OBV's ‘Vote is vote’ poster proved right!

When Operation Black Vote sought to urge BME communities to register vote ahead of next week’s EU referendum vote we argued that our voices need to be heard,  and our votes need to be counted, not least because there are elements out there  that are truly racist and they will vote. We claimed that sadly, these elements were on both sides of the debate, but particularly on the Leave side.

By holding up a mirror to what has become an increasingly EU  xenophobic debate, OBV’s Saatchi created ad  seemed to unleashed the ‘dogs of hells’. The Daily Mail, the Sun, The Express,  their journalist and readers called us all the names under the sun. Radio shock jocks, Nic Ferrari-LBC, Vanessa Feltz, BBC London,  and Jon Gaunt, were salivating with the poisoned vitriol, because OBV had dared to suggest that the EU debate had become toxic and race hate filled and we had a duty to show.

(To see a bigger version, right-click on the image and select 'view image' )

Then, a week after the deluge of hate towards OBV, our biggest detractor the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday went with a front page expose of,  as they called it,  ‘Violent, swastika tattooed, Nazi supporting thugs’,  infiltrating the Brexit campaign in large numbers. Six pages were  dedicated to the story which  would have taken weeks of investigating.

So a question remains, when the Daily Mail began its onslaught against Operation Black Vote’s poster campaign, they would have been in full knowledge that our depiction was 100% correct.  They and others were acutely aware that in the picture  OBV did not seek  to demonise all white people, which is why  we never showed a 'normal' white person. Instead we featured  the type of character who would  not be out of place with those extreme far right groups we see associate Nazi supporters.

As many of you know, OBV has been around now for 20 years. It’s our anniversary next month. And we’ve done so many innovative campaigns throughout the last two decades. But the  ‘Vote is vote’ poster campaign , is perhaps the campaign I’m most proud of, not least because this campaign symbolises what OBV does best: confronting bigotry whilst inspiring positive action, even if it is uncomfortable and even draws criticism . With Black groups and organisations being decimated by a decade of austerity and institutional indifference towards tackling racism OBV has tried to stand strong.

But in the present debate, anybody that disbelieves this EU referendum is not just about immigration but also about race in a negative sense is sadly deluded.

When I saw the Mail on Sunday’s headline about the rise of violent racist thugs in this EU debate, I didn’t gloat, I just felt sadden that we were not heard when we highlighted  this uncomfortable truth.

For all of us who care about race equality these are the  most worrying times in this country for decades. Not only is it worrying now, but it could get a whole lot worse as anti-immigrant and anti  BME sentiment becomes normalised by vested interest who seek to see use immigration and race to kick the EU.

Simon Woolley