duffy challenged Gordon Brown on immigration, the affronted prime minister shied away and muttered darkly about that “bigoted woman”. It is quite clear now who was the bigot. Brown was typical of a political class that became shamefully biased against its own people. In thrall to a post-war European ideal, they had scant interest in the difficulties and discomfort it caused ordinary people on the ground. If anyone complained, simply shut them up by hissing “bigot” or “racist”.

A plasterer out of work because Poles living five to a room undercut him? Little Englander!

A mother-of-three hit by the child-benefit cuts, which come into force next week, and expressing disbelief that the UK is still sending £30 million in benefits to the kids of EU workers, who aren’t even living here? Sorry, nothing we can do about it, madam. It’s all for the greater European good, you know. Do be quiet.

A teacher hounded from a school by Islamist hardliners who want girls and boys segregated and treated in a way that is anathema to British values? Racist!

Disgusted at countless male, Muslim grooming gangs treating vulnerable white girls like “chewing gum thrown in the street”? Racist!

Fed up with being required to show cultural sensitivity to customs we find morally repugnant, and getting no cultural sensitivity in return? Racist!

Constantly decried as racists by a bien-pensant elite, the overwhelming evidence is that, until recently, Britons have absorbed seismic shifts in this country’s ethnic make-up with remarkable patience and good humour. Certainly, we are a lot nicer to our immigrants than the French (go on, permit me un petit racist sentiment…). We have far more mixed-race marriages than any other European country. Mixed-race celebrities such as Dame Shirley Bassey, Lewis Hamilton and Jessica Ennis-Hill have been key influences on public acceptance. In the Eighties, 50 per cent of the public was against marriages across ethnic lines; that figure dropped to 40 per cent in the Nineties, and stood at just 15 per cent in 2012. It’s a record of change and growing acceptance to be proud of.

And now we are going backwards, with more than a third of British people admitting they have racist feelings. If there had been a proper outlet for public disquiet over mass immigration, that would never have happened. Even settled immigrants, who have been here for more than two generations, say they are fed up with the level of immigration. Are they racist as well?

During the campaign for the Euro elections, I saw an elderly couple being asked by a TV reporter to explain why they were changing their vote from Labour to Ukip. “We liked the old Rochdale,” they explained meekly. Those pensioners are as entitled to their views as Nick Clegg is to his. Calling them “racist” when you have altered their town without consulting them is outrageous.

We should have seen this coming. Back in 2007, I appeared on BBC One’s Question Time in the week that the Labour MP Margaret Hodge had called for British-born families in her Essex constituency to take priority over immigrants in the queue for council homes. Hodge had seen with great foresight how that thorny issue was alienating white working-class voters and playing into the hands of racists. The Labour Party immediately distanced itself icily from Mrs Hodge’s pragmatic stance. On the panel next to me, Alan Johnson, then a minister, regretted that Margaret should be reduced to “using the language of the BNP”.

Well, they’re all talking about immigration now. Ukip has given them no choice. In his recent party political broadcast, Ed Miliband conceded that Labour would now address the issue it had tried to shut down for so long. Overnight, “racism” had stopped being racism or bigotry and become “people’s legitimate concerns about immigration”.

The deeply distressing and rapid rise in racial prejudice among the British people over the past 13 years maps on to a period of uncontrolled mass immigration. Cause and effect could not be clearer. Nor could the solution. I only hope it’s not too late.

29 May 2014

Are We All Racists Now?

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