There are about 49,000 racist attacks in a year. Let’s see who is fuelling this.
o 1 March 2005 Hazel Blears: Muslims will have to accept as a ‘reality’ that they will be stopped and searched by the police more often than the rest of the public. ‘There was no getting away from it.’
o 24 August 2006 Ruth Kelly: ‘It is not racist to discuss immigration and asylum…our ideas and policies should not be based on special treatment for minority ethnic or faith communities…we have to have the confidence to say no to certain suggestions from particular ethnic groups.’
o 28 September 2006 John Reid: ‘These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings, grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others.’
o 6 October 2006 Jack Straw: ‘The full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult. It was such a visible statement of separation and of difference.’ [The following week at least six women were attacked for wearing veils or even scarves.]
o 6 March 2007 Jack Straw: ‘There is a big cultural divide between Muslims and the rest of us, more than say with the Afro-Caribbean community.’
o 21 April 2007 Tony Blair: ‘The black community need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture…we won’t stop this by pretending it isn’t young black kids doing it’.
o 10 May 2007 Margaret Hodge: ‘We should look at policies where the legitimate sense of entitlement felt by the indigenous family overrides the legitimate need demonstrated by new migrants…to decide who is entitled to access social housing.’
o 10 June 2007 Ruth Kelly: ‘speaking [English] is absolutely key… translation has been used too frequently and sometimes without thought to the consequences.’
o June 2007 Hazel Blears: ‘We have got people living in Salford now from every country under the sun… the community doesn’t object to the people…but they object if they are undercutting wages and…not abiding by health and safety.’
Charles Chinweizu
FRFI 198 August / September 2007
