WHEN one of the UK’s most reliably anti-migrant, right-wing publications published a front page last week in praise of people prepared to stand up for decency and against thuggery, it would have been tempting to think an important corner had been turned.
Tempting, but premature. As both the police and the new UK Government warned, the bampot tendency may be temporarily in retreat, but they and their enablers are still with us. Still a prey to all kinds of misinformation and manipulation.
It’s especially important that we Scots don’t imagine we have some kind of special immunity because the riots have largely happened in English cities and the well-established tinderbox that is Northern Ireland.
Two things have to be borne in mind; we do not have boatloads of would-be asylum seekers travelling up the Clyde, Forth and Tay, and as a country, we have a greater demographic need for new blood than any other nation of the UK.
READ MORE: Right-wing protesters outnumbered by counter demonstrators in Scottish city centre
Which brings us to one of the more ludicrous actions of Rishi Sunak’s government. In attempting to stem the tide of what his party’s right-wing alleged was uncontrolled immigration, they took two fateful steps.
The first was to stop the relatives of people studying in Britain – including spouses and children – from joining the (usually) graduate student, and the second was to impose similar measures on health and social care recruits.
The results – as we saw from this last week’s statistics – were all too predictable. Already struggling universities became less attractive as an educational destination, and the health and social care sector – already boasting way too many vacancies – pushed the UK well down the list of desirable workplaces.
A strange way, you might think, to construct the long-promised new social care revolution.
The other intervention came from Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan who gave us a glimpse of the bleeding obvious by flagging up the part played by social media platforms in spreading fear and loathing. England’s upcoming Online Safety Act was not fit for purpose, he added, and needed swift amendments. All true of course, but there’s no silver bullet available.
The heart sinks on hearing that Ofcom has been charged with drawing up appropriate legislation. That’ll be the regulator which still thinks GB “News” is a fit and proper broadcaster despite being presented by an array of failed Tory ministers whose idea of rigour is to interview each other.
When I sat on what came to be known as the “MacLeveson inquiry”, we wrestled long and hard with the conundrum of regulating internet-based sources of “information” given their standard defence of not being publishers in the same sense as newspapers and terrestrial broadcasters are.
The new legislation envisages big fines targeting the transgressors; it does not explain what happens when the giants in that marketplace merely raise one or two digits in response to being judged, depending on the location of the legislature in question.
I doubt Ofcom enjoys the same muscle or legal army as the big bad boys who run social media; one of whom felt able to allege (from his base many thousands of miles distant) that the UK was on the cusp of civil war. A strange silence ensued when thousands of ordinary citizens showed up instead to urge the rioters to get a life – preferably elsewhere.
It has been suggested in several quarters that if the riot boys show up in Glasgow, the citizenry should likewise attend and demonstrate more acceptable forms of solidarity. The kinds of action that might allay some of the fears both Khan and Humza Yousaf (below) have expressed about the ability of their own children to grow up without fear or prejudice.
I get the intention, but I think the best weaponry to deploy might be to ignore the bovver boys from a great height. My guess is they’d hate that just as that nice Donald Trump can’t bear the spotlight to be turned elsewhere.
Plus, that unsavoury lot are nakedly spoiling for a fight; let’s not give them one. Let’s have their collars felt instead, and frogmarched to cool their heels in a cop shop. There’s not much obviously patriotic about burning out advice centres and looting community stores.
I note in passing that a lot of folk are spitting tacks at their being described as “protesters” rather than “agitators” and “rioters”. Fair enough. But we might reflect at this juncture that had they been protesting about climate change, they would be housed at His Majesty’s pleasure for rather longer.
We do seem sometimes to have a cockeyed sense of judicial priorities.
Like when people outraged enough at the carnage in Gaza to take to the streets, only to be described by some politicians as a “hate march”.
Like last week when former immigration minister Robert Jenrick suggested that anyone shouting “Allah u Akbar” out loud should also be arrested. It translates as “God is Great”, apparently. Would you lock up someone shouting that?
READ MORE: John Swinney in further talks with Police Scotland after far-right riots in England
We have to find a way of weeding out those in our multi-cultural society who are radicalised and dangerously malign, from those who thought the UK was a place where anyone could practice their religion of choice, given that for many Muslims faith is a way of life rather than a once-a-week drop-in. Ditto the most observant Jews.
It’s difficult for those of us without a faith and with white skin to appreciate the day-to-day fears of our brown and black-skinned fellow citizens. Given the level of-still present misogyny, being a woman of colour must be to get the worst kind of double up.
Yousaf, our former first minister, self-describes as being “as Scottish as you can get”, yet he also says how fearful he is for his immediate and extended family. That should shame us all, as it should when his Labour opponent, Anas Sarwar, is judged not for his contribution to his country of birth, but for his colour, religion and antecedents.
Being a mongrel nation, which we assuredly are, should be a badge of national honour, not a cause for social division. Generations ago my forebears were apparently kicked out of France. That has given me zilch facility with the language although I do have a Dion/Piaf earworm since the start of the Paris Olympics.
(Image: Pixabay)
The other day, a Shetlander complained loud and long on the Radio Four airwaves about the measly sum handed over to Scotland when these particular northern isles, along with Orkney, were given over as part of Margaret of Denmark’s dowry.
So ended a long association with both Norway and Denmark, though it happened 550 years ago rather than last week, as you might have jaloused from the broadcaster’s undimmed outrage.
It is a long and ignoble tradition too for people throughout the British Isles to blame all their ills on whatever wave of migration was last experienced. We imprisoned Scots Italians in the last war, and well into the 20th century were still advertising that the Irish need not apply for vacancies.
READ MORE: Police Scotland to send officers to Northern Ireland amid riots
One young rioter last week said his indignation stemmed from immigrants taking his job. He was unemployed, he explained, and couldn’t get a start. What about your criminal record, asked the interviewer. “What’s that got to do with it,” the chap responded.
Quite a lot, young sir, I’d guess. That and the fact of your blatant racism.
People, like Nigel Farage, who complain about migrants being held in hotels might like to reflect that they are barred from working. Not because they have a criminal record, Nige but because they’re stuck in an endless queue to have their application for leave to remain processed.
If that’s successful, they can apply for work. And, not at all incidentally, pay tax.
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