THE WINDRUSH scandal has caught the eye of the British public, largely because it has highlighted the inherent racist nature of British Society. When I say British, I generally mean English because both Wales and Scotland were forced to be part of the British Isles much against their populations and at a whim of the wealthy elites.
David Lammy’s speech in parliament went viral for the right reasons but societal ignorance over English racism still resides. There is collective historical amnesia over the very racist nature that out society was built upon.
Racialist ideology
The faux accusations of anti-Semitism levelled at Jeremy Corbyn made headline news for weeks, yet Theresa May’s blatantly racist policies as Home Secretary and Prime Minister have been buried. The liberal, centrist commentators have finally picked up on this fact and are now beginning realise that their ideology of appeasement has allowed the same British colonial white supremacy to reside just under the surface of politics in Britain.
There has also been an interesting rise in right wing condemnation of the Syria airstrikes. Not just conservative right-wing but further far-right fascists have also decided to take this anti-war approach. They are not wrong to take the stance but by projecting from a left-wing point of view, this allows them use it to create an image that denotes a strong leader or strong movement.
This poses a danger to societal ideological constructs potentially scarring any form of left-wing ideology.
Conservatives have a history of appeasing Fascism, it was the Conservative, Franz von Papen, who put forward the idea of giving Adolf Hitler the role of Chancellor and he serve as Vice-Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The idea was chiefly to appease the Nazi Party because he and his colleagues believed that he could be controlled from behind the scenes.
This was similar to that of Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy, the Conservatives tended to favour appeasing the fascists because they preferred the idea of Fascism over allowing Socialism or Liberalism any power.
If you consider that role Theresa May has played in appeasing the likes of UKIP, her own far-right element of the Conservative Party and many of the anti-immigrant media outlets in the country.
You begin to see the pattern of racism that is under the surface of British society. Whether or not she is overtly racist herself, it still shows that there is an ingrained belief of hierarchy in her personal ideology. This has been recently proved with the Windrush disgrace.
The Windrush disgrace
The British Nationality Act 1948 gave UK citizenship to all people living in the United Kingdom and its colonies, and full rights of entry and settlement in the UK. Many West Indians were attracted by better prospects in what was often referred to as the mother country. The government disgrace erupted after it emerged that some children of Caribbean migrants who settled in the UK from the late 1940s to the 1970s had been declared illegal immigrants and threatened with deportation.
However, in 2014, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition passed am immigration act that removed the protections for those dubbed as the ‘Windrush generation’, along with other hard-line anti-immigration rules.
Furthermore, the Home Office under the guide of Theresa May during this time, also decided to destroy the landing cards of that generation. In PMQs the PM claimed that it was in 2009 under a Labour government that the decision was made to destroy the landing cards, however, the Home Office stated on Tuesday that it was in 2010 after the coalition government came into power that the decision was made. A spokesperson for the PM stated that the decision was taken at No.10 and that Theresa May had no input in the decision, not much has changed since then it would seem.
