Rochester, racism and the threat to our society

The virus of xenophobia and racism runs rampant in Rochester-by-election

The Ukip candidate and front runner in Rochester by-election former Tory Mark Reckless, has helped ensure mainstream British politics has sunk to another all time low by suggesting that Polish plumbers and other EU migrants could be asked to leave Britain if his party were in government.

Not to be outdone by her opponent the Conservative candidate and business woman Kelly Tolhurst lambasted her leader David Cameron about the ‘hurt’ caused by immigration to her area and the need for “action, not just talk” on controlling the number of new arrivals.

In a leaflet distributed to voters she wrote how she would go straight to the prime minister and “demand something is done” if she won the by-election.

So why are we seeing such a huge increase in racism?

The mood music for people suspected of being immigrants is one of hostility and sometime violence. Taken together with the increase in Islamophobia, what we are witnessing on Britain is a massive increase in racism manufactured by elite who wish to deceive the people into believing that immigrants are the 'problem'.

This is a means of political distraction where the Government and media conspire to scapegoat migrants instead of the public focusing on the authors of the UK’s economic woes, the City of London, the Bankers, who through Libor, Forex and other complex financial scams, have bled our finances dry. Some have estimated that the financial loss caused by reckless banking has cost the nation 200 Billion pounds, yet the focus in most newspapers and on the lips of our political representatives is the ‘curse of immigration’, which by the way if the truth be told their contribution as added to our net finances, and the squeezing of our poorest and most vulnerable through measures such as the ‘bedroom tax’.

Some argue that Tories sensing public outrage over the bankers in 2008 made a conscious decision to attack migrants. Labour having consistently the same racist immigration rhetoric as the Tories during their 13 years of power, creating the atmosphere for Ukip to thrive.

In the political race to the bottom of issues on immigration, it is impossible to appear to be tougher than genuine racist and xenophobes. Ukip has become skilled in using anti-EU rhetoric as a flag of convenience, to camouflage and obscure their real racist agenda.

This surge in racism has generally hugely increased our economic exclusion; with unemployment, child poverty, homelessness being at their highest level ever within our communities, and with more savage public sector cuts to come.  Things as they say can only get worse.

Institutionalised racism is no longer monitored by many institutions and is now resurgent, rampant with the gains of McPherson Report published after the death of Stephen Lawrence have all been lost.

The Equalities Commission for Human Rights, that replaced the Commission for Race Equality has adopted a largely cosmetic and theoretical approach to tackling racism

This unique series of challenges requires serious political discussion.

The fight against racism has waned under the withering attack from the right. We need to regroup and consolidate our struggle by a mass merger of all organisations, on this tiny island into a single national body. The folly of organisational chauvinism and ego empire building, that creates organisations, that compete rather than complement each other , that fail to share resources, but are happy to compete with each other, whatever their public protestations of unity, are part of the problem.

The fact that each City, town and local area simply replicates youth clubs. employment schemes and social care services results in black voluntary organisations, less the five miles apart, providing the same services to the same community, yet they know nothing about each other, never talk to each other, never work with each other,

In some areas, despite social media, black communities living back to back have little or no idea of what is happening in another community five miles down the road. We remain isolate and fragmented at a local level,

Many of these organisations maintains the folly that they have the 'unique' blueprint for dealing with issues that affect our communities. The fact is the sheer scale of the issues we now face, means such false arrogance and organisational competiveness results in a weak, disempowered, confused fight against racism.

This free market place approach to tackling racism has failed. The truth is racism across the Europe is on the march and black children in the UK are now facing a deeply uncertain future.

That’s why when the cuts came, these black organisations couldn't effectively oppose, slow down or moderate the cuts that closed a huge number of front line services and black organisations.

We simply don't need thousands of tiny minor organisation, which in part is now counterproductive for so many 'national' organisations that have a handful of workers in London.

Whatever happens on Thursday in Rochester, for BME communities and society as a whole it is a lose, lose: Either a wretchedly rabid racist Ukip candidate wins or a mildly xenophobic Conservative candidate wins.

In the long term we have got to have some seriously well organised leadership and organisational unity. Perhaps we need to merge some of these organisations, to create a movement capable of doing the job of tackling racism that is now threatening to destroy the future of our children

Lee Jasper, Co Chair, BARAC UK