Brexit: Politicians have ‘legitimised hate’

With a new Chair at the helm - David Issacs - The Equality and Human Rights Commission have become more strident in their quest for greater equality and pushing back against the political dynamics that have been fuelling racial hatred.

During the summer the EHRC launched its race equality report which highlighted persistent institutional racism across the UK. Now the Commission has written to all mainstream political parties to warn them that their loose and toxic talk about immigration and migrants has in affect ‘legitimised racism’.

Their hard hitting letter clearly associates the death of the polish man Arkadiusz Jozwick, and the thousands of recently reported race hate crimes with the rhetoric and climate of hatred towards other, caused by the political language during and after the Brexit debate.

The open letter sent to political parties reads:

The murder of Arkadiusz Jozwick, racist, anti-semitic and homophobic attacks on the streets, and reports of hijabs being pulled off are all stains on our society,".

This letter was sent just days after Thomas Mair was jailed for life for the murder of pro-remain Labour Party MP Jo Cox during the referendum campaign. His shouts of ‘Britain First’, during the attack was reference to the Far Right group often described as ‘fascists’ who were forcefully promoting Brexit along with other Far Right groups.

The Commission welcomed the Governments response to the rising hate crime with their hate crime action plan, but added there needs to be “a more concerted action to counter the narrative from a small minority".

Many of you will remember that during the referendum campaign OBV used a hard hitting ad created by Saatchi and Saatchi that warned politicians and the media that the toxic debate was fuelling xenophobic attitudes.

Instead of engaging with that debate, OBV was viscously attacked by certain sections of the media, stating we were the racist for highlighting the tiny minority who had been emboldened to be rabidly racist.

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We at OBV welcome this intervention by the EHRC .

As our national equality body it has a duty to intervene when a once tiny minority of extremely bigoted voices becomes co-opted into main stream political discourse.

The levels of racial hatred we are now witnessing did not occur over night. We’ve had a drip, drip narrative of poisonous hatred over a number of years, sadly fuelled by a number of politicians, and a very complicit media.

My only deep regret is that the EHRC did not send these warning letters out over a year ago.

Simon Woolley