BRACIST

ALARMING RISE IN ANTI-IMMIGRANT/XENOPHOBIC SENTIMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM LINKED TO BREXIT REFERENDUM

As anyone who knows me personally will testify, I am a current affairs nut and gobble up all sorts of news, especially that of a political nature.
Hence I had BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live on a lot in the run up to and the immediate aftermath of the UK General Election.

There are three key things I came away with after this election:
 

1.  Twitter is a complete and utter bubble and to consume just that media forum and not the proper old school media or TV, radio and newspapers etc will leave your viewpoint and thought processes totally off balance and possibly far from the real situation on the ground etc.
 

2. I was genuinely taken aback at the amount of people ringing into phone in shows, tweeting to viral hashtags on Twitter saying they were switching from Labour to Tories to "Take our country back" and also boot foreigners (and other takes on that narrative) out of the United Kingdom.

3.  Like many others I did not expect the election to do turn out as it did and am trying to work out how and why my predictions were so off kilter.

I had thought initially that it was a severe bout of media framing on TV and radio i.e. they were selectively searching for a small number of people who were switching from Labour to the Tories for jingoistic and at time racist reasons.
Alas as the election campaign rattled on it dawned on me that these were no mere hyped up isolated incidents, but the thoughts of a hell of a lot of working class people across the United Kingdom.

My mind is now filled with dread as I think of the things this Tory government will likely do to the British working class and that many will seek to blame their hardships not on the government but on foreign nationals living there instead.
  

What made me finally write a blog on this issue was a BBC report I stumbled upon from last summer.
the article reported that such was the increase in racist attacks across Wales, 24 councils had felt it necessary to appoint "cohesion officers" whose role it would be to help those who were victims of verbal and/or physical racism, while also undertaking efforts to try and educate people in an effort to try and curtail these attacks.
Official records from the UK police as a whole show that the number of racist attacks reported in 2018 was double that reported in 2011 at 70,000 complaints.
I wonder how many more went unreported?
If various NGO's are to be believed the actual number of racist attacks, be they physical or verbal that have occurred in 2018 could be many multiples of the official figure.
Another very visible sign of the increase in racist sentiments was seen in the fact the Brexit Party gained 29 seats in the 2019 European elections, more than Labour and The Conservative Party combined.

Another troubling aspect to all of this, in my view was the stance taken by a number of far-left groups in the United Kingdom. 
I have already discussed in previous blogs about the farcical pretendism that was LEXIT so I won't go over it all again.
Not long after the Brexit Referendum Result various NGO's recorded increased incidents of racist attacks in Britain and their reports were picked up by newspapers such as The Guardian, they were outright dismissed if not in fact derided by some of the far-left pro LEAVE organisations.
They claimed there was no increase in racism, it was all just a tissue of lies invented by the mainstream media to pin a false tail on the British working class for not voting REMAIN as they had wanted them to do.
The media they claimed did not what to admit the REAL reasons, as they claimed, why people supposedly actually voted LEAVE.
They were angry over EU Directives that led to state companies being sold, led to a lessening of workers rights and an increase in the amount of tax poor families had to pay due to EU laws on environmental taxes and so forth.

However later on when it became a starkly unavoidable and inexcusable fact that there WAS a sharp rise in racism since the Referendum result these groups then admitted it was true their was in increase in attacks; However they insisted these incidents were on the rise anyways ad had nothing to do with the Referendum result.

Given what has come out in various polls and surveys and the views that have been expressed by many on radio and television as well as the letters pages of newspapers in the run up the election it is now clearer than ever  that the sad rise in racism and xenophobism can be directly linked back to the Brexit Referendum Campaign and it's end result.

 But why have these Far Left Groups taken the position they did?
I personally feel that it was due to the fact that many of these working class folk were the types who gave donations to these far-left organisations on their city centre stalls and some may have helped them out at election time.
Rather than admit the truth and potentially alienate these folk, they decided to create a sand dune to duck their heads into.

Given what the Tories are likely to do over the term of this Government, I fear things are set to get a lot worse on all fronts.

I pray the spirit of the Poll Tax Campaign will resurrect itself in the left leaning members of the British Working Class and that there will be an enormous push back against the Government.
As thing currently stand I fear my prayers may go unanswered...