Immigration is a good thing. So there.

It's a contentious topic and one fueled with misconceptions and outright lies from certain corners of the media and political sphere. The general public are worried, no doubt due to politicians using words like "under siege" to describe the changing population of the UK. UKIP would have us believe that Britain is set to become a distant memory, while Eastern European migrants take over and we all start speaking Polish or Romanian or Bulgarian, or some mangled mixture of all three - but crucially with no trace of Engerlish remaining.

I'm being hyperbolic, of course, and I don't mean to come across as flippant. When you do start to research the facts and figures behind UKIP's claims, you quickly realise how absurdly laughable they are.

What stops them being seen for the joke they are, sadly, is the tacit endorsement of their fallacious claims by the Labour and Conservative parties, who have responded to their rise in support NOT by deconstructing their rhetoric and promoting a more accurate picture to the electorate, but instead by competing in a race to the bottom on who can come out with the most hardline policy on immigration.

What IS the real picture of immigration then? What does the population of the UK truly look like at the moment? I talk to people a lot about this issue, and the same themes come up again and again. People believe that there are more and more non-UK born families across the country. People believe that British workers are being sidelined for employment in favour of lower-paid migrant workers. People believe that migrant families are prioritised for social housing and that the housing shortage is due to increased demand from non-UK born households. People really believe that the strain on the NHS is down to demand from "health tourism" and a higher than ever immigrant population. 

Where have all these beliefs come from? When I go out, for example, to collect my children from school, there's a definite mix of nationalities and ethnicity, but still an overwhelming majority of white British families. When I go out shopping, I see the same thing. Yes, there is diversity, but it's nothing like the "swamping" that some would have us believe. 

I've said before that this anti-immigration rhetoric forms part of a wider smokescreen designed to keep the electorate enraged about a total non-issue while the genuinely damaging problem - i.e. the carefully cultivated wealth inequality - goes unchallenged. While we waste time debating immigration issues, we are not talking about the economic crisis, or how the UK is in more debt now than before the coalition government took control; we are not talking about about how the European economy is MORE fragile now than in 2007; we are not asking where the £46billion taxpayers' bailout given to RBS has gone; we are not throwing every fibre of our being into protecting our NHS from privatisation, or even into understanding what privatisation means; we are not vilifying the government for the callous welfare reforms that have seen over 1million people turn to foodbanks, and incalculable numbers of disabled people die within weeks of having their lifeline benefits stopped. 

There are genuine problems with the UK at the moment; real issues that must be addressed. But immigration is nothing, nothing like the thumping great threat that UKIP, the Conservatives and the rest would have you believe.

Let's take a look at some numbers.

University College London, in collaboration with the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, last year published a paper titled "The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK". Their research uncovered some astonishing findings:

• The net fiscal balance of overall immigration to the UK between 2001 and 2011 amounts to a positive net contribution of about £25 billion.
• Recent immigrants are 45% less likely to receive state benefits or tax credits than UK-born citizens.
• By sharing the cost of fixed public expenditures (such as defence), which account for 23% of total public expenditure, immigrants reduce the financial burden of these fixed public obligations for natives.

Is your mind blown? Mine isn't, because I had suspected for some time that immigration is not only positive for the UK, but actually necessary for our economic survival. "Now then", I hear you murmur, "if this is all true, why don't the government just admit it?". Well that is a very good question, and I wish I knew the definitive answer. You don't need to look very hard for evidence that the government are not only aware, but actively trying to conceal the real picture of immigration to the UK - earlier this year, they came under fire for blocking the publication of a report which would have blown open all their reasoning for tightening up EU migration!

"But there ARE more of them!!"

Yes. Yes there are more "of them" than there were last year, and the year before that. Specifically, net migration (that is, the total number of people coming into the UK minus the number of those leaving) for the year ending March 2014 was 243,000 compared to 175,000 in the previous 12 months.

"That's a huge jump! Bloody Farage is right!!"

Hold your horses! Never take numbers out of context. Let's look at the bigger picture...

Total immigration in the year up to December 2010 was 575,000, while in the year up to December 2012, it fell to 497,000. As emigration from the UK has hovered between 316,000 and 350,000 per year, a clearer picture starts to emerge. In terms of population percentage, the net migration figures are not fluctuating all that much - certainly not enough to justify the outrage meted out by the noisy right-wingers. 

Here's a little graph for you:

I didn't make this. I'm not THAT much of a spreadsheet whizz. This came from the Office for National Statistics, August 2014 report on migration.

It's right there in black and white (and green and blue and pink). The picture of immigration in and out of the UK over the last decade really hasn't changed all that much.

So back to these problems facing the UK today; the housing crisis, the strain on the NHS, low-paid jobs. I'm going to elaborate on each of these topics in subsequent posts, but let me just say that not one of these problems is caused by immigration.

Housing

The housing crisis in the UK is a mess. Briefly, between the government selling off 2.5million council houses through the Thatcherite "Right to Buy" scheme and not replenishing the stock with new builds, we now have 1.7million people on council house waiting lists across England alone with nowhere to put them. Alongside that, soaring house prices and mortgage rates have been exacerbated by the rise in houses being used as commodities for investment rather than homes, making it more difficult than ever for first time buyers to afford a home. Meanwhile the private rental sector has exploded, now accounting for more than 13% of housing across the UK but with soaring rent, no long term security for tenants and the ever-increasing instances of homelessness caused by tenants finding themselves at the end of one tenancy but unable to afford the myriad fees of another.

Without private rent caps, the immediate introduction of more social housing and a drastic overhaul of the definition of "affordable housing", the housing crisis will not get any better. Immigration has not caused this, the government's appalling mismanagement has. Capping or reducing immigration will not alleviate it. Only sensible, proactive intervention from the government will. 

NHS

The coalition government's attack on the NHS is scandalous. The model, very simply, works like this: slash the budgets --> services decline --> "outsourcing" is heralded as the knight in shining armour --> wham! We have sleepwalked into a privatised health care system.

Source: Another Angry Voice

Do you remember David Cameron's pledge to not expose the NHS to pointless restructing? I do. And yet the abysmal Health and Social Care Act (2012) has brought about the biggest top-down reorganisation of the NHS in living history, not to mention removing between £60-£80billion of funding from the now-abolished Primary Care Trusts and giving it instead to Clinical Commissioning Groups, who are a prime source of entry for private companies to gain health provider contracts. Crucially, this move was not in the Conservative or Liberal Democrats' manifesto, so the public never had the opportunity to vote against such massive changes to the functioning of the NHS.


I will blog in more detail about the true cause of the NHS crisis, but you can read more here for now: Twelve Things You Should Know About the Tories and the NHS

Once again, waiting time for GP appointments, hospital closures and downgrading, waiting lists for treatment - none of it has been caused by immigration. ALL of it has been caused by massive government budget cuts. Capping immigration will not relieve the situation; only reversing privatisation and investing back into our hospitals and health services can restore the NHS to its rightful state. Incidentally, did you know that 26% of NHS doctors are non-UK born? Our lives, quite literally, have depended on immigration.

Employment. 

And we roundly return to the "dey terk er jerbs!!" argument. Anecdotally, I've heard this a thousand times over. British workers are turned away while the jobs are given to migrant workers who will accept a lower wage.

Firstly, this is largely a myth. In the few instances where this has happened, why does the migrant worker shoulder the blame instead of the unscrupulous and exploitative employer? Why aren't we stamping our feet and demanding the immediate implementation of a Living Wage for all employees, regardless of their country of origin? 

Back to the myth-busting. There is a 52 page government-commissioned report from the Migration Advisory Committee which you can read for yourself here. Briefly, the report found that the impact on wages from the flow of migrant workers was minimal, and there was only a weak - but not causal - correlation between the two. It also identified that there are specific areas of the country where migrant communities are more concentrated and so the perception of the impact of immigration will obviously be skewed. 

Plainly, there is no evidence to support claims that migrant workers are harmful to British employment prospects. Where exploitation by employers occurs, this must be dealt with by enforcing existing legislation about pay and introducing a Living Wage for all workers in the UK. Immigration in and out of itself, has not driven down wages. Capping immigration will not result in a pay rise for UK-born workers. Only decisive action by the government to recognise the current massive pay gap and support employers to pay proper wages can relieve this.

Considering that this will rank amonst one of my more epic blog posts, I really only have scratched the surface of the massive and intricate topic of immigration. I haven't even begun to talk about asylum seekers, illegal immigration, or the actual practicalities of any kind of immigration cap, but if I try now my fingers will fall off, and if you have to read more of my opinions, I suspect your eyes will mutiny.

I hope that I have successfully unravelled some of the commonly held myths around immigration and at the very least prompted you to question some of the claims made by the likes of UKIP and the Conservatives. I leave you with this image from Another Angry Voice:

Further reading:

The Telegraph: "EU migration is essential for a healthy economy"

Office for National Statistics (including all Quarterly Migration Reports): International Migration

Keith Taylor MEP in The New Statesman: "I'm ashamed of our government's stance on immigration"

Crisis Policy Briefing: Housing - the Private Rented Sector
Migration Advisory Committee: Migrants in Low Skilled Work

The times, they are a-cha-aangin'....

Earlier this morning, I was idly daydreaming about what the future may hold for me. I wrote a blog post two years ago agonising over what I would do "When I Grow Up", articulating my anxiety at what a career gap would do to my employment prospects and how I felt at odds with my role as a stay at home mother. It suddenly dawned on me that since joining the Green Party, that anxiety has vanished. 

The time I commit to the party now is entirely voluntary, but the experience I'm gaining and the skills I'm polishing have given me a sense of empowerment that I thought I'd lost. Politics is traditionally thought of as male-dominated territory - not just male, but white, upper class, able-bodied, public-school educated males. What could an ordinary working class* woman hope to achieve? 

*delusions of grandeur and a predilection for reading The Guardian notwithstanding!

Shahrar Ali's rousing speech at Green Party Conference earlier this month spoke of the "Politics of Imagination" and challenged us all to take ownership of ineqality within the party and outwards, in wider society.

 "You don't have to be a woman to fight patriarchy, to want to reassure a voter on the doorstep, no she doesn’t have to wait for her husband before talking politics with you. You only need to be Green.

You don't have to be black to want to rail against racial prejudice or persecution. You only need to be Green.

You don't have to be gay to want to march alongside PRIDE. You only need to be Green."

I know I don't speak for all women when I say this; I know that women with a disability, gay women, transgender women, and women of colour experience complex layers of intersecting oppression that I cannot claim to understand - but today I realised what an awesome sense of pride I feel in belonging to a political party in which my gender will never be a barrier to my ambition.

The Green Party's leader is a woman, as is our MP, our peer in the House of Lords, two of our three MEPs and one of our deputy leaders. Six amazing, inspirational women.

I am greatly encouraged that the Green Party is THE future of politics, and represents a truly progressive outlook where equality is the automatic starting point for all people, not just a dream. The people I have had the privilege of meeting and working with so far have restored my faith in humanity and shown that there is a chance for my generation to break away from the oppressive, nasty, divisive narrative that has pervaded politics so far. It is time for the government to stop being the playground for white privileged males and to become representative of our beautiful, colourful, diverse nation.

As today's news is dominated by Scotland's referendum decision to remain part of the United Kingdom, there is a fast-paced undercurrent that sees how people are beginning to reengage with politics and bring democracy home. It is time for us to harness that current and turn it into a tidal wave. It is time to rejuvenate British politics and I am exhilarated to play my part.

Yours truly with Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett.

Old Hatred, New Victims: When recycling is a bad idea.

We've just passed the 13th anniversary of "9/11". I vividly remember September 11th, 2001. I was 17 years old and sitting in my A-level English Literature class on the second day of term. A friend's phone beeped with a text message saying there had been a nasty plane crash in New York and it was all over the news. The class soon finished and we idly made our ways home. I went to chat to my mum, who was watching the news in horror just as the second plane hit the towers and we remained fixated on the television for most of that afternoon as the events unfurled.

I felt something change that day. There was something in the air that was new and yet familiar at the same time. The suspicion, mistrust and, ultimately, hatred of a group of people sharing a religion - in this case Islam - that I'd so recently studied in its historical forms with regard to anti-Jewish propaganda in Nazi Germany. 

I'm not the first person to highlight parallels between modern Islamophobia and Nazi propaganda. This article "Same message, different minority" succinctly compares statements from self-titled "anti-jihad" writer, Robert Spencer, and Der Stürmer editor (1923 - 1945), Julius Streicher. Similarly, you may be surprised by the results of this quiz, which invites you to differentiate between anti-Semitic statements from Nazi Germany, and modern anti-Islam rhetoric.

The similarities are bloodcurdlingly abundant. The manipulation and misrepresentation of the truth is as pervasive today as it was 70 years ago, only this time it's directed at Muslims, not Jews. Then, it fed into pro-Aryan sentiment at a time when Germany was recovering from the First World War and national morale was bruised and vulnerable. Adolf Hiter exploited this and coaxed enough support for his heinous ambition to start a war with devastating consequences, not least for the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust. Today we see Islam conflated with extremism and terrorism, with degrading stereotypes flung around mainstream media with casual abandon, while far-right neo-fascist groups such as the "English Defence League", "Britain First", and the BNP declare themselves the line of defence against a perceived Islamic invasion of the UK.

I'm not a conspiracy-theorist. I'm satisfied that it's more likely than not that Neil Armstrong really did walk on the moon in 1969. I don't believe in chemtrails. I don't buy into theories that 9/11 was orchestrated by the American government. But if you ask me whether I believe that Islamophobia is a carefully constructed political agenda to justify the so-called "war on terror" that is systematically dismantling the Middle East in pursuit of its oil-rich land - then yes. Yes I believe this is true.

Do you remember the "45 minute" claim from the September 24th 2002 dossier used to strengthen the cause for invasion of Iraq? How we were urged to believe that Saddam Hussein had been stockpiling weapons of mass destruction which could target British soil in under an hour? Do you also remember that these alleged WMDs were never found, and that the UK government had to admit that the 45 minute claim was untrue; that there was no stockpile of weapons. That we invaded a country, killed over 400,000 people and left a legacy of chaos for which we should be eternally ashamed.

'Ahh, but Al Qaeda! Terrorists must be stopped!' What do you say to the revelation that there was NO evidence for an Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before 2003? Even more so, that the rise of the latest group, ISIS, can be directly traced back to the abominable bungling of the 2003 Iraq war by the UK and US governments? And for the cherry atop the proverbial cake, the allegations that the US government has in fact been arming and funding ISIS by supporting its allies in Syria, just as they aided Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

Let's just take a step back from this mess for a moment, and come back to what this means for ordinary people at home. I remember studying anti-semitism in Nazi Germany during high school history lessons. I vividly recall everybody in the room feeling horrified and bewildered by the force of the propaganda that proliferated the era. We watched documentaries about Kristalnacht and the concentration camps that frequently reduced us to tears. And time and time again we asked HOW and WHY the ordinary people of 1930s Germany could have tolerated such vile besmirching of so many people just because they were Jewish. 

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established soon after the second world war, with the ultimate aim of ensuring that the atrocities visited upon the Jews could never be repeated, that we as a global community learn from the horrors of our history and commit ourselves to never allowing it to repeat.

And yet here we are. Western governments are demonstrably complicit in the rise of organisations such as ISIS, meanwhile the threat they pose is used to justify military action in the Middle East and domestic tension is aggravated by an undeniably Islamophobic mainstream media. In short, if you make people afraid, you make them malleable and open to manipulation. 

The surge in support for groups such as Britain First is symptomatic of a nation whipped up into fear, anger and hatred. There is nothing patriotic or defensive about these groups, despite what they claim. Islamophobic attacks are on the rise in the UK and US, with attacks against Muslims in America having increased 1700% in the year after 9/11, and British Muslims experiencing violence and abuse every single day. Political figures such as Lord Christopher Monkton, former deputy leader of UKIP, spout such diatribe as: “Nearly all acts of terrorism perpetrated throughout the world in the past quarter of a century were carried out by Muslims in the name of Allah”. and newspapers continue to publish exaggerated and plainly untrue stories to perpetuate the propaganda of hatred towards Islam. 

However, there is a beacon of light - something that didn't exist in Nazi Germany, or even in any useful form around the events of 9/11. Social media has burst onto the scene and given a platform to anyone who wishes to be heard. Whilst that has been exploited by far right hate groups, it also gives the oxygen of publicity to those who see past the red herring of Islamophobia and are frenetically urging the world to reject the scapegoating of Islam, to look beyond what the newspapers tell us to think, and to expose the corrupted workings of governments whose vested interests are in the financial gains to be made from war in the Middle East. 

There is SO much information out there, so many ways to scratch beneath the surface of the information endorsed by governments and to question their agendas. We have the opportunity now to stand strong and refuse to be manipulated, to stop history repeating itself. Education and respect are the antidote to bigotry and ignorance. For every misinformed, hate-filled piece of literature, there exists a counterpart. Let's make the most of the internet and keep looking for the truth. 

I urge you to look at the links in this post - especially the quiz about Nazi propaganda and modern Islamophobia. They're a starting point for understanding the role of Islamophobia in the UK today.

Uncomfortable truths

I love learning new stuff. There are few things more exciting than adding a new topic to my (probably relatively limited!) repertoire of Things I Know About The Universe. Sometimes though, I learn a thing I don't like; something that makes me reevaluate my place in the world and how I contribute to it. This month has shown me one such occasion. 

At the beginning of August, I attended a training day with the Green Party's "Young Greens", including a workshop on "Intersectionality". It was a new word to me and I regret to admit that I spent the first few minutes fidgeting in my seat, feeling like I was back in an A level sociology lecture. In brief, intersectionality relates to different systems of oppression and the way they overlap to form complex compounds of prejudice. We have a tendency to treat sexism, racism, homophobia, disablism etc. as distinct and isolated streams of intolerance and neglect to consider the individuals whose lives are impacted by one or more of these. You can find support systems for gay people, disabled people, ethnic minorities - but where is the inclusive, all-encompassing support for the gay, black, disabled person?

A seriously over-simplified diagram
of interlocking systems of oppression.

It sounds so straightforward, that it's almost ridiculous to have to point out that someone can be a victim of multiple systems of oppression and that we should all endeavour to see the overlaps and not separate them out into neat compartments that we know how to handle.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. Last year I wrote a blog post about Miley Cyrus and that VMA performance. It was the first time I'd really had to consider that traditional feminism sidelines non-white women, and so I wrote about the insidiously racist undertones contained within the aforementioned dance routine. Reading it back now, I could kick myself for falling into the trap of separating out sexism and racism. The two, in this case, are tightly interconnected. And I missed that.

Why did I miss that? Why did I fail to see the gap in traditional feminism that applies to women of colour? Because "white privilege".

Those two words made me squirm in my seat during the workshop and frequently since. In very basic terms, being white gives you an immediate advantage in every single area of life whilst simultaneously conditioning you to not see the privilege. Does that make sense? I'm a white British female. I've been in situations where I've felt self-conscious about my gender, some where I've been hyper-aware of my nationality. Never once have I felt that the colour of my skin might be an issue to someone or might affect my chance of getting a job, renting a house, being looked at strangely on public transport, called names in the street. I can look at newspapers, television programmes and movies and see my culture represented without giving it a second thought. THAT is the essence of white privilege. The fact that someone else had to explain that it even exists is itself indicative of the widespread normalisation of white privilege.

We don't tend to think of racism in these terms. It's easier to frame it as negative actions towards someone else based on their ethnicity, when in actual fact white privilege is the foundation upon which racism is built. 

So I've been trying to get my head around this for a few weeks, and I'm still not sure I understand it. Too many times, I've felt very defensive and upset, wanted to shut down the computer, dismiss white privilege and carry on feeling that I work far too hard to promote tolerance and social harmony to ever justify being called a tool of oppression. Do you know why it would be easy for me to do that? WHITE PRIVILEGE. Because I am white, I can - if I choose - look away from the problem and pretend it doesn't exist. I have that power because my life is not negatively impacted by the colour of my skin; I don't even have to give it a second thought. 

Something happened this week that reinforced my determination to educate myself properly on issues of race and racism. I saw a post on Facebook which had prompted a debate that eventually turned nasty and saw one person call the other "mayo face" and later "mayo brigade". I've never heard that insult before, so I googled it and learned that it is a slur used against white people. I felt an instant hollow in my chest and could have cried. Here was someone dismissing one person's entire opinion with a nasty jibe about skin colour. I felt angry, sad, humiliated - and it hadn't even been directed at me. Just a couple of words on a screen, but they ate away at me for days. It dawned on me quickly that this can't be far from what people from ethnic minorities feel All The Time. 

At what stage in their childhood did they learn that people will give them grief for no reason other than their skin is darker? What must it be like to go into a shop, browse the newspapers and see nobody who looks like you? How do you manage the frustration at being sidelined for jobs because of the colour of your skin? Even more - how do you refrain from shouting and screaming at everyone who tries to say that racism isn't an issue these days?? Because oh, god. IT IS. It so is. And this is an every day reality for people who aren't white. 

How I felt after that one isolated incident doesn't even begin to compare to prejudice experienced by non-white people, but it gave me a fleeting insight. So the next time I want to write something about feminism, I am determined to not imagine that whatever I experience as a white female could be the same as that of a black woman. I don't know nearly enough about intersectionality and how to apply it to my life, so educating myself is my goal. 

If you've read this and feel as I initially did -  defensive, annoyed and like I'm talking out of my backside - I invite you to consider that it is your position of privilege which allows you to feel this way. We cannot begin to unravel the labyrinth of prejudice until we all accept that being white and/or male and/or straight and/or able-bodied, etc. affords us certain perks that we teach ourselves to see as an automatic right.

Further reading:

Explaining privilege to a broke white person:

http://occupywallstreet.net/story/explaining-white-privilege-broke-white-person

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack:

http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

Kimberle Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins:

http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/files/socialdiff/projects/Article__Mapping_the_Margins_by_Kimblere_Crenshaw.pdf

Miley Cyrus and Accidental Racism

Right then. I couldn't resist any longer. A post about Miley Cyrus' performance at the VMAs this week...

I feel I should preface this post with a couple of points:

• Before yesterday I didn't know what "twerking" is
• Before yesterday I only had a vague grasp of what a Miley Cyrus is

Ninety per-cent of the discussion I've read about this performance has focused on its overtly sexual nature, speculation on Cyrus' drug usage, eyebrow-raising at that really weird tongue thing she does and the inappropriateness of broadcasting this routine to an audience of impressionable children and young teenagers. Until that is, Caitlin Moran retweeted a link to a blog exploring its racial implications.

I read the blog a couple of times, trying to take in the message. In all honesty, at first I felt it was overanalysing somewhat, looking for issues that weren't there. But then I'm not a black woman; I have never had to consider that traditional feminism doesn't account for specific issues faced by women of different ethnicities. That's when I started to deconstruct my own feelings about this blog post, the VMA performance and other forms of normalised "accidental" everyday racism. 

I still don't think Miley Cyrus' dance routine (I'm being generous in calling in that!) was overtly racist in the same way it was overtly sexual. But it DOES perpetuate accepted stereotypes about black women and representations of their sexuality.

To me, being racist means a deliberate and conscious act which harms or denigrates one or more people based on the colour of their skin and/or aspects of their culture. 

I don't think that applies to Miley Cyrus in this instance. What I do see in her performance is what I've called "accidental racism"; that is, an unconscious attitude towards (in this case) black culture which stereotypes and misrepresents a key intimate aspect of black women's lives. 

The fact that the racial implications of the performance need to be highlighted is entirely the point. We don't see this as 'racist' because such representations of black women and black culture have become normalised to us. A few decades ago, it wasn't seen as sexist to market a kitchen product to women in this manner because demeaning women was normal and accepted. It has taken many years to challenge that and begin to eradicate sexism, and yet we still see adverts for cleaning products, supermarket chains, etc. that focus their preference by mothers as their unique selling point. And yes, when people complain that such adverts are sexist, we're told that we're overanalysing and looking for issues that aren't there - because attitudes that cleaning and grocery shopping is the preserve of the little wifey at home are still normalised.

It is possible to perpetuate damaging racial stereotypes without realising you're doing it. This insidious form of oppression is much more difficult to challenge because it first requires an awful lot of work to demonstrate that it even exists and that you're not grasping at straws to find it. 

A few days ago, a friend published a link to a series of "automatic preference" tests, one of which looks at whether you lean towards or away from black or white people's faces. I have NO idea how it works, but when my results were given, it also gave a breakdown of the total number of respondents and the average result. Staggeringly, the majority - over a quarter - of respondents were found to have an automatic preference for white people over black people. This means that without any conscious decision making, they found a white face more tolerable than a black face. THIS is entirely what is meant by accidental racism. 

Here are the tests if you'd like to explore for yourself: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/uk/selectatest.jsp

One final thing I would like to say on this matter is that I don't hold Miley Cyrus 100% culpable for the content of her performance. There is a team of stylists, choreographers, managers and broadcasters who need to ask themselves what the hell they were thinking when they decided this was a really great routine for a young, female artist.

Romani Ite Domum

Let me preface this post by saying that I have no issue with the government taking steps to lessen illegal immigration. What I do have a huge problem with is how this is being handled and the impact it's having on an already tense and volatile situation regarding race relations in the UK.

Two things in this week's news have grabbed my attention and got me feeling all soap-boxy. Firstly, the delightful "Go Home" vans pootling around North London courtesy of the Home Office's latest brain fart:

Bleurgh. Where do I start with this. "Go Home"... such a nasty, insidious slogan. There's no way the government chose this without careful deliberation and awareness of the far right connotations to those two little words. It's a phrase often touted by bigoted hate groups and levelled at anyone who looks a bit foreign. You don't drive a van like this around an area with a high number of ethnic minorities without expecting to cause some upset. 

Secondly and even more alarmingly are the spot checks at two London Underground stations by UK Border Agency officers. The news has reported that people from ethnic minorities have been specifically targeted by the officers and asked to prove that they have a right to be in the UK. Just picked off the street and treated like a criminal... Riiiight. Yep. I can see the logic in that one. Because there's no such thing as a white immigrant? And definitely no such thing as a British person with brown skin. Mark Harper, Immigration Minister, insists that the checks are based on intelligence and in no way utilise racial profiling but I think that's about as likely as me winning tonight's Euromillions draw.

It occurred to me this morning that three nations who were founded off the back of immigration and invasion also happen to have a beyond ironic problem with racism and prejudice against other immigrants. 

• Britain: we're a mongrel nation. There is no such thing as a "true Englishman" and there never has been. Vikings, Saxons, Romans, Normans - we've been invaded by just about everyone! We have been a tiny little melting pot for thousands of years and now we choose to get a bit tetchy about sharing our soil with foreigners. Lunacy.

• America - we stole America from the Native American tribes! Got lost on the way to India, found some new luscious land, booted out the locals and claimed it as the Free World (irony, much!). THEN we stole a bunch of people from Africa, enslaved them for generations and only in the last 50 years acknowledged their basic human rights, and yet still black people in America face daily prejudice and hostility.

• Australia - we drove out the indigenous population and turned the country into one massive penal colony! More than 165,000 convicts were shipped out Down Under over an 80 year period. The indigenous Aboriginal communities were marginalised as the white population took hold and made it their home. Australia is now notorious for problems of racism against Chinese and other South East Asian migrants and in the last decade has faced accusations of institutional racism against the remaining Aboriginal community. 

Of course there are issues of racism in other countries, and yes this is a very simplistic view of the history of immigration. My point is that immigration is not new and neither are we passive participants. 

What does any of this have to do with the UK Border Agency and the Home Office's ham fisted attempts at dealing with illegal immigration in Britain? 

Everything. 

The government have made what could generously be described as a real cock-up this week. If I'm feeling sceptical, I may call this a stunt to gain votes from the ultra conservative areas of the UK. At worst it's a divisive ploy, drawing on ignorance and toying with the already fragile relationships between those who make and keep the polices, and those who have to adhere to them. It would not take much to reignite the riot scenes of August 2011 and it seems the government are being ever more explicit in taking steps to repress the vulnerable minorities, whether they be immigrants, the disabled or the poor. 

There's so much more to say on this, but for now I shall leave you with an alternative to the Home Office's "Go Home" van. I think this is certainly easier to digest:

Human Rights and Human Wrongs Part Trois (and I promise, the final piece!)

Part Deux of this post ended with me asking why I ascribe the same claim to human rights for people who have committed violations of human rights themselves as I do to the ordinary, peaceful, every day man, woman and child. 

It's actually a really simple thought process, the conclusion to which I arrived at after reading endless accounts of human rights violations across the globe. 

Anyone who's been on Facebook or Twitter in the past few days can't have failed to see something called Invisible Children, or the "Kony 2012" campaign. In short, there is a viral film approximately 30 minutes long and made by an American man, Jason Russell, documenting his campaign to bring about the arrest of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. The history of the LRA's actions in Uganda is a long and bloody one, incorporating the abduction of children to turn into child soldiers (boys) and sex slaves (girls), murder, rape, pillage, mutilation and torture. The video is an overly simplistic representation of a very complex problem and smacks slightly of a 'Team America' approach to saving the world and easing the "White man's burden" - but that's another blog in itself! 

The reason I bring up this particular issue is because of the incredible speed with which is has become a viral topic and how rapidly it's brought human rights onto the public and social networking agenda. The YouTube video (linked above) currently has 15, 173, 840 views. That's a lot. It's a lot more than this time yesterday. The hashtag #STOPKONY has been a top trend on Twitter for the last 24 hours (although now appears to have slipped down in favour of popular culture references I don't understand). There have also been a huge number of blogs, articles, personal posts and so on critiquing the Invisible Children movement - and this is where the issue gets very complicated. Some look to the organisation's ideology, others to its questionable ethical business practices  (do read this one, it's a much more thorough and well informed assessment of the situation than I could provide) and support of the Ugandan army - a force themselves guilty of rape, torture and murder. 

One thing seems to be emerging (and this highlights my incorrigibly optimistic nature) which is that more people are talking about the complexities of human rights on a larger scale than I've seen since I sat in a university lecture room with 40-odd people who all cared about it very passionately! Of course it may be that x-million people will blindly click "share" on the video link from YouTube and then never do anything else. Awareness is great, but it doesn't solve problems. Blind awareness and support solves even fewer problems, and in fact creates some of its own (another blog! One thing at a time!). BUT if more people take the time to read more widely around the whole issue, learn about Joseph Kony & the LRA, learn about the local community-based projects in Uganda who've spent years tackling this head on, go to organisations like Amnesty International and learn about OTHER human rights atrocities all around the world - Syria, Iran, Palestine, Zimbabwe - the list really does go on and on and on - then something positive will be achieved simply through more people acknowledging that this is happening right now. All around the world, people are being oppressed, tortured, executed, detained in horrific conditions, institutionally raped. It's very difficult reading - but try to bear this in mind next time you read a Daily Mail article wailing about how immigrants and asylum seekers are taking over Britain. What would it take for you to flee your country of origin, in fear of your life?

Back to the original issue behind this post then - we've established what human rights are, we've discussed how people around the world are suffering at the hands of others, we've touched briefly upon how misunderstood and underrepresented the plight of so many people is in Western media. What does this mean for my initial point, that even the really Bad People have rights.

As I said slightly earlier - it's actually incredibly simple. If you've been inspired by this post to go and do some more reading about the global human rights situation, you will probably have learned that there are more people living under oppressive and murderous conditions than you ever thought possible. The first time I realised that, I was heartbroken. I don't want to believe that we live in a world where people live their whole lives in fear, where children say they would rather die than try to fight and survive, where bad people go unpunished because of political preferences from national leaders. I WANT to live in a world where bad deeds are punished, bad people brought to justice, good people the world over live a life of freedom and peace. I think it's safe to say that's a ubiquitous desire. We can only ever hope to achieve this if we sustain a certain moral standard - in order to single out and bring justice to the Bad Guys, we must be the Good Guys. We cannot, either directly or tacitly, condone torture or execution, because if we do, we just become part of the spectrum of bad guys. If we deport known or suspected criminals back to their countries of origin where we know they will be tortured or executed as part of that country's penal system, we step into very murky waters and we stop being the good guys. We stop having the right to condemn others for torturing and murdering innocent people, if we are even complicit in the torture and murder of anybody. 

My human rights that protect me from being tortured and murdered exist because our country's moral stance prohibits this, but it should be prohibited worldwide and for all persons. Can we really say that we as a nation are outraged at Christopher Tappin's extradition to the US to face charges for which no evidence has ever been brought before a UK court, amidst an American media campaign to portray him as a truly evil man and a 'danger to the community' - the notion which has been used to deny him bail? Well yes, we can say we are outraged, because he's been treated very badly by what appears to be a corrupt system - there's no transparency to the case against him, and accounts I've read so far appear to believe that he's been falsely accused (or at least that the case against him has been constructed falsely). 

I am in no position whatsoever to speculate on his guilt or innocence - but I can say that his human rights risk being violated through the course of the last few weeks. That's certainly the perspective of the British media in reporting each new turn of events. But... he's not the only person in the current press limelight looking at being removed from the UK to face trial in another country. There's also Abu Qatada, albeit in a very different manner of media portrayal. 

Now, I hear you exclaim, how can I possibly compare the two?! One is a nice, respectable British businessman falsely accused by a corrupt American legal system to provide them with a tidy scapegoat; the other is widely believed to be an Islamic extremist, indicted on charges of terrorism by a Jordanian court and believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. But let's look at that for a moment-  Abu Qatada has never been charged with committing a crime in the UK and was arrested and detained indefinitely, without trial, under dubious anti-terrorism legislation in 2002. As far as we know, since living in Britain he's lived a law-abiding life and at one stage was thought to be aiding British intelligence agencies with information about terrorist organisations. The charges against him in Jordan were founded on evidence and testimonies obtained through torture and the argument against deporting him back to Jordan for further trials is based upon the possibility that he himself would face being tortured. Again, whether or not he's guilty of the alleged crimes is something I am in no position to speculate on, but it alarms me that rather than strive to stamp out the use of torture in the Jordanian courts, the British press has instead focused on being outraged that such a dangerous man can be allowed to remain the UK at all, horrified that the European Court of Human Rights forbade his deportation.

 Let's just look at that again - if we take the British media's perspective at face value, we are saying that we would sooner accept the torture of a man than we would put the time and effort into ensuring that he faced a fair trial and was brought to justice for crimes which it had been proven he was guilty of.

That frightens me. Remember what I said before - what right do we have to condemn others for torture and murder if we are complicit in torture and murder ourselves? 

Well the short answer is that we don't. It's not justice if we accept any nation using torture and execution as part of its legal system. It's anarchy. 

I'm no legal expert; I can't tell you whether I think Christopher Tappin or Abu Qatada are guilty of the crimes of which they are accused or not. I can only tell you that the only way of guaranteeing that their respective guilt or innocence is reliably established is to ensure that both men - and all people in these situations - are tried by an uncorrupted court, using evidence that is truthful and accurate, and that if found guilty their punishments are proportionate to the crime. 

*********

At this point, I could start talking about existing laws regarding sentences for various crimes, but then we'd be here for at least another 3000 words! In short, I oppose the death penalty entirely, in all its forms and as a sentence for any crime you could think of. 

There is so much more that could be said on this issue. There are hundreds of books, written by well respected academics in the field of human rights and they are full to the brim of case studies, theoretical arguments and statistics on human rights topics. I started with a book written by my human rights lecturer at university, and I wholly recommend it as a basic start to understanding the subject: Human Rights: An Introduction by Darren O'Byrne

Human Rights and Human Wrongs: Part Deux

A couple of posts ago, I pontificated on my general philosophy about human rights and how they apply to the people of the world who have done Bad Things. 

As a very brief summary, I feel that preserving the human rights of every single human being on this planet is the absolute most fundamental basis of a true justice system - no matter how appalling a crime a person has committed. 

Up until now, I haven't specified exactly what I mean by "human rights". It's an intangible concept, a phrase that has popped up here and there in the media, mostly recently in the context of the UK government wanting to deport people out of this country, but being unable to do so because it would infringe their human rights. I now frequently see people tutting and raising their eyebrows at those two words, as though human rights is some terrible albatross around our necks, prohibiting us from disposing of people whose behaviour and philosophies aren't quite right for us.

For the sake of accuracy, let me highlight exactly what I mean by Human Rights, by referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

There are 30 articles to the declaration (which I won't copy and paste here, because it's very long and you can read it for yourself by following the above link), which set out the fundamental conditions for each and every person on this planet to be able to live a life of freedom and comfort. 

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world

The UDHR was established following the Second World War, with the express intention that atrocities which had occurred during and prior to those awful years would never be allowed to repeat themselves. It is, however, impossible to ignore the widespread conflicts across the Middle East, the so-called "War on Terror" and escalating tensions between ethnic groups across the UK and USA. Within this framework, the topic of human rights has cropped up a few times and not entirely in the manner one might expect, given the relatively young age of the UDHR.

I said in my previous post that I would return to this subject later on and elaborate on specific cases to illustrate my point in practice, which is my intention with this post. I will endeavour to write sensitively and thoughtfully, support my statements with evidence-based research and in so doing, hopefully make an eloquent point about the different ways we apply human rights in practice to the people who find themselves falling back on them. As such, I thoroughly expect that this will be a very, very long entry, for which I apologise, but in the interest of making my point carefully it will be necessary to cover a lot of background. 

As I have said previously, it's not always a comfortable perspective to respect the basic human rights of a person who has, or is accused of having caused suffering to other people. Sometimes I have to work really hard at overcoming my anger when reading about those who have exploited or harmed others on any level - something that came to the front of my mind over the weekend when someone on Facebook posted a picture of the World Trade Centre in New York with the second tower in flames shortly after the hijacked plane had crashed into it. 

An emotive image in itself, evoking memories of that pivotal change in global politics when I, as a 17 year old girl, suddenly felt very grown-up and a bit frightened of the world.  The image wasn't what got me riled up though, but the caption accompanying it did. It consisted of a letter (supposedly) written by a Canadian housewife to her local paper, venting her umbrage at the reported condemnation of US soldiers defiling the bodies of deceased insurgents and the allegations of torture and abuse by US and UK forces. Her precise point was along the lines of 'why should I care about them when they attacked us first?'. The last time I looked at the image on Facebook it had been shared by 45,517 people. That's a lot of people (I presume) agreeing with this woman. 

I am one person who doesn't agree with her. I could post the image and the accompanying text here for you to make up your own mind, but to be completely honest I don't want to. Reading it again fills me with such sadness for the seemingly huge number of very narrow-minded people, I just don't want to pollute my blog with it. If you really want to look at it, you can follow this LINK, but I will warn you now, it makes for very uncomfortable reading - not least because it's a very poorly researched rant, almost worthy of the Daily Mail. 

At this point, I would like to include one of my favourite and recently discovered quotes. It summarises very neatly how I feel about people who like to make extreme statements without having all the facts at their disposal:

"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No-one is entitled to be ignorant." - Harlan Ellison

It's a beautiful point, nicely made. Hold whatever beliefs and ideas you want - but let them be well informed. READ widely about issues before you make your mind up and condemn one party or another. Tell me I'm an idiot for my views if you like, but please research as much as I do about these issues before deciding whether or not to agree with me.

The issue of human rights is a very personal one. You either believe that everyone is entitled to their basic human rights, or you don't. There's a wealth of logical - and even spiritual - arguments to support my belief on this matter, but an equal number of emotive and persuasive ones to the contrary. 

My view on human rights is informed by two things: firstly, the accounts I've read of torture, oppression, exploitation, and execution through the brief time I spent studying human rights at university. What I learned in that time made me feel so utterly despondent about how we, the human race, behave towards one another that I wanted to run away and live on the moon. Secondly, I thought about what MY human rights meant to me. What sort of scenario could I envisage where I might need to call on my human rights to protect me? 

Let's imagine a hypothetical situation where I am accused of some dreadful crime. We can expect that I would not be arrested or detained unless there was sound evidence against me, and in that instance I would receive a fair trial by jury, the evidence presented would be accurate, testimonies against me would be truthful and the sentence I received - if found guilty - would be proportionate to the crime I had committed. All of these elements of my treatment are protected exclusively by MY human rights - me, the hypothetical criminal. 

Let us change the scenario slightly and presume that I am innocent. The theory of the UK justice system is that everything possible is done to ensure that no innocent person is ever convicted of a crime they didn't commit. We can reasonably expect, therefore, to have our innocence presumed until guilt is proven. As such, we can expect that I will have access to competent legal defence, will be treated with dignity and respect if remanded into custody, fed and watered adequately, and at all times assured that the case against me will be examined fairly so that my innocence can be ascertained and I can be released back into my regular life with no repercussions from the incorrect allegations made against me. Once again, this relies entirely on my human rights being observed. 

I am a good, law-abiding person as and such I can be reasonably confident that my daily life will continue without the threat of arbitrary arrest, torture, systematic rape, oppression or censorship. The very fact that I can sit at home and write this blog without fear of repercussion from the state is actually quite a big deal when you put it into context with nations of poor human rights records. 

The whole entire point is that these rights of mine will always be there. Nothing will take them away. I will never be in danger of the police hammering down my door and carting me away because of something I've been falsely accused of, then watching a corrupted trial take place where the evidence produced against me has been entirely fabricated or obtained by torturing me. 

This is not true of many countries. In fact, it's not even always true of Britain. It's something of a myth that we as a nation have an impeccable human rights record. We are not a paradigm of morality- a statement that is only vaguely alluded to in the Canadian housewife's rant attached to the picture from September 11th, 2001. It is worth noting that she doesn't deny that there are substantiated claims of US and UK forces abusing and torturing detained insurgents in the Middle East - only that she doesn't care.


But what does any of this have to do with the rights of Really Bad People? You know the ones I mean - the ones in the papers, who've committed unspeakable acts of violence or abuse against one or more persons. They might be child molesters, rapists, terrorists, murderers, wife beaters, or any one of a whole spectrum of reprehensible acts a human is capable of perpetrating against another. WHY do I ascribe the same claim to human rights for these people as I do to you and me, the decent, respectable, well behaved, functioning members of society?

THAT is going to have to come in another instalment. Well done if you've managed to stick with me so far. I promise that part 3 is not far behind and worth reading! Go and grab a cuppa and the next part will be along shortly, possibly once I've had a cup of tea and finished editing it.