Hate Crime – the Tip of the Iceberg

Dave Landau from Islington Left Unity reports on the shocking escalation in hate crime since the referendum

The Referendum campaign was from the outset poisonous and immigration was always at its centre.  Cameron was bounced into promising a referendum by pressure from UKIP riding a wave of anti-migrant sentiment.

On both sides the mainstream campaigns were in a race to the bottom.  It was common currency that migrants were a problem, that freedom of movement is bad, that Britain’s borders needed to be strengthened.  For Cameron the negotiations with the EU were mainly about allowing the Government to change the rules to make Britain as inhospitable to migrants as possible and years of successive legislation in previous years were about this too.

For the mainstream Brexit campaign it was all about migrants as a threat, ‘flooding’ in making Britain ‘unrecognisable’ – ‘we want our country back’.It is no accident that Farage’s favourate politician is Enoch Powell, with special reference to his ‘rivers of blood speach’.  Listen to Farage’s speeches and you will hear that many are closely modelled on Powell’s speech. But it was not just Farage and UKIP.  Boris Johnson’s extraordinary reference to Barak Obama’s national heritage was astonishing. Claims made about Turkey by the Brexiters. With accumulation of so much poison, pushed relentlessly by many newspapers day after day, is it any wonder that we see a rise in hate crime, racist abuse and attacks?

What is perhaps surprising is that this escalation did not take place throughout the campaign.  Hate Crime has always been like an iceberg.  Most of it is under-reported and/or under-recorded by the authorities.  We only see the tip of the iceberg. More effective campaigning and work in the community reveals more of the iceberg.  So, after the recommendations of the Report into the Death of Stephen Lawrence, there was a massive increase in the number of reported incidents – people had the confidence to report thinking that it would be taken seriously.

So it maybe that there was an escalation in some places during the Referendum campaign that has not been reported and bought to public attention. People who have never experienced hate crime have now experienced it since Friday.

All this mainstream racism and the phenomenon of Farage in the limelight emboldens racists to attack people, call them vermin, wear t-shirts saying “We’ve Won, Now Go Back Home”, abuse and punching people in the face, all the things that we have heard about over the past few days. It is likely to get worse as Brexit fails to deliver. 

For example, Johnson has spent the last couple of months whipping up enthusiasm for getting out of the EU but is now saying “we are in no hurry to leave the EU”. But all those Brexit enthusiasts want out now!! Others have pointed out that the UK is unlikely to get much of a deal with the single market if it blocks freedom of movement of EU citizens in and out of the UK. People will still be angry and looking for scapegoats.

There will be more hate crime and more support for Farage. This was not entirely a Referendum on Immigration but for many people it was exactly that. Most Brexiters are not racists and those who have been mobilised around immigration are really deeply concerned about issues such as jobs and housing.  They feel they are not being listened to.

This reflects a failure over decades by the Labour Party to fight seriously over these issues and to challenge myths about immigration and racist attitudes.  We need a movement and party who can do that and Left Unity work together with anti-racist socialists inside and outside of the LP to create such a party.