I’m a disabled person with a chronic illness. I can no longer stand in solidarity on streets and picket lines, or doorsteps against warrant sales, as I did in the miners strike, the poll tax campaign, or even as recently as Kenmure Street when I was one of hundreds who turned away the immigration vans.
So. For all the good it will do, I have nonetheless written to my new Labour MP.
Dear MP
First of all, congratulations on your election.
These are not happy circumstances, however. I have been appalled by the far right violence erupting across the country. The BBC describes this as "protests", but they are nothing less than pogroms, targeting mosques and refugee hostels, as well as people simply perceived as "Muslim".
While the spark that lit this conflagration may well have been the misinformation spread about the suspect in the dreadful Southport atrocity, the fuel has been heaped up by the mainstream media and politicians when they talk of immigration as a "problem".
This has come from the Mail, the Express and the Sun, Farage, Patel and Braverman, but also the prime minister when as opposition leader he said there were "too many immigrants in the NHS", and the BBC when it constantly portrays migration, of whatever sort, as a "problem" to be "solved".
Make no mistake, we are in the midst of a parallel of Kristallnacht. People with brown skin are being beaten up by mobs. Citizens Advice Centres burnt down. Refugee hotels besieged by baying racists. This is but the violent tip of a much deeper pathology in this country's psyche. These attitudes of mistrust and xenophobia are rife, and instead of countering them our media and our politicians are pandering to them.
My wife and I have hosted refugees in our flat. We know that refugees are just people. People have migrated since the beginning of our species, and migration will only increase with the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and the global social justice crisis.
War, heat, environment collapse and just a desire for better conditions will drive millions from their homes in coming years. These people are citizens of a planet. They will have to go somewhere. No amount of bureaucracy based on artificial lines drawn on maps will change that. No amount of "concern" over immigration expressed by "non-racists" will change that.
And more than that, people who are part of our communities, our neighbours, people born and raised alongside us, are being seen as "other". Are afraid to go out. Are viewed with suspicion.
I fear for our future. I look at the pogroms. I look at the foothold Farage has in Parliament. The disarray of the Conservative Party. The possibility of a realignment on the right. We are sleepwalking into very dangerous territory. Right now. And mealie mouthed pandering to "reasonable concerns" over immigration is absolutely not the way to deal with it.
I plead with you. Take heed. We must reverse the tide of hatred and mistrust, and reintroduce solidarity, empathy, community, love.
Yours sincerely.