Doing my best to reboot after Christmas, still adjusting , feeling rather exhausted at moment, please be patient, normal service hopefully will be resumed shortly, as forces of division reappear ,the atmosphere still unconfortable, on the steps of uncertainty.
Some thoughts though as right wing elements like Tommy Robinson acolyte James Goddard make a nuisance of themselves outside Westminster, and "UK Yellow Vests," who have started donning high-vis jackets at their standard anti-immigration protests around the country hoping to gain some form of credibility by aligning themselves with a mass movement that has nothing to do with them.
Let's remember they are they aren't the Gilet Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement of France, who over the last 2 months has grown from being an anti-tax protest to a generalised revolt against Macron and in some places, capitalism itself. They are though the same bunch of yellow vest fascists. who last Saturday saw them attacking striking transport workers from the RMT union , who had been campaigning over cuts to safety-important train guard roles, attacked for being leftist and part of the organised working class. An Asian picket was abused and called a sex offender, paedophile and nonce.One fascist took a video in a vest with Tommy Robinson news written on it, there were people there wearing DFLA and EDL t-shirts, and ex-BNP Liverpool 2012 mayoral candidate Mike Whitby was there abusing pickets.
We have to continue to oppose the far right and fascists in Britain in their attempts to claim the mantle of the "yellow vest " movement here in Britain to stir up racism and Islamphobia, with their racist and divisive policies that combined with bizarre conspiracy theories and language , that is so far removed from what has so far been shown in France.
All this happening at a time when we have the Tories and the right wing media ratcheting up racist scapegoating of refugees and migrants, trying to whip a frenzy about scores of people crossing the Channel and coming to Britain. This hostility is part of the wider hostile environment against migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and war. Punitive immigration policies that mean families are routinely torn apart for not having enough money, and people are criminalized simply for seeking safety, or a better life. In Britain alone, over 30,000 people are locked up in immigration detention centres each year.
We should reflect on the fact that many of these people left their homes because of reasons outside their control, whether that was conflict, poverty, economic injustice or climate change. The UN’s Refugee Agency estimates that 20 people are forced to flee their homes every second. With global inequality at unprecedented levels, modern borders have become a form of global apartheid: segregating who can and can’t access resources and opportunity, in Britain there is even an explicit policy aiming to create a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants – launched by the current prime minister, Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary.
Bank managers, NHS staff and landlords are routinely required to perform the role of immigration officers, monitoring people’s immigration status, as borders increasingly become part of everyday life and the government forces undocumented migrants further underground.
The related policy of mass deportation means even those who make it are often sent back to the very violence and hardship they fled from in the first place. Deadly deportation schemes means people are returned to countries where they risk persecution, torture and even death. No borders are necessary. Refugees and migrants welcome. Time now to untangle these forces of division and unreason, keep saying no and not giving in to racist rhetoric, end this hostile envronment now.
