As heart-warming as it was to see thousands of anti-racism protesters rallied in towns and cities across last week, the sad truth is that love has not yet defeated the hate we saw on our streets when the far-Right went on their rioting rampages. In homes across the country families like mine were consoling their scared children and coming to terms with the fact that things would never be the same.
My little cousins and nieces who have known nowhere but London as their home were for the first time in their lives scared to go out. In the family WhatsApp group they were sharing the horrific stories they were seeing on social media. I was actually shocked at how unprepared I was for their reaction to what was going on.
I had become jaded with the hooligans screaming about immigrants taking their jobs after observing the rise of the far-Right and its normalisation during our recent election. We were treating Reform as some kind of legitimate political party and not an entry point into extremism in this country.
But this all changed when my 18-year-old cousin messaged me to ask “if had seen the news and what was going on?”. I was confused for a moment until I realised the riots were something he had never seen before. He was now old enough to understand the things I could once have protected him from by switching the subject or channel on a TV.
Hate has crept into the lives of the children around me and from now on they will question their place here
And as I tried to calm down a very scared young man who was terrified that racists were coming for him and his family, I realised that hate had won. It had crept into the lives of the children around me and from now on they would not only start questioning their legitimate place in this country, but also fear Britain.
Don’t get me wrong, the children in my family have always known about their heritage and they are proud of it. However, they grew up in multicultural London, in communities full of diversity which was celebrated. They had never seen their differences with the wider population of this country as something that might be unwelcome, or worthy of hate. Now they do. And I can’t change that nor can I lie to them and truly say that they will be safe when they leave their loving community in north-west London and go out into the rest of the country for university.
Those words are so depressing to write, but it’s true. Up and down this country this week there have been parents of colour having conversations with their scared children. Conversations which they thought they would never have to have with them, especially not with some of them so young in the case of some of my friends.
Conversations like these were, I think, last had with children when the National Front was on the streets, something which I have thankfully only been told about but never experienced myself.
When I was growing up in the Nineties and Noughties, I honestly don’t remember feeling unsafe as a kid because of my colour. When I went to university it was the same. I am not saying I did not experience racism but that was people being ignorant about something, which like a kid or teen you would correct them about or decide to ignore.
There was never a fear of violence as there is now for a generation of children in my family and others. And this is something we should be ashamed of and something that needs to be addressed — beyond us just marching on the streets against those who divide us. We cannot think we have beaten back the far-Right because they did not materialise on the streets at the weekend. We need to call them out and counter their hatred with education and political defeat at the ballot box.
And I know I name-checked Reform but there are also issues within the main political parties and that’s a serious conversation we need to have if we want to truly address the issues we are facing. Because the reality is that if we don’t do the work to bring this country back together and help make our children safe then we would have lost what makes us great. And we are a great country. Britain has been a melting pot of people for centuries and has withstood the horrific raise of extremism in all its forms which we have seen around the world. That’s something I am proud of and willing to fight to protect.
