The appalling violence seen in several British towns and cities over the past week has taken my thoughts back to an event attended by hundreds of people in Birmingham last month. We were all there to both remember the past and to make a commitment for the future.
We were remembering the systematic murder of 8,373 men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia in July 1995. They were killed simply because they were Muslims. It was genocide and it has been described as the worst atrocity on European soil since World War Two. It was born out hate.
The commitment we all made at the event in Birmingham on the 29th anniversary of the genocide was to combat hate – both in our own communities and abroad; both now and in the future.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to claim that Britain today is the same as Bosnia in the 1990s. It is not. Just this week Elon Musk used his privileged position as a social media “influencer” to claim that the UK is heading for civil war. Such inflammatory words are irresponsible and they are likely to incite yet more violence on our streets.
But what happened in Srebrenica should still serve as a warning to us today. Before the 1990s, Bosnia was a country where Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox Christians had for generations lived together as neighbours.
Fanned by ultra-nationalist politicians, however, divisions amongst Bosnia’s different communities were sown in the early 1990s. People were categorized and dehumanized, not because of something they had done, but rather because of who they were. If you were the wrong religion or you came from the wrong ethnic background, your presence in large parts of the country was no longer welcome.
The hate that ultimately led to genocide in Bosnia was not an event that took place overnight. It was a process in which people were encouraged over time to blame the genuine uncertainties they felt about the future after the break-up of Yugoslavia on the presence of “others” who were not like them. It was fed by lies and distortions which were convenient to promote ethnic supremacist political agendas. Down the line, otherwise rational people came to believe the lies to be facts and they ended up denying others even the right to be treated as human beings at all.
Britain today is a society disfigured by inequality, with millions of people struggling to make ends meet. In a rapidly changing world, many are fearful for what the future holds for their families. Many young people don’t see much of future for themselves in a society which seems to treat them more like statistics than people.
The dislocation that all this breeds is not something that can be neatly divided by ethnicity. There is no doubt that the deprivation faced by ethnic minority communities in Britain is particularly acute and particularly extensive. But having represented a predominantly white part of Birmingham in Parliament for 27 years, I also know the reality of poverty and deprivation in white working class areas. In 21st century England, educational under-achievement is numerically worst amongst white working class boys. In areas like the one I represented, “opportunity” can too often feel like a word for other people, not one for young people growing up there.
It is long overdue for government to address these challenges. I sincerely hope that the new Labour Government will show both the vision and determination to do so. Over the past decade or more, though, inequality has got worse, not better. And it has been too easy for politicians to sidestep the real issues while encouraging an atmosphere in which those who have little look to those who have less as the cause of the problems they face. Put them into categories – “Muslims”, “asylum seekers”, “refugees”, “ethnics” etc. and you get the picture. If people speak out against the scapegoating, label them “woke” and out of touch for good measure.
It is an atmosphere that was shamefully encouraged by Ministers in the last government. While claiming to want to stop the criminal gangs who put lives at risk in the English Channel, too often the words and actions of Ministers targeted not the gangs but the desperate people seeking sanctuary from war and persecution overseas. Some Ministers even referred to their presence in the UK as an “invasion”. As representatives of a party that considers itself to be mainstream, they should have known better, Today, the theme is being taken up even more blatantly by the likes of the Reform Party. Nigel Farage himself has openly blamed “legal and illegal immigration” for fracturing communities as he ominously warns that what has happened in recent days is “nothing compared with what could happen over the course of the next few weeks”.
Little surprise then, that the scapegoating of “others” and inflammatory statements from politicians and influencers find all too ready amplification in the shadowy world of Far Right online networks where direct lies about the brutal murder of children in Southport are used to incite the kind of violence we are now seeing.
Let us be clear: the events of recent days are not simply “protests”. If you set fire to hotels because you object to the presence of people living there, you are not expressing you right to free speech. You are joining in potential murder.
Ministers are right to make clear that those who incite or carry out acts like these will face the full force of the law.
But our response needs to be deeper than this. It means taking on the politics of hate that has been spreading for much longer than this summer. And it means doing so consistently, both in the political arena, and in our daily conversation.
It also means celebrating the thousands of people who have voluntarily come out onto the streets in recent days, armed with buckets and brooms to clean up the physical damage left the riots. By their actions, they are showing the best of us and the best of our country. They are showing it does not have to be like this.
At the Srebrenica Memorial Day in Birmingham last month, representatives of no less than eight different faiths in the city signed the following statement of commitment which has also been endorsed by the leaders of all four political parties on Birmingham City Council.
It is summed up in its closing words “I am because you are.”
Amen to that.
