Lest We Forget - No, poppies aren't banned

Every year, it seems to come a bit earlier as the nights start to draw in, the birds head south and we scour the forest floors for firewood...

Yes, you know what I mean. The invidious social media posts telling us the British Legion aren't selling poppies in "certain areas" (never your own of course, somewhere else) because they are "offensive to some minorities" (unstated which, but Muslims and non-white people are clearly in with a shout). British people (as long as they're white) need to "stand up and take back" our (Belgian) poppies.

And yet again the British Legion will explain this is not true. As it has had to do since at least 2016 if not earlier.

Remembrance hijab

Remembrance Day and poppies commemorate all the fallen. Contrary to the "Britain stood alone" (apart from a posh white Canadian and a jokey, similarly pale Aussie) narrative of the movies and the media, in fact the British were never alone.

Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Arabs, Africans, Chinese and Afro-Carribean people fought alongside white British soldiers in huge numbers and were frequently decisive in turning defeat into victory.

The British Indian Army (recruited from what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) contributed 2,500,000 soldiers to the British wartime army, about a quarter of the total - twice the numbers from Australia, Canada and New Zealand combined - and the largest volunteer force in history. Half a million of them followed the Islamic faith.

As well as being a decisive factor in the war against Japan, Indian and Pakistani troops fought in nearly ever major engagement elsewhere, including El Alamein and critically at Monte Cassino, as well as D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. Meantime, nearly 6,000 African-Carribean volunteers (including many women) served in the RAF and hundreds of thousands of troops from Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Burma, Malaysia, and a range of other non-white states came forward to serve as allies. Tens of thousands of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others died fighting fascism, even as the British government diverted food from imperial colonies, contibuting heavily to several million deaths from famine in Bengal in 1943.

The people who routinely plaster this annual lie on social media betray not only their racism, but their ignorance of history and lack of awareness of who is remembered each year. You can always find some hate speaker saying anything you like, but "some minorities" have never demanded that poppies be banned. Indeed, had it not been for the service of men and women from "some minorities", Britain would almost certainly have lost the war against the Nazis in 1941, just as the Wermacht was pouring into the Soviet Union and before the US entry to the war.

But, of course, in spite of their faux claims of patriotism, the fact is that at least some of these fake poppy ban posters might perhaps have been happier if the war against fascism had produced a very different outcome. Rather than the strain of two minutes silence, they might have preferred instead to join in some throaty, full-throttle "sieg heils" and then listen enraptured to the click, click, clickety-click of jackboots on the Mall.

Lest we forget.

Dear Other White People

Dear Other White People

If the covid crisis is unprecedented, the last few weeks has seen Britain reach even deeper depths of the surreal as again and again race issues we liked to imagine existed only in the USA come more and more frequently to the fore here too. Whether it is someone abusing people from black or other minority ethnic background on a train or bus, or police stopping a car with black occupants (one of whom turned out in a recent incident not to be a burglar but a Member of Parliament), or the rise of openly racist groups like the Patriotic Alternative (even the BNP at least pretended not to be racist), our society stands as exposed as any other as saturated in bigotry and prejudice. As much as anywhere else, our society can hear the rants and witness the acts committed against those whose skin colour or clothes or other characteristics suggest they are not directly descended from the white Caucasians our history traditionally claims “native” British people are descended from.

Following the casting of the statue of 18^th century slaveowner Edward Colston into the waters off Bristol harbour, at the entrance to the ocean over which he transported 100,000 black Africans to work as slaves in the British colonies, a wide range of white voices, sadly including even the new Labour Party leader, condemned the act by a crowd of people of different races. They had marched through the streets of a city whose wealth is founded on the slave trade, all united in proclaiming that Black Lives Matter particularly in the wake of the appalling murder in the USA of a black man George Floyd by a white policeman, who slowly strangled him in public over nine long, agonising minutes. A couple of weeks ago, extraordinarily, video footage showed a British cop trying the exact same thing on a black suspect.

Fascist taking the piss on a police memorial

In June and July, tens of thousands of all race backgrounds took part in BLM demonstrations in hundreds of cities and towns around the UK, but the wave of protest was largely negated. The mass media pondered on the possibility of a surge in covid (which never happened) as a result of the protests, in spite of them being generally well-arranged and socially distanced. Where there were crowds, they were far more often the rightwing Football Boys or remnants of the EDL or Britain First who trooped out in varying but smaller numbers tanked up with bile and beer to shout abuse at the BLM marchers in between literally pissing on the streets of London on behalf of the pot-bellied Master Race.

Yet somehow the narrative shifted. Spray paint on Churchill’s statue in London one weekend led to the monument being boarded up the following weekend and in a well-tried rightwing tactic several tabloids associated a call by a small anarchist group to remove it because of his well-known racist views (he was particularly hostile towards Indians and as well as denigrating their vital contribution to the war, stood by disinterestedly as three million Bengalis died of famine in 1943 as food was diverted to feed the British army) as being a demand of the wider BLM movement. Faux horror and shock erupted over an almost entirely false story and before long PM Boris Johnson first obliquely encouraged had right violence supposedly in defence of the statues and then proclaimed that he would not “take the knee”, the symbolic act of BLM.

So now the prevailing argument runs that we need to concentrate on the Now; the statues are either irrelevant or, apparently, key symbols of our history and to remove them would pose a great threat to our identity as Britons – presumably white ones. And as for now, well, we need to focus on stopping an "invasion" of would-be migrants, many fleeing wars started by or supplied by the UK, from crossing the Channel. The far right Britain First group is lauded by the gutter press for launching a patrol boat to deter the desparate people making dangerous attempts to enter a country where they perhaps mistakenly believe they will find safety. As the Home Secretary bravely talks about deploying the armed services against these wretched refugees, many families with small children, we seem to go into some sort of xenophobic fit.

But of course, it's not to do with race. It's just about protecting ourselves... After all, with four Asian or Black Ministers sitting at the Cabinet table in major offices of state, how could Britain be anything but a multicultural paradise, blind to prejudice? With a few black and brown faces on TV and even in parliament, we may argue Britain has changed.

Except it hasn’t. We still live in a racist state.
We sing Rule Britannia on live TV at the BBC Proms each year and create the mythical narrative of our ancestors bravely shouldering "the white man’s burden" of civilising the savages.

Yet we were, and we are, the savages.

For as we sing "Britons never, never shall be slaves", we conveniently forget - we were slavers. Our Empire, its wealth and the legacy we still benefit from, were in truth the black peoples’ burden as, along with Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Danish slavers, Britain ripped nearly 13 million black people from their homelands, communities and families and transported 10 million to the Americas (3 million people - dead, dying or insubordinate - were put overboard en route and lie at the bottom of the Atlantic) to labour in a range of plantations, whipped, raped, abused and worked to their deaths. And back in Africa, our great heroes like Stanley machine-gunned thousands of Congolese and torched hundreds of villages in search of the saintly Dr Livingstone as he acquired swathes of Africa for the Empire.

Black African or Caribbean people are 4% of our population, but 40% of those in poverty. People of South Asian origin are castigated as terrorists or grooming gang members, while people who look like they may have antecedents in China are accused of causing covid sickness. All are more likely to be unemployed, unwell, physically attacked - or worse.

Just this last week, the Metropolitan Police closed the case of Stephen Lawrence, the young black man murdered by passing white racists while he waited for a bus back in 1993, on the grounds that they do not believe they will ever prosecute all those involved in his death - only two members of a much larger gang who stabbed him to death have been jailed and even that took 18 years to achieve. While the appalling handling of his case eventually led to a finding of the Met being institutionally racist and some attempts at reform being carried out, for Stephen and his family, justice remains as elusive as ever.

Stephen Lawrence - murdered by racists in 1993

And this is where we have to look at ourselves if we are white. We may consider ourselves to not be racist. We may have black or Asian friends, maybe we’ve been to a Hindu temple or Muslim mosque or a Sikh wedding, enjoyed a culture night here and there. Like a good curry...

In truth we seem to be actually quite an insecure lot. Perhaps our assumption of superiority, whether manifesting as smug benevolence or hostile aggression, stems from knowing our greatness exploded from the barrels of guns and that our Empire was no different to any other. Brutal, exploitative and racist.

And like anyone raised in an environment where brutality towards others is seen as a norm, we need to spend some time in questioning our own assumptions, beliefs, feelings. We may not think we are like our great-grandparents, but their blood courses in our veins and their ideas endure in our heads and outlooks, just as their loot lies deep in the founds of our country.

And we need to ask ourselves, who are we really?

Reams have been written about the ongoing racism that leaves black and Asian people in the UK facing discrimination, harassment, intimidation and even physical violence – deaths are mercifully fewer than in the USA, but that is probably more on account of our lacking a full-on “gun culture” than any greater racial harmony - and firearms deployed by the police feature often enough in the deaths of black people identified as potential or actual menaces purely because of their skin and the stereotypes around these of “looking suspicious”.

And this is far from confined to neofascists on the far right, like the rotund characters “defending” Churchill’s statue in London with alleged Nazi-style salutes and bottles chucked at police horses while chanting “We are racists and we like it.” Nor is it just the constable in Cambridge whose video from 2015 shot to viral infamy as he explained to a motorist that he was indeed stopping him because, “no offence mate, but you’re black.”

This prejudice soaks our culture – from a presenter on Sky News asking a black colleague why she stays in Britain (her home country) when she has so many criticisms to make of its racism to the every day assumptions that ultimately leave people of colour substantially more likely to be sick and dead from covid than their white counterparts.

Many years ago, Mohammed Ali memorably asked “Why is everything white?” in an amusing but telling interview on the BBC Parkinson show. Nearly half a century on, there seems to have been little progress or, if there was, it has now been substantially reversed by several decades of a political culture that has used “immigrants” and “refugees” (spit the words out!) as scapegoats for the much harsher, individualistic country we have become.

And for these words, read “black people” – for as the Brexit debate crystallised (but did not originate) the hate, the xenophobia that has become ever more blatantly evident has not primarily been concerned about incomers as a whole nearly as much as it has played to deeper white prejudice against black people, whether migrants or British born. “Go home to Africa!”, accompanied by puerile monkey-noises, has been an oft-heard taunt of the counter-demonstrators at more than one Black Lives Matter event in recent weeks.

Yet while many, even the majority, of white British people will insist they are not racist and may ourselves find the poisonous outpourings of Britain First and the Football Lads Alliance (never mind our Prime Minister’s encouragement of them) deeply offensive, there is another side to prejudice against black people we all too often shy away from; and that is white privilege.

The mere mention of White Privilege of course often meets with howls of protest from white people. Where is the privilege of a white homeless man compared to the wealth of someone like Chancellor Rishi Sunak? What about a single parent Mum on a predominantly white council estate rubbing by on social security compared to Priti Patel or Kwasi Karteng, both senior government ministers or a slew of prominent black people on the media, in sport or business? How can there possibly be such a thing as white privilege?

Well, let’s look at what White Privilege is and what it is not.

I recall just once, a single time ever, being treated in what could be viewed as a racist way when another white man attributed to me "Scottish narrow-mindedness" because I disagreed with him on something at work. Taken aback, I remember asking him what he meant and it became obvious this was his long held view not just of me, but of all Scottish people, whoever we were. In effect, he was shutting down my voice not because of anything I had done or could do – but because of where I was born, who he perceived me to be.

One, single time. It had no particular consequences for me. My other colleagues didn’t share his prejudice nor his view on the matter in hand and I suffered no detriment other than brief frustration at not being listened to.

But I have often wondered since - what if that happened to me every day, several times? What if it had been going on since I was born? What if it was accompanied by insults and anger even from random strangers? What if it was accompanied by threats and actual violence? What if people stared at me suspiciously on trains or equated me to an animal or a pet "as a joke"?

What if they sprayed that I wasn’t welcome on the door of my home? Or shoved shit or poured petrol through the letterbox? What if my achievements were either denigrated as having to be down to cheating or special treatment or even bizarrely praised as exceptional for "someone like you"?

And what if people who shared my nationality were many times more likely to be out of work or low paid or in substandard housing or sick or killed, maybe because everyone else thought like my former colleague that there was something inherent in us that meant we didn’t even deserve to be heard? And what if I complained or even just politely asked for better, I was asked who I thought I was or why was I "playing the race card"? How would I feel, day in, day out?

Yet that is precisely how it is for black and Asian people in the UK. Even those who may enjoy other types of privilege as males or being from a wealthy background. Still they have and continue to face denigration of one sort of another not because of what they think, say or do, but simply because of the colour of their skin, or their faith or accent.

A black woman posted a video on Facebook today of a white man screaming abuse at her and other black people on the London Underground simply for being black. The sheer hatred exuding from the man towards people he had never met before is terrifying, but perhaps the saddest part of all was in the words she posted on the video: "Being black in the UK is tiring."

So my white privilege is that I don’t face these things, at least not for being white. It is the advantage of not being treated with derision or suspicion, of not having to do something twice to prove you're not cheating, or not having negative assumptions laid upon and hostile treatment visited on you - simply because of your race or the colour of your skin.

 Yes, we can all have tough times. And no one is saying all white people have it easy - in our world, relatively few people do. There is much that needs to change for all of us, which is why I am a socialist. 

But if you are white, then yes we have the privilege in our racist society, with its "hostile environment" and a government - elected by us - headed up by a man whose lazy, drooling lips ooze racial insults and calls his Orcs onto the streets to spit their venom and piss their prejudice over the pavements of our capital city.

If we are white, we have the privilege of being born into, growing up and living in a country founded on the spoils of Empire, the loot from scores of other countries around the world and the impressed labour of countless millions of black, Asian, Chinese and other peoples. Yet even last month at the height of the BLM demonstrations, an opinion poll showed that the overwhelming majority of white British people are actively “proud” of our Imperial past and suddenly keen to preserve the statues of slavers and colonialists they hitherto probably barely even noticed as they passed by. Removing these things would allegedly “erase our history” even although oddly enough I have no recollection of learning history by looking at statues usually randomly erected to praise the wealth of dead men.

We are of course far from alone in not confronting our past. Few nations ever do - so perhaps we could lead the world for once in acknowledging the tragedies of our history.

Acknowledging our white privilege is not about blaming ourselves for the deeds of our ancestors, but it is about acknowledging, understanding and making some sort of reparation for the impact of the past on today. Just as no family exists independently of its preceding generations, nor does any nation. You may not realise it but if you were a UK taxpayer, then as late as 2015 you were still paying for the huge compensation payments made to slave owners by the British government when slavery was finally ended in the 1830s. But for white Britons, at the same time as paying the taxes, we gained all the benefits of the wealth of Empire and the economic advantages founded on that and which continue through to today either via the legacy of past Dominion or by the economic imperialism of today.

And if you want to truly know our white history, and your own, it is worth reflecting that if you know of a black person who shares your surname, you almost certainly do so because at some time some of your ancestors owned their ancestors – slave owners were not just a rich elite: a bit like property timeshares today, tens of thousands of ordinary British people “invested” in slaves they never met or saw, but whose labour or rental paid dividends to them. You can track back at the National Archives online. More than any statue of a slaver, a black person with your surname is a living testimony to our true history of violence, murder, indenture and rape.

In contrast, the "freed" black slaves received not a penny in compensation and indeed initially remained in a similar legal condition as "apprenticed freemen". Even when this was done away with, overwhelmingly they remained mired in poverty and scrapping by on the subsistence wages paid by their former owners – and those who later came here on the Windrush and subsequently, who worked in the jobs white people wouldn’t do and who have played a huge part in keeping the NHS going, they have also paid via their taxes towards the debts on the slave-owners’ compensation. In effect even in the 21^st century black Britons have been having to buy their own freedom.

And just as our white advantages have endured, so have so many of black people’s disadvantages. That is how capitalism functions - generation by generation generally it locks in the benefits and barriers, and all the more so if accompanied by racism and violence.

So only by understanding our history and economic system better do we make any sense of today and of ourselves and our attitudes. We cannot on the one hand want to commemorate the myths of our allegedly glorious past while denying the impact of the horrific things done by our ancestors. And while we urgently need to tackle our institutions and social norms, we also have to check ourselves – no amount of race awareness training, positive action programmes or diversity monitoring will make an ace of a difference if we don’t look at how we ourselves behave, consciously and unconsciously too. How colour blind are we truly? And indeed, should we be, for by setting race aside, are we truly seeking equality or is it as much a means of denying the reality for BAME people of the prejudices past and present in limiting life chances and even in some cases life itself?

Psychology shows that humans are a social creature. We thrive on one another and our inherent nature is compassionate and co-operative, not the competitive, conflict-driven creature we are repeatedly told we are. Yet just as we are at core collegiate, the inevitable limits of the number of people we can personally know and the division of our world into nations, races and classes – all, ultimately at some level fictions we choose to believe in – we can too easily be drawn into a sense of Us, our community, our family, our friends, and the Other: those who do not look like Us, who maybe wear different clothes, have different accents, traditions, skin tone. And if we don’t like anything, it seems uncertainty and the unknown hold much fear for many humans.

So here, too often, some sow the seeds of division, turning the joy of difference into a threat: a demand for equality somehow a call for domination. Nearly always it is driven by ignorance rather than hostility, but the one can easily morph into the other and it is certainly experienced by its victims as hostile. Racism has been fostered by decades of rumours and lies spread by small groups of organised xenophobes and fascists, egged on at a supposedly respectable distance by the mass media and many mainstream politicians. So in the 70s we saw Thatcher steal the National Front’s clothes to crack down on immigration, in the 2000s Gordon Brown sought to tackle the rise of the BNP by wittering about British jobs for British workers and of course the allegedly liberal Cameron fostered the hostile environment to ape UKIP as it grew at his party’s expense.

Ignorance will never be defeated by softly legitimising it with a dob of “reasonable racism”. It can only be tackled by calling it out when you see it. Silence doesn’t just mean consent – it positively manufactures it. It creates cultures where many who are profoundly uncomfortable with what is going on around them will nevertheless comply because the silence of others makes them feel they are alone and resistance is futile. Watch the closing scene of “Butterfly’s Tongue”, a film about the relationship between a little Spanish boy and his elderly schoolteacher during the civil war, and you will see how easily it happens.

Yet the striking thing when you do challenge racism is not how entrenched it is, but how paper-thin much of the anger can be. Ignorance stems often from its own pot of despair, fed and fuelled by genuine grievances but with a misplaced target. One of the most striking moments for me when I was canvassing and encountered three people sitting on a garden wall who said they were voting for the hard right BNP. I have known some on the Left whose response would be to angrily denounce them as racists and even refuse to speak with them – yet that would do nothing. Calling out racism isn’t necessarily about shouting at it.

Instead, talk with them. If they utter racial slurs or threats, ask them why they have chosen to do or say what they do. Ask them to think how they would feel if someone did that to their mother or father. If they think white Britain has supposedly “superior values”, ask them where bigotry sits among them, and why. Above all, listen – as I did with my three whose main concerns were about the local GP surgery and buses to town. They had been told both were much better in Asian areas, which some in the local media had made out were subsidised because Asian people lived there. In truth, most of the local Asian and white areas were mired in much the same poverty and poor services, something they seemed to take on board during our discussion – by the end of which they at least promised to vote differently. It is from finding common issues - not difficult in our grossly unequal society - that bridges can be built and barriers broken down, and the very real problems faced by people of all races can begin to be genuinely tackled.

Listening though is not agreeing. It is about understanding in order to effect change: never become complicit. Challenge prejudiced decisions at work or in the community. Speak out when someone makes a racist statement with the implication that, as another white person, you must feel the same way. Don’t go along with a bigoted joke – though rather than denouncing the teller, ask them why it is funny, ask them why they thought you would find it amusing and how they would feel about a joke like that told about them. Most people are good-natured enough that if you peel back the edifice of division created by all manner of extrinsic factors, they do not see the Other, but rather recognise another human being. (Alongside this though, we might exclude the fascist leaders and organisers - some will not be won over, and it is important to recognise this too and never, ever compromise with their vile ideologies.)

All lives matter, yes, but it’s black lives that are being taken. Understand that the call for equality is just that, nothing more – though be prepared for those who will see it as a threat to their status and authority even.

If you are a white person, like me, we can help make a difference even by just making clear to other white people that we don’t share their views, and that their assumption we do is offensive to us. If they play the old card that the problem isn’t with black or brown skinned people but that they want that nonsense they call integration rather than multiculturalism, ask them what they mean – every single one of us is different. I may share the same skin tone as you, but our tastes, our likes and dislikes, the things that make us who we are could be wildly different, while if they bothered to talk to someone from a different ethnic background, they could be very surprised at how much they have in common. There are many injustices and wrongs in this world - why add to them by being racist? Or by accepting racism as somehow being inevitable?

Listen to black and other ethnic minority friends, colleagues, neighbours and others, but equally don’t assume that they will want to tell you their personal experiences. You don’t need to have a child abuse survivor recount their abuse to know it is wrong and act against it. Similarly with racism. If someone feels able and wishes to tell you their story, fine, be honoured that they wish to share it with you, but don’t expect it or require it. Just be an ally - be a comrade. 

And as one black American writer has pleaded, as black people are often raised with the mantra that they need to be twice as good (as white people) to fit into society, if it is going to be like that, please can white people be twice as kind - twice as thoughtful about what our neighbours of colour may be going through encountering things we simply don't. Our white ancestors created this awful problem - but we can sort it, or begin to, not by beating ourselves up about the past (though equally not blindly celebrating it either), but by embracing our neighbours with different skin tones and cultures, by learning about them and looking for the things that bind us together.

Racism damages lives, destroys them even, cuts them short – and it is the accumulation of the often small acts in themselves that build up to legitimise the harm. Hitler’s concentration camps did not just spring into their awful existence overnight – years of gradually insulting and slowly dehumanising Romanies, Jews and others normalised the hatred, so much so that many camp guards actually believed they were committing an act of good when they forced victims into gas chambers. And so it goes that every act of hatred, or ignorance, no matter how small, needs to be challenged.

In the end, in our society with its imperialist past and racist now, our white privilege is the privilege of standing on the shoulders of thieves and murderers who conquered the world and fashioned it to our advantage. Our white privilege is the privilege of centuries of accumulated wealth and the multitude of benefits that go with that. Our white privilege is the privilege of not being black.

And we need to be utterly ashamed of that fact, and we need to listen to our black sisters and brothers and collectively and individually work to create a world that is better and happier for all of us, black and white alike, and the identity that we all share - the battered, fragile but ultimately compassionate and loving one called the human race.

Sarajevo On The Potomac

The Obama Presidency sadly masked the enduring nature of US empire with a purely symbolic change - the wars, racism, inequality and poverty continued largely as before. Yet the appalling carnage of the last week points up how completely Trump has shifted the narrative from one of hope for a better future, however vague, to a grim fascination with division, oppression and violence.

When he held up a Bible the other day, his sneering face with its narrowed eyes somehow told you that he'd be far more likely to beat you on the head with it than actually read its contents. This display was the epitome of what his craven mate Nigel Farage refers to as "muscular Christianity" - nothing to do with the Gospels' messages of love and justice, but everything to do with sanctifying a cultural mindset of White Power. A monoculture, exclusionist, racist to the core, even if so many of those fronting and following this barren, joyless concept somehow typify the unhealthy mundanity of the stupid white men they usually are.

Trump even now is not Hitler - he is not as coherent or planned or darkly intelligent. Rather, he is the Milosevic or, yet worse, the Radovan Karadzic of our time, but with far more firepower and no imaginable UN peacekeeping force on the horizon. Bathed in the flames he has fired, Washington D.C. so easily morphs into today's Sarajevo while Minneapolis teeters towards a future Srebernica.

The savage Bosnian war in the mid-90s, sparked as the federal state of Yuogoslavia unravelled in a matter of weeks, is as apt a comparison as any, however chilling the prospect. For, with its suborning of Christian symbols to promote racial supremacy, its "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims, its massacres in Visegrad, Prijedor, Foca, Srebrenica and scores of other once peaceful Balkan valleys, its tinpot warlords and its narcissistic, psychopathic  President - this was always the canary in the coalmine, screaming out where the post-Soviet neoliberal "New World Order", as Bush senior lauded it, was always going to end up.

Well, destination reached, and it has long been in view. This is the tomorrow these men promised and many others enabled, whether by collusion or indifference.

You are here.

Now.

What will you do about it?

We Can Export You Wholesale - the bitter future of Theresa May

The British Government is busy advertising on TV at the moment, promoting the idea that trade is automatically good - maybe a debate for another time.

But a centrepiece of this is an Indian man standing in a railway station, for some reason specifically seeking British partners to develop the rail metro network in his country. Here he is...

Often for the wrong historical reasons, India and Britain have strong links, not only in modern trade and (frequently violent) imperialist history, but in personal, human terms with 1,400,000 British citizens tracing their family back to South Asia. Their cultural diversity has enriched our country and somehow, in spite of all the prejudice spat out by so many on the right, you sort of hope that we are slowly getting to a point where the value, in so many different ways, of this and many other communities in the UK is being accepted.

And yet, today we find from the now online-only Independent newspaper that Home Secretary Theresa May used the flimsiest of excuses from a BBC Panorama expose of irregularities at one, single language school to deport some 46,000 students illegally - seven in ten of them from India. Apparently the tests used to decide on deportation were so flimsy that the Upper Tribunal for asylum and immigration has thrown out the Government's case. 

This of course follows on from May's other schemes to ban overseas students from working while studying here and force them to leave almost as soon as they complete their degrees - ignoring the economic, commercial and cultural benefits we gain from graduates who remain and work for some months in the UK. Coupled with a relentlessly hostile media, most of us don't realise just how damaged our country's image is abroad now, seen as we are as rather inward-looking, prejudiced and unwelcoming place - in sharp contrast to an increasingly confident, outward-looking India. Even before the myopia and sociopathic behaviour of the Tory Government, one assessment was that, for all its problems and all our past, India wasn't looking to Britain or anywhere else for ideas or help.

Now of course, with rightwing media hysterically and repeatedly claiming that no one at all is ever expelled from the UK, the figure of 46,000 illegal deportations in under two years may cause a degree of overload in Mail readers heads. Given the disinformation they read each day, they might be surprised to learn that in 2014 alone 38,000 people were deported from the UK, before the student case arose - over 7,300 were from India, and over 5,000 from Pakistan.

But it also represents yet again the deep, deep racism and prejudice seemingly at the centre of our Government and in the heart of Theresa May, assuming of course that she actually has one. (Notably, even the rightwing Daily Telegraph was moved last year to describe some of her plans for illegal migrants as "chilling and bitter").

It is ethically wrong, damaging to tens of thousands of people who came simply to study and learn our language - something more generous minds might see as both a compliment to us rather than a threat, and as something highly positive. Instead, Britain yet again is seen to be at odds with people because of their nationality, their colour and their race, and quite possibly religion too. Our Government's pathetically narrow-minded (and factually wrong) view of foreigners as scroungers out to double cross us will, in the end, damage us far more than them. 

It is their appalling mindset that leads to utterly disgusting tragedies such as that of Bhavisha Ben Patel and her husband Pinakin. This young couple arrived in the UK for a 10 day holiday in Scotland early last year, but were immediately whisked to Yarls' Wood detention centre. This was done because Mrs Patel, naively wanting to be sure she had all the right documents for passport control, had brought her education certificates with her. 

Sady, this was a sure sign, in Theresa-land, that she planned to work here illegally, in spite of having return air tickets and children back in India. Two months later, several weeks after they were due home, they remained in detention and Mr Patel died of a heart attack aged just 33 years. Mrs Patel remained incarcerated for several weeks longer, unable to bury her husband or get home to her family, and prompting a hunger strike in support of her from fellow inmates.

That man in the railway station may not wait for us much longer. After all, if we can't abide his daughter or son coming here to learn for a year or two and lock up compatriots who come for a holiday, why on Earth would he want us to go and work in his country? Soon, despairing of us, he may board one of India's brand new trains and, bound for the future, leave us behind in the dead end siding that is Tory bigotry.

And, of course, as with any Government, it is all done in our name.

Polymath of Revolution: Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson is more often than not remembered by mainstream white culture as the deep, melancholic voice of American musicals, though sometimes in roles that ultimately pandered to white stereotypes of black people. But there was much, much more to this remarkable radical whose life straddled so many of the defining struggles of the 20th century.

He was born in 1898 in New Jersey to a mixed race mother and a black father who had been born a slave before escaping and eventually becoming a pastor. In spite of facing a barrage of racism in his early years, Robeson won a scholarship to Rutgers College where he excelled at sport and played in the National Football League. At the same time, he studied and qualified in law from Columbia Law School, but on graduation, he was faced with patronising racial barriers to progressing in the profession. Encouraged by his new wife Essie, who supported him financially, he switched instead to theatre in Harlem where he soon worked with a range of radical bohemian artists. His performances were widely praised, but the subjects of many of the productions he appeared in challenged prevailing norms about race and society, and led to death threats.

This didn't stop him and he was soon singing as well, presenting concerts of slave spirituals, arguing against the prevalent trend among middle class blacks to eschew their history and culture. Later, while working in theatre in London, he enrolled in courses at the School of Oriental and African Studies to understand African languages and dialects more deeply. Yet as he appeared in more films, he soon encountered racial stereotyping - and appalling treatment where what directors like Alexander Korba assured him were roles taking a more progressive slant on race were twisted round on the editor's floor. This soon sharpened and heightened his political awareness and thirst for social change.

While keen to foster African Americans' pride in their culture and identity, he also deeply believed in the universality of all humanity and through this was drawn to communism. In 1929 in London he encountered striking miners who had marched from Wales and learned of their poverty. He raised funds and travelled to the Valleys with food for their families and supported trade union activists. Later, he met socialist thinkers like H G Wells and this inspired him on his return to the USA to hold concerts to fund raise for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. A couple of years later he became Chair of the Council on African Affairs, a left-wing body advocating for black rights in the USA and against imperialism and colonialism globally. Although tolerated during the war because of the alliance with the USSR, it was listed by the FBI as a subversive organisation in 1946.

He visted the Soviet Union in 1948 (although as with many on the Left at the time he was largely uncritical of Stalinism), worked for Progressive Party US Presidential candidate Henry A Wallace in the same year and supported the American Communist Party, all of which led to him being blacklisted during the McCarthy repression. Along with other CAA leaders, he was charged with subversion in 1953 and denied a passport for five years, seriously damaging his international career as well as cutting his domestic earnings. Surviving this, however, he staged a moderate come back in concerts in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

After the lynching of four black men by a white mob in 1946, Robeson had secured a meeting with President Truman to petition for action to protect black people. However, when he warned the President that failure to stop lynchings would lead to a violent backlash from African Americans, Truman had angrily terminated the meeting. This did not stop Robeson from continuing to campaign, but it was to be another 15 years before the rise of the civil rights movement was to see any real progress. Robeson was for a while active in the movement but ill health compelled him to retire from public view. He died in 1976.

Paul Robeson was a deeply intellectual, multi-faceted man, a true polymath but one even now frequently relegated to a stereotype by white dominated culture.  It is an insipid, patronising and even self-defeating racism in so many ways similar to the "genteel" racial barriers that he had encountered during his brief foray into the legal profession. That he nevertheless held to a politics which, while celebrating cultural difference, fostered the underpinning unity of humankind is consequently all the more impressive.

Here is a full length film biography of Paul Robeson and, below that, his rendition (in a rare English version) of the Soviet National Anthem.

Killed Because They Are Black - The Racist Rebels of "Free" Libya

The terrified man is hung upside down as a mob chant abuse at him, many filming his torture on mobile phone cameras. After some time, a man steps forward and begins to hack off the prisoner's head, the mob cheering as his blood spurts to the ground. It is the latest of many videos to come out of war-torn Libya showing people brutally killed, homes destroyed and refugees expelled. Misery and death seem ubiquitous.

But the air forces of the coalition of western countries - France and Britain at their head, with an allegedly reluctant USA following up - were nowhere to be seen in their mission to protect civilians.

Why not? Simply because the people carrying out the lynch mob executions and torture are our allies, the so-called Libyan freedom fighters based in Benghazi to whom President Sarkozy and Premier Cameron have pledged apparently unending support. On so many levels, our intervention, originally sold as a very limited no-fly zone, has become a full-on support to a coup d'etat against the secular Gaddafi regime by a coalition of regionalists, tribal leaders and religious zealots. Within these groups, there is now also an increasingly racist streak, with Arab supremacists targeting Libyans descended from the black African slaves of previous centuries, as well as black African migrant workers.

Black Africans are targetted indiscriminately by rebels

Because of their slave history, just as blacks in America were denied rights for decades by the white majority, black Libyans have traditionally occupied the place of an underclass in Libya. Gaddafi's regime, violent though it has often been, did much to alleviate their position and oppose the traditional marginalising of blacks. Now, with the east of the country "liberated", this seems to be changing. Under the ruse that Gaddaffi has flown in black African mercenaries from the sub-Sahara, black people throughout Libya are being indiscriminately  targeted in their droves to be beaten, robbed and murdered by the rebels.

Britain's support for the rebel National Transitional Council has deepened continuously since the UN resolution permitting action to protect civilians was approved, both financially and militarily. Whilst the Gaddafi regime appears to have exaggerated some of the strikes by the West, it is very much the case that western intervention has gone far beyond its original claimed intent and the remit granted by the UN.

Yet throughout all this, the NTC appears to be far from the champion of democracy it is made out to be - it contains many former political leaders from the Gaddafi regime, as well as many military men - seven former regime generals were paraded before the cameras today as the latest defectors. Islamic fundamentalists from  the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition are also prominently involved - and as posted earlier, it was demonstrations they called to commemorate the Danish cartoons of Prophet Mahommed that sparked off the revolt against Gaddaffi's secular regime.

Ever since the Chavez Initiative back in April, the Gaddaffi regime has repeatedly offered to accept an internationally monitored ceasefire, an offer repeated last weekend during the visit of President Zuma of South Africa. Although this would, presumably, be the best means of ensuring the protection of civilians which is meant to be the purpose of western intervention, the rebel council has repeatedly refused to even consider a ceasefire and rejects out of hand the idea of peace negotiations with Gaddaffi. And this refusal is repeatedly accepted, indulged and even rewarded by the West, which has announced ever more powerful weapons and, in spite of our alleged age of austerity, financial support to the Benghazi junta. Attack helicopters are in the process of being deployed, and al-Jazeera has run footage of what appears to be European ground troops liaising with Libyan rebels - a flagrant breach of the UN resolution.

What is playing out here is an alarming example of rightwing revenge - Cameron and Sarkozy come from conservative traditions that have always detested the Gaddafi regime, recalling its sympathising back in the 1970s and 1980s with the Soviet bloc. That is why they have intervened so unquestioningly in support of his opponents while ignoring the brutality of the Bahrain regime (still enjoying the welcome of David Cameron when its Crown Prince visited the UK the week before last). Undoubtedly, they are also salivating at the prospect of the ill-gotten gains to be made by western corporations if the large state sector was to be privatised post-Gaddafi - in France's case making up for missing out in the huge public assets sell-off to American, British and even Israeli companies in post-Saddam Iraq.

As before, in the warped name of warped democracy, Britain is bunking down with some distinctly odd bedfellows. And the people who suffer are those driven from their homes and lynched by "free Libya" rebel mobs, for no reason other than because they are black. Where is the West's intervention to protect them? Or are they just the wrong sort, or wrong colour, of civilians in this very uncivil war?


The Evidence

Video of African Workers Hiding Out in Benghazi from Racist Mob Violence

The Ugly Face of the Benghazi "Liberation" - Racism against Black Africans

More links (warning; extremely graphic)-  Rebel lynch mob murders black African   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRM-OH1cQQE&feature=related

- Nigerian migrant civilian worker killed by rebels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQHBq8-xyLs&feature=related