The rise of racism in the UK

The Daraja Press Podcast

As many of our listeners will know, there have been racist uprsings across England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The trigger for the riots was disinformation: that three small girls stabbed to death in Southport on 29 July had been killed by a Muslim asylum seeker. In fact, the suspected killer was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents and is not Muslim. It is true that rightwing mobilization and counter-mobilizations have been on an unprecedented scale, but has this not been building up over many decades? How is this related to Brexit, which some suggest that it was essentially the result of a racist mobilization? Is the presence of people from the former colonies of Britain in the UK the result of active recruitment to do the shit jobs that white British workers refused to do both because of the demeaning nature of these jobs but also the low pay offered? And wasn’t it the Labour government that introduced the first immigration laws in Britain? So what has distinguished Labour from the Tories? To discuss this and much more, we have today Amrit Wilson, writer, activist, feminist and author of Finding a Voice: Asian women in Britain, published by Daraja Press.