“When we don’t integrate we are criticised; when we do, we’re told we’re taking over. We can’t win.”
Dilwa Khan, Muslim Voices
Labour Outlook’s Sam Browse reports from today’s UN antiracism day march against islamophobia, antisemitism, and racism.
Today, demonstrators filled Westminster, marching from the Home Office to Downing Street to protest rising Islamophobia, antisemitism, and racism.
The march, organised by Stand Up to Racism to coincide with UN anti-racism day, came as the government ramps-up islamophobic rhetoric – demonising Muslim community organisations as “extremist” – whilst a key Tory donor, Frank Hester, is shockingly reported to have made racist remarks about Diane Abbott to a meeting, including that she “should be shot”.
The demonstration heard from anti-racist campaigns, community groups, migrant and asylum rights organisations, politicians, peers, and trade unionists.
Speaking of the Catch-22 in which Muslim communities find themselves, Dilwa Khan of the organisation, Muslim Voices, told the crowd “When we don’t integrate we are criticised; when we do, we’re told we’re taking over. We can’t win”.
In her message of support, human rights lawyer and Labour peer, Shami Chakrabarti, highlighted the hypocrisy of Government Ministers, saying “we need no lectures on racism from the friends of Frank Hester”.
Steve Smith, from the campaign, Care4Calais, set out why the government is pursuing this agenda in an election year: “by playing to the racist base instincts of one group of people, the government is distracting people from the issues that really matter”.
Fran Heathcote, General Secretary of the PCS union – who have been at the forefront of challenging the government’s racist Rwanda deportation policy – was clear: “The Government is trying to revive the Rwanda policy in the run up to the election… PCS will keep on fighting the policy every step of the way”.
“All of us here today need to go back to our unions and our workplaces with a renewed commitment to fight”.
Julia Mwaluke, Vice President of Unison, similarly savaged the government’s record, saying “this week we see the hypocrisy and racism of the Tories at large”.
After pouring criticism on the Prime Minister for taking millions from Hester and then awarding his business hundreds of millions in government contracts (she told the crowd “Sunak knows which side his bread is buttered”), she turned her fire on the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, saying he “should restore the whip to Diane Abbott”.
The General Secretary of another Labour-affiliated union, Maryam Eslamdoust of the TSSA, similarly argued: “The comments about Diane Abbott are shocking and disgusting but not surprising… far more worrying to me is that she’s still under suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party… she should have the whip returned”.
John McDonnell was equally forthright about both the government and Abbott’s suspension: “It’s not the far right that are the main enemy; it’s the racists that we have in government. We’re marching today against the racism at the heart of our political system.”
“If the Labour Party wants to be seen as an anti-racist party there is one thing they can do and that’s Keir Starmer could restore the whip to Diane Abbott”.
The defiance in the air was palpable and summed up by representatives from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community organisation, Drive to Survive, in the Roma chant they taught the protest: Rishi, chum mandys bull – “Rishi, kiss my a*s!”
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