The Windrush Scandal

I've just released my second book in the Schellberg Cycle: Clara's Story, A Holocaust Biography. Now I realise that I'm just as naive as Clara was. We both believe in the ultimate goodness of human beings. Things can't possibly be that bad.  People just don’t behave that way.

We're both wrong. They do. Well some do, and unfortunately though they're a minority, it's a significant and powerful minority. 

My teen years were dominated by friendships with people of the Windrush generation. They were just people and I never noticed the colour of their skin. They were just like me:  getting on or not at school, going on to university, starting a career, raising a family and now retiring. 

I dug out photos of our wedding. I'm not going to post them here but I needed to remind myself. Elaine was my main bridesmaid. She also got a BA in modern languages. She did French and Spanish. I did French and German.  We both did our year abroad as the UK went into the Common Market.  She went to Bilbao in the winter as she didn't think she could stand the Spanish heat in the summer.  This lady who was born in Jamaica! The last school she taught in was the first one I applied to post PGCE. 

Her older sister Ingrid is also the picture with fiancé Theo.  Their mum, Mrs Salmon, is on the front row, looking very elegant and very much the lady. 

Other friends back in the late 1960s included Monica, her sister Mavis and Rene. When Monica got into a bit of bother and became a single mum Rene offered to marry her.  She didn't accept his kind offer but it shows what good friends we all were.

Before that at my primary school there was Celestine, a year above me,  and John a year below. Celestine was real head girl material and John could always be relied on to organise anything.  Something went awry, though, in West Bromwich. Many of the Windrush families moved into the big houses on Beeches Road and the white families started moving out in disgust.  Even I could see, as a six-year-old that this was creating a ghetto.  They wouldn’t be able to fully integrate into our way of life if they lived separately like that. 

I go back to Mrs Salmon, though. A lady indeed and she embraced Englishness totally yet there was still something of her Jamaican life about her. Thank goodness. We miss out if we don't take the gifts our immigrants bring. She brought us chicken cooked with lemon and sweet potatoes. We probably take them for granted now. Back then they were new to us. 

The law was on their side then.  Any racism was tempered with a general acceptance that these people are British subjects, they pay their taxes, they obey our laws and they came to do jobs we couldn't do or didn't want to do. 

Now, though, these people are under threat. Both the Home Office and the government are being much too slow to put it all right. My Clara instinct screams, "They just can't do that. They'll surely put it right." Clara has at least told me that we need to keep on fighting.                                     

    

Human Rights in the UK and Europe

After the 2015 election Cameron proudly announced that the first thing he was going to tackle was Human Rights.  My heart sank. Then recently Theresa May suggested something similar and there was something about stopping people having the right to stay in the UK because they had befriended a cat.  What is a grammar School / Oxbridge educated Prime Minister doing talking in anecdotes? That is clearly ridiculous. Cats are resilient and if this case really existed, there was some misinterpretation going on.  

Not nearly as alarming though as that these high-ranking Conservatives  suggest the Humans Rights Act takes away our ability to deal with terrorists or any other antisocial people. In fact, granting the rights to other humans makes antisocial behaviour unacceptable. Anyway, in the original Declaration of Human Rights  Articles 14.2 and 29.2 limit the freedoms of those who will harm others.  

Read them. It will take you five minutes or so. There is nothing there that will do you any harm and can only be good for you.  A Google search will lead you to the list in various PDFs. 

In 1998 they were adapted as law in the UK. This actually gave us sovereignty.  We could now deal with breaches ourselves instead of them having to go to the European  court. 

However, my fear is now that we may lose them post-Brexit if these high-profilers continue wanting to tinker.  At that time we will no longer have recourse to the European court.                

We need to talk about our Tess

The woman irritates me and embarrasses me. She has no leadership skills. Her body language is very disturbing.  And I mean in proper photos and videos not in those awfully cruel ones that catch people in awkward frames.  Oh, yes something similar appears to happen in political cartoons but these are far more considered and although they laugh at politicians, the bigger ones will be able to laugh with them.

That woman, though, anyway:

·         She talks utter garbage. Global citizens = citizens of nowhere.  Madam, they are citizens of everywhere. She waffles harmlessly a lot of the time but it achieves nothing.    

·         She tries to behave like a man in order to impress as a woman. And she fails. She impresses no one.  

·         She has bought into the despicable game that many politicians play. Anything to stay in power.  Yet she was Remain, and along with many other MPs, knows full well that that Remain secures our future and Brexit ruins it. Even if she and I are wrong about that, how can one in such an important position go against their own conscience? As a democratically elected MP she has the duty to act in our best interests.

·         She wants to tinker with Human Rights.  Has she actually read them? There is nothing in them that prevents us from dealing effectively with terrorists and other antisocial people. It was very gauche of her to bring this all down to an anecdote about a man and his cat.

·         Thatcher made her mark, and love her or hate and her policies, we have to admit that she made an impression and showed us that women can lead – although she also behaved like a man. But Tess, my love, you're embarrassing yourself and me and I suspect countless other women. Live up to what my mother-in-law used to say.  "I don't want to have equality with men. I prefer to remain superior." It shouldn't be too difficult to be superior to that bunch of clowns, though John Major and Ken Clarke may prove to be difficult. I could forgive you for failing there.      

Yes, she has a tough job. I don't deny it. I do admire her tenacity but also think it's wise to know when to give up.    

But there's a problem; unless we have another election who will replace her? Moggsy or BJ?  Buffoons the pair of them but dangerous ones from the Old Boys' Network. 

So what are we going to do about Tess? Is it time for an intervention?                        

    

Democracy?

If we believe the exit polls, probably a significant proportion of the 52% who voted "leave" in June 2016 have died now.  It was the Boomers+ who mainly voted to leave.  Well, I must point out I'm a 66 year-old Boomer-Remainer and know very few Brexiteers even amongst my age group.  Just so we're clear about who I am.  I buck the trend a little. I guess that's down to the circles I move in: people who speak other languages, academics, writers and people who sing in choirs. 

The polls also tell us that many young people who are now old enough to vote would vote Remain.

How far are we now between 48% and 52%? 

A referendum differs anyway from an election. If an election came out with that split, the opinions of the 48% are still represented by the MPs who sit in parliament. Stupid decisions can be reversed. The referendum is an irreversible yes or no on a single issue and it strikes me as foolhardy to make such a dramatic change on such a narrow margin.  It screams "find a third way".  My suggestion is stay in the EU but address all of the problems the Leavers perceived. Some of these, of course, were totally unfounded; there is no £350,000,000 a week available for the NHS, we always did have sovereignty and the NHS actually benefits because of immigrants.  I have already written about similar issues elsewhere on this blog.  

A lot of people who live, work and pay taxes here weren't allowed to vote. The world hasn't got this right yet.  In my opinion, expats should be allowed to vote either in their country of residence, in the country where they pay taxes or the country where they were born, or split their voting rights proportionally across these places. I have similar concerns about taxation.  Yes, there are reciprocal agreements so you can choose to be taxed where you are domiciled yet we rage against the multinationals that choose not to be domiciled in our country.  I actually think I should pay a little tax to the US. Their fire-fighters would put out the fires in the Amazon offices and thereby protect my interests. Again, it should be proportional and I should get the same proportion of voting rights. Maybe I'd have even had a little say in the latest presidential elections. Goodness, if such an international law existed, the US might have had a female president.  Now add those who live and work here but couldn't vote to the 48% - is it already 50 / 50? 

There are those who have changed their mind, those who were having a go at Cameron, those who did not realise that we need our current - or June 2016 - level of net migration to support our welfare state. It does not undermine it. Are we already 51 / 49? 

Then there are those who believed the lies. Okay so that old joke: how can you tell when a politician is lying – his mouth is moving. "It's normal," some say. "We were duped. Our bad luck." Well we all have to learn how to understand critically what a politician says for even if s/he tries to talk without bias he / she will have a bias. The lies this time though were blatant and huge and the consequences of the decision taken as a result life-changing and irreversible. 52/48? 

There is a little light, and I think social media helped. Madam May tried to bring into effect something akin to the Enabling Act that gave Hitler a lot of power.  At least our MPS had the guts to throw this one out. 

I hope they will also have the guts to stand up to May or any other Tory – and in fact Cameron was the first to bring this up – who tries to tinker with Human Rights. And that is one of the most worrying aspects of losing the protection of EU laws and the European court.    

Let's hope that they know what is right and will have the guts to act on that. They have been democratically elected to look after our best interests.  

Overcoming Xenophobia?

"deep-rooted fear towards foreigners" (Oxford English Dictionary; OED)

"fear of the unfamiliar" (Webster's) 

I own a few properties. My agent contacted me about one recently. "I've found a really good tenant, but he won't pass a credit check." 

"Oh?" 

"He's foreign."

"Oh, well … ." 

"He's every right to live and work here at the moment. He's EU."

"Okay. So what's the problem?" 

"He only has a reference from a foreign landlord. Our credit-checking agency won't accept that.  But I've looked at his bank accounts and this reference is immaculate."  

This makes me wonder whether we've actually ever really been in the EU. Haven't we always rather only taken on board what suits us? Trusting another EU landlord obviously doesn't. 

Why not? And is xenophobia the answer? 

To say someone is xenophobic seems to be accusing them of being nasty. But any phobia is an involuntary response to something. I'm personally not at all xenophobic about anything or anyone European – I know them so well. But I find myself wary of other cultures, even though I try to talk myself out of it, so can to some extent understand this credit agency. 

We have to make an effort, though, don't we? If we can't cope with other Europeans, who in the end are more like us than many others, how are we going to secure all these wonderful new deals all over the world?     

                 

Language may well be a factor but the Chinese don't all speak English, do they? I always feel slightly uneasy in the US – less so in Canada – because the culture is more different from our own than we'd believe. This isn't entirely mitigated by the fact that we use a very similar language.  

   

So what should we do about this xenophobia? Admit we have it, work to overcome it, think of strangers as friends we've not met yet and gradually exchange experience. I have vague memories of being that way with my friends on the mainland a while ago and certainly I taught my students this process.        

It can't hurt, can it, to work on it a bit that way?