Time to stand up and fight
Clayton Goodwin makes a welcome return to these pages to reflect philosophically on the events that have shaken and defined London and the UK over the past few months.
A lot has happened since we were last together. Elections have happened, and the United Kingdom is an apparently different place. It is not so much that London has changed, because the capital city has always been fairer and more tolerant than much of the rest of the country. Londoners, though, have taken the opportunity to confirm their special character.
Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Muslim of Pakistani origin, has been returned to office (for a record third term) in spite of a vicious, and often underhand and scurrilous, campaign waged against him.
Nationally the Conservatives, broken and discredited, have been sent packing. And the ‘magic’ of Nigel Farage and his extreme right-wing Reform UK has been exposed for the mirage it has always been. Brex-el-zebub (mix Brexit and the original name of Satan, Beelzebub), the demonic source of so much unhappiness and trouble, has become the policy that ‘dare not speak its name’.
Perhaps the ugliest episode was when the (mainly) northern towns and cities rioted in anti-immigrant wrath this late summer, attacking mosques and carrying out running battles with the police based on a vicious campaign of misinformation that claimed that the attacker of a dance class of small girls, tragically killing three of them, was a Muslim asylum- seeker. In fact the 17-year- old suspect was born in the UK and his parents had come from Rwanda as refugees.
The openly racist were abashed not so much by the actions of the police, though they played their part, and the courts of law, but by the will of the people. The rioters came out into the streets in their dozens, sometimes hundreds, to be encountered by the citizenry in their thousands in defence of the values of a fair and just society.
Although the far-right media and politicians will continue their campaign of division and mendacity, for the time being they have met their match – and they know it. Also, students have done again what students have always done by demonstrating for causes other than those of merely national interest, especially in regard to calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Spreading political poison
The current political parties reflect cultural, racial, ethnic and social diversity in depth. After having had a woman and then a Hindu as their Prime Ministers, the rump of the most right-wing Conservative Party in history faces a leadership election in which the favoured candidates are of African and Asian heritage.
William Shakespeare knew what he was saying when he wrote nothing is but what is not. The neighbourhood in which we live, once a hot-bed of racial tension (the British National Party headquarters was close by), has become a haven of cultural harmony. On my walk to the pharmacist this morning I exchanged conversation with neighbours of English, Jamaican, Nigerian, Indian, Sri Lankan, Pakistani and Far Eastern families.
Yet a people that should be happy are fearful. The past is too much with us, and casts its shadow.
During the Covid lockdown three to four years back we received a regular neighbourhood letter, linked in to similar local missives throughout London, providing details of the progress of the pandemic and information as to where to find help.
Excellent. As the contagion passed, however, another contagion took its place. The newsletter began to print correspondence involving political opinion. Harmless enough at first, but then becoming radical. Within a few weeks, all opinions had coalesced into one campaign. Basically, our friendly neighbourhood circular called for opposition, violent and sometimes physical, to Mayor Sadiq Khan.
When an otherwise mild and decent neighbour said to me for no reason whatsoever, “I hope Khan falls under a bus and is killed!” I recognised the wording of the newsletter and knew it was time to end my subscription. Thus, by taking over from the inside, political poison is spread.
The right-wing national and local media will keep at it until they are effectively challenged – which is something which their opponents have failed to do. The Conservatives have been rejected, but Keir Starmer’s Labour Party refuses to give the people an alternative vision of hope. When the right-wing return to the fray more forcefully there will be nothing to stop them.
A good few years ago I was a Parliamentary candidate (for the then Liberals) and insisted on meeting my racist National Front opponent in debate, even though it was party policy to boycott them. If a socially harmonious society is not worth defending in the face of its sternest adversaries, then what is the point?
Writing in the press under the slogan Fighting the Front, I took the fight to them wherever they could be found. The NF surge was stalled and their support ebbed from them – but their adherents return in every generation under whatever form they take, and the struggle must be renewed.
The resentment of the present right-wing media and politicians shows no sign of weakening in spite of the trouncing they have received. They still portray their standard-bearer, Nigel Farage, as being a man of destiny, in spite of the humiliation heaped on him at the polls.
There is no way that his party’s meagre five seats out of the 650 in the House of Commons can be portrayed as anything other than a disappointing disaster. Yet he and his cohorts continue to force the political agenda because nobody in the position to do so will say otherwise.
The government argues that the so-called ‘invasion of immigrants’ should be handled more humanely, but without saying that there is no invasion at all. Where is the narrative about immigrants having been invited to come here and paying a tidy sum to stay and work or study to the national benefit?
It is small wonder that the politically illiterate get the wrong end of the stick, if that is the only end which they are being offered. Londoners, who have experienced the joys and benefits of working together across cultures, did not riot.
Too fearful to rejoice?
The United Kingdom is drifting rapidly towards Europe again, and is beginning to engage with the outside world once more. This should be proclaimed from the very hill-tops. Bliss was it that dawn to be alive sang the poet William Wordsworth; Oh, to be in England sighed Scottish bard Robert Browning. Where are the poets of today to encourage such exhilaration?
Whereas the fall of the Berlin Wall has passed into history and myth, the breaching of the wall of Brexit is shunned as if it were the worst curse word in the lexicon. The victors in this year of election are too fearful to rejoice. They have cowered so long that apathy has entered into their soul.
When looking to other countries, our pundits see only the creeping menace of the Victor Orbans, the Marine Le Pens and the Donald Trumps, without a glance towards those places where this trend has been stymied or reversed.
From across the Channel, their eye sees only the Rassemblement National, heirs of the Front National, and not the harmony and cultural touch of the Olympic Games. In their apprehension they are doing the work of the right-wing for them.
London – and, after all, this is a Letter from London – has much of which it should be proud. It has a story created by waves of immigration whether it be from Saxons, Africans, Vikings, Asians, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and those of more recent vintage.
It means so much more than just a better choice of cuisine on a Saturday evening. The Pope gives his traditional blessing Urbi et Orbi (to the city and to the world). It is rather a good title, which deserves to be taken up. This year London set forth its own statement of character in frustrating political opposition which was little more than shameful. That is something truly worth sharing with the world.
This summer London, and the UK, have dealt decisive electoral defeats to those who would divide us and harm our social well-being. We have witnessed how through the length of the land the population has come out in great numbers to reject anti-immigrant, anti-foreign, anti-just-about-everything mobs and their political muck-
stirrers.
Yet those same people, parties and publications that have caused our recent woes, driven into near-obscurity though they have been in ballots and on the street, are liable to wriggle off the hook because … because …. those who could and should extol the merits of a society for which we have both struggled and voted, are too fearful to stand up and be counted.
If today, when the opposition is in humble and discredited retreat, and the goal is open at our feet, is not the time to proclaim and stand up for what we believe …. when will it ever be?
