Brexit and the rising hatred East Europeans face

Whilst eagerly awaiting the European cup final last Sunday, when by the way the unlikely Portuguese hero Eder eventually scored the winning goal- more on him in another article- I found myself unaccustomedly watching BBC’s country file.

There was a section that, clearly not planned by the beeb that jumped out at me. The piece was about strawberries. Of course Wimbledon had just finished hours early and the discussion began with the tons of strawberries consumed over the Wimbledon fortnight.

The Country file team went to one of the England’s most prestigious Strawberry farms to speak to the owner. Having discussed the finer elements of strawberry farming they moved on to picking and with that the farmer introduced her head picker, who in turn introduced her top strawberry pickers.

Everyone other than the owner was a white European probably from Eastern Europe. In a contest to pick the most strawberries in a limited time period the presenter pitted himself against the East European pickers who showed their brilliance in carefully picking strawberries at a tremendous rate.

And with no sense of cultural or political antenna the segment ended. For example, nothing about the simple fact that the nation’s most revered fruit, the strawberry, could not be picked without East Europeans doing this back breaking work, one imagines for minimum or near minimum wage.

It’s not just the agricultural industry that depends upon East European labour; the hospitality, career, and building professions too depend upon a committed work force to often do the labour Brit’s simply don’t want to do. And in return what do many receive: nasty racism.

Just over a week ago we asked groups and individuals to support our campaign for a Government Race Hatred strategy, many groups and individuals got in touch.

One individual, who shall remain nameless, wrote to me:

Simon, it’s been awful since Brexit, even though it wasn’t great before either. Friends and family are constantly complaining about racial hatred and racial discrimination".

One family member said to her, ‘I live and work hard here and I feel I’m treated like dirt'. She went on to talk about their children at schools who are now being told by other pupils, ‘my dad voted for you to leave. When you going?'

She said for parents to hear that is heartbreaking. She’s right of course. Worse still the treatment meted out to East Europeans in part mirrors that of the Caribbean and Asian experience in the sixties and seventies. And whilst some may say, well in one generation they will blend in being white, it still doesn’t make it right. Furthermore, the racial scars of a child are not easily erased.

My sincere hope is that our understanding and empathy of their plight will in turn give them a greater sense of colour racism which many barely acknowledged much less confront.

As for the BBC and English strawberries, ‘shocking denial’ was a constant phrase that came to mind.

Simon Woolley