Black Britain Brexit: This how the Jews felt in 1930’s Europe

The UK’s black and ethnic minorities, and immigrant communities will be waking up this morning blinking staring into the strong glare of undiluted racism, Islamophobia and xenophobic mainstream sentiment.

I never thought I'd say those words. Over 30 years I have campaigned, alongside many individuals and organisations, to ensure the toxic legacy of racism was not passed onto to the next generation. That we halted gross racism on our streets is undoubted, but to our disappointment and horror, we awake this morning, to find white working class communities have chosen hate over hope.

Racism, the very thing that underpinned the expansion and growth of the British colonial empire saw the rape of African, Indian and Latin American, countries. These vast profits funded the British Industrial Revolution, the growth of British technology, industry and infrastructure. Today, that crude racism that has re-emerged from its historical grave.

In post-war Britain, immigration was an absolutely necessary for the rebuilding of the nation, shattered and broken after the devastation of the Second World War. The defeat of racism and fascism and the coming together of European nations was a moment of great optimism and hope throughout the world.

Today we see that legacy smashed under the jack-heeled boots of British ignorance, prejudice and a resurgent racism. A unique promise of peace in Europe now lies dead and an uncertain future faces our young people.

There will be lots of analysis seeking to explain how we ended up being the pariah of Europe. Having once been known as the sick man of Europe today we will no doubt now be known as the sick and entirely insane man of Europe.

The older generation has eviscerated the futures of our young people on the deeply regressive alter of little Englander nationalism. For that you are due an profound apology. Yesterday you had passports, resident rights to live, work in 28 countries, today you are entitled to live in one.

The reality is that the country awoke this morning, to the biggest political hangover post-war generation.

Millions of poor white working class communities decided that immigrants were the primary cause of the countries economic misfortunes, the reasons why they libraries will closed, can get their child into the school and their failure to get a doctor or dentists, that all this chaos, is the fault of immigrants.

The fact that they were so easily convinced is a result of the failure to connect, educate and decolonise, white working class communities. Brexit was stronger in those areas of the country that had virtually no multicultural communities or immigrants among them.

Failure of the left, trade unions anti racist groups to ensure that such communities were educated to the fact that immigration had built this country and made it what it is today is a critical failure of immense proportions.

Confronting the British National party, chasing the English defence league organising opposition to Pediga, is a necessary, but not sufficient response to tackling deeply ingrained culture of racism and its institutional practices.

Why has the left failed to get its message across that identifies the bankers as the real reason the country is now bankrupt and in an economic mess?

Some elements of the left went further and gave credence to those views that targeted immigrants as the problem. Having failed to secure its own core constituency the left virtually abandoned white working class communities, leaving UKIP to fill the vacuum.

No doubt there will be those today, who will say the labour movement should have been "tougher on immigration" in an effort to secure more votes. Yet all this stupid left concession to racism has seen hatred consume the body politic.

Over the last 20 or so years, having played footsie with racist sentiment for electoral gain, legitimised such sentiment at the same time as racism became amplified by austerity. The result has seen British racism become both rampant and resurgent.

What is now under real threat is the entire human rights, race equality legislative framework, which decoupled from the European Convention of Human Rights and Strasberg, will now require new interpretation within a solely British context.

This will mean the end of Britain’s adherence to the EU’s Social Chapter leading to a fundamental weakening of workers rights and the rights of black and ethnic minority peoples to be protected from unlawful discrimination.

The very same people, who fought for an exit from Europe, are the very same people who called for an end to "political correctness" and will be the very same people who will now demand an end to, or a weakening off race specific legal protection from discrimination. Lets recall, leading Brexiters, Boris Johnson’s utter ambivalence and failure to deliver race equality during his time as Mayor for London and Nigel Farage’s public comments that he thought “ the British Race Relations Act should be abolished in a post racist Britain”

Having worked for 30 years to ensure that our children and access to strong laws protecting them fro the worst excesses of British racism and its effects, we are now facing the prospect of seeing all that legislation being wiped away on the bonfire of "political correctness".

The collapse of the British economy has already seen the pound fall in value against international trading currencies. In short we see millions of pounds being wiped off British economy and many of our parents retired to the Caribbean, Africa, Asia woke up to see the value of their pensions slashed as a result.

Ironically those Black and ethnic minorities who voted to leave the EU, will now be sending home much more of their hard earned money to support their elderly parents in their retirement.

I can also see those with racist sentiments, now buoyant after this vote, whether in the police force, private public sectors, local regional central government being unrestrained in the extent to which they are happy to articulate their racism utterly unrestrained.

The slogan "we want our country back" is not just aimed at Eastern European migrants, it is also a message directed to black and ethnic minority communities. What they really mean is “We want our white Christian country back”

At difficult times like these race hate crimes can rise.

I would advise black Asian and ethnic minority communities, particularly those in isolated areas, to begin to take precautions against the potential rise in racist or religious abuse, offensive graffiti and racist attack.

We are fully aware and history teaches us, that when the rhetoric of racism bleeds into the mainstream, the effect is our people are attacked on British streets. I would hope the Home Secretary and the police service would be making assessments to the extent to which, our communities are vulnerable to such attack.

This EU referendum has produced the most profound crisis in British race relations ever seen in Britain since the Second World War.

Black, Asian and minority leadership in the United Kingdom must abandon the softly, softly, accommodationist, servile approach to confronting racism. That is a failed project. We must determine a new course of action focused on doing whatever it takes to secure rights to protection against discrimination for our children. There is no way we can allow racism to win in Britain.

That's why a number of national black and minority organisations and networks will be calling a meeting to discuss these grave and urgent matters in an effort to begin complex process of analysis examining and exploring where black self organisation, anti racism and race equality are now.

This is absolutely vital, if we are to prevent the mistakes of the past and ensure that the broad labour movement, here in Britain does not simply concede on the issue of racism for electoral gain or economic advantage and resist capitulating in the face of xenophobia. Neither can we afford the ‘cosmetic anti racism’ of the past, Black, Asian and ethnic minority organisations must determine the new radical priorities for action. The politics of the past has failed.

We will need to agree our agenda could change and ensure that is adopted by the movements as a priority for action. We need greater solidarity amongst our organisations, we need to liberate young people and allow them to lead our movements, we need to promote black women into leadership positions and we need to discard the poisonous competitiveness that has seen black organisations vie for resources and political influence.

This is more serious and critical challenge based in our lifetime. This article is the ringing alarm. Our children's future is in dire jeopardy. We must unite now in order to avoid our children suffering the type of racism and fascism that we thought we'd consign to the dustbin of history.

There is simply no more important a priority.

Lee Jasper