‘It feels a dark kind of summer, in which prejudice is dressed in fuchsia and the political class shrug their shoulders while the angry mob grows. We are often told that newcomers to these shores refuse to adopt “British values”, but perhaps those stoking the public’s worst instincts can remember one themselves: in this country, people are innocent until proven guilty. That includes asylum seekers too.’
—Frances Ryan, ‘As asylum seekers are engulfed by slurs and lies, our leaders shrug. Truly, this is shameful’
‘I certainly don’t want my children to share a neighbourhood with men from backward countries who broke into Britain illegally, and about whom we know next to nothing.’
—Robert Jenrick MP
By Alan Morrison
In Epping this July they put “local people first”
By protesting outside a so-called “migrant hotel”,
Asylum accommodation signposted by populists
& targeted by algorithms of unregulated rage,
Vigilantes wrapped in their St George(Cappadocian Greek)
Flags frightening traumatised refugees—
(While in Palestine, & Sudan, countless innocents
Are wrapped in body bags or white cloth bundles,
& unceremoniously tipped into mass graves)
The Epping protestors are a patchwork crowd,
Some “pink” & apparently “peaceful”, but many
Drawn from disparaged “Gammon” brigades
& Far Right groups: Britain First, Patriotic
Alternative, Blood & Honour, Homeland, The White
Vanguard—toxic brands not yet proscribed
Unlike the pacifist plane-painters of Palestine
Action—yet Nigel Farage(of French Huguenot descent)
Still rails against “two tier policing”—while
Enoch Powell-referencing prime minister Starmer,
Immaculate Union Jack wings furled behind him,
Speaks of a “social fabric” in need of repair—
Those who deem themselves more ‘enlightened’,
Tofu-munching, “virtue-signalling”, Guardian-scrolling
Milquetoast middle classes & their “Woke” undergraduate
Offspring, would privately inveigh against such fiery
Elements as “Gammon”, a similar sunburnt rump as
Trump’s MAGA, though Nigel Farage & Angela Rayner
(Following their own diverging agendas)
Try to explain this aggressive behaviour
As more than simply inarticulate anger
But legitimate concern regarding illegal immigration
From sections of the “left behind” white working class,
As do the right-wing flag-hugging papers, The Telegraph,
Times, Mail & that hectoring red top duopoly,
The Daily Express(of Beaverbrook’s crusader emblem) & Sun,
Rusted pillars of manipulated ‘public opinion’—
Not forgetting jingoistic G(utter) B(ug) News
& barracking, Left-stalking Talk(-at & over you) TV;
(Meanwhile, more cosmopolitan pro-European
Metropolitan muesli-ruminators are suffering
From flag-fatigue but are too apathetic to craft
Cocktail Union Jacks to set alight in their period
Fireplaces for fear of inflaming inner-tensions)
There might well be two tiers for policing protests:
Republican & Pro-Palestine placards are seized
& packed up in police vans along with their holders,
Some threatened with up to fourteen years behind bars,
Meanwhile the pugilistic anti-immigrant mob
Hell bent on symbolic pogroms, are treated with
Comparative kid gloves by discombobulated bobbies
Some of whom no doubt number among subscribers
(Ironic for a patchwork country as ours made up
Of descendants of countless immigrants:
Romans (Italians), Jutes & Saxons (Germanic),
Danes, Vikings (Norwegians), Normans (French),
Through Huguenots (also French), & Eastern
Europeans, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians,
Hungarians, Albanians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians—
‘But they’re all alright because they’re all white,
Well most of them, less so those Romanians’,
It’s always those of colour that are singled out
& no matter if they have intergenerational roots
Dating from when our capital was a melting pot
Of Empire: the Jamaican Windrush generation,
Orientals, Indians, Pakistanis… Afghans… Palistinians…)
Then the protests spread like a plague of locusts
Around this island fortress, this damp-sprouting citadel,
Chanting & shouting & screaming & caterwauling
Rough music from rat-infested city to city:
Epping, London, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Moygashel…
Cruel Brutannia! Brutannia trawls the waves…
We Englanders are an amalgamation of immigrants,
Most of our ancestors washed up like seashells
On these chalky shores, seaweed-clung refugees
Intermingling with the English shingle, yet today
Numbers among us are caught unashamedly
Red-handed, as the Ulster Banner-bearers
Around their Loyalist bonfire, a tall crate-stacked
Wicker Man-like pyre topped by the Republic
Of Ireland’s scorched tricolour where they burn
Hand-crafted life-jacketed Black & brown effigies
Clinging for dear life as flames melt their dinghies…
(Tory-turned-Reform MP Sarah Pochin & Tory-future-
Reform MP Robert ‘paint-over-cartoon-murals-for-
Making-reception-centres-too-welcoming-for-
Unaccompanied-child-asylum-seekers’ Jenrick argue
Small boats are importing “medieval attitudes”…)
To think so many have risked their lives in small boats
& coracles, crossed the Channel, our castle’s choppy moats,
Drawn to our island which they pictured it as
A beacon of tolerance, compassion, & hope,
How were they to know that our beacon’s warming
Glow was not one of welcoming but warning…?
Cruel Brutannia! & Farage fans the flames…
POSTSCRIPT: And on 9 August, 522 peaceful protestors,
Mostly pensioners, are arrested under
The Terrorism Act for sitting silently in Parliament Square
Holding up placards of support for a proscribed
Activist group against the Gazan genocide
(The Home Office moots that Palestine Action
Had targeted “Jewish-owned businesses”,
Actually Israeli-owned ones, Elbit Systems
For instance—the semantics here are
Calculated armaments, in the marked absence
Of moral arguments, to tarnish PA with
An anti-Semitic patina, weaponizing terms
To camouflage weapons exports, complicity
In genocide, silencing criticism of Zionism-
Gone-rogue, & the apartheid Israeli state,
Thus sending a chill to shut down debate—
But by such false conflations & abuse of the term
The biggest boosters of anti-Semitism are
Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Lammy, Starmer…)
Meanwhile elsewhere that same day in Nuneaton
Hundreds of Far Right protestors, some sporting
Nazi emblems, terrorising refugees outside
Asylum accommodation & clashing with police,
Results in just one single arrest—is Nigel Farage
Going to flag this up as “two tier policing”?
& will Yvette Cooper mull this moral travesty
Of triage on her watch? Will she add a proscriptive
Postscript for future print runs of her suffragette-
Infiltrated tome She Speaks: Women’s Speeches
That Changed the World, from Pankhurst to Greta…?
Perhaps her next volume will be titled How to Vet Her…
