‘the country had voted to get people like her to “get out”‘… January 16, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Swedish citizens at the Scandinavian Kitchen cafe in central London told her of the anxieties about their future and xenophobic abuse they had experienced since the referendum.One woman working in the City told how her chief executive had to send an email to all employees to tell them xenophobic behaviour was not acceptable after she was told by a colleague that the country had voted to get people like her to “get out”. Another told her how she felt that she and other Swedes would end up being “collateral damage” in negotiations.
What has happened to Britain? Something that was always there or something that the referendum result has somehow ‘legitimised’?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
If everything Swedish were suddenly to disappear from britain, a lot of arses would find themselves sitting on the floor with all their possessions in disarray around them. And streaming silence on their phones.
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And Mourinho would have collected another P45 by now.
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I’m afraid we won the battle against racism too cheaply – some time in the late 90s or early 00s it became something that everyone knew you mustn’t ever express, without a lot of people really getting the message that it was wrong to feel it. With Brexit those people feel it’s their time now, and they no longer have to pay lip service to political correctness etc etc. There’s that, and there’s the fact that – even if it is their time – this is objectively a pretty awful time, particularly for lower-paid workers; there’s a lot of spare anger and resentment floating around. It’s depressing to think that it was only lip-service-to-political-correctness-etc that stopped some people telling their coworkers to f*** off home whenever times got tough, though
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+1
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+1
The vast majority of brits are just getting on with their lives and trying to get by in an ever more deteriorating circumstances. On the whole – they’re a pretty tolerant bunch.
But there is a substantial minority (irony?) which cuts across social, class and monetary boundaries who feel entitled to practice their range of “foilbles” – a wee bit of racism here, a smidgeon of misogny there, and so on. And there is a rather pervasive longing by quite a large cohort of people to practice what I call the ‘social exclusionary principle’: as long as I can think there is someone worse off than me (often concretely thought of as lower than me) I don’t feel too bad. I often think this exclusionary principle can be harvested at times to be used for Brexit type purposes. Add in a bit of nationalist hoopla and you have a toxic stew.
Nice (who spend most of here life in Ireland) just received her citizenship paper and new passport. We’re planning our return home …. or maybe France.
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Niece but very nice
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“Or France”
Niece to Nice then?
I mentioned in passing to someone at work – a leave voter – that i wasn’t minded to stay in the UK long term and he went ‘why?’ Genuinely puzzled that i’d take it personally.
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Nice one…
yeah, find the same occassionally in Ecosse – esp when Ireland mentioned…baffled
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You’d almost prefer some of them to be straight about it and say “we want to get out from the EU treaties and if that means some people have to leave the country, so be it”. The cluelessness is worrying though.
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Racism and Brexit votes (not identical but strong overlap) are strongest where people have least actual daily contact with Others. It makes sense that a significant number of people feel “no, of course I don’t mean you, you’re a colleague / neighbour / person I’m chatting to and treating like an equal, I mean Them Out There”. But still happy to ally with the aggressive “go back where you came from” type of racist.
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That’s the paradox, the sense of other is greatest where the supposed ‘others’ are least in number. Whipped up by compliant media and noxious politicians and a weird inaccurate nostalgia.
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Not to mention that said nostalgia (eg in the case of WWII, empire or for that matter Downton Abbey) has been increasing exponentially the fewer people are left around who experienced (or suffered, or perpetrated) these things as adults. WWII as a sort of new founding myth of English nationalism is fundamentally WWII as imagined (or as experienced by children) – my maths suggests that if you were 16 in 1945 and so old enough to be in the military, you are now 88 and lucky if you can make it to a polling station.
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‘Others’,-immigrants- are least in number because immigrants, understandably, gravitate to the more prosperous areas. Racist scapegoating comes more easily where economic conditions are poor.
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Phil, sadly, I think you are right. Although I think many of the younger generation,but not all, don’t feel that gut antagonism to “foreigners” or people of different races which it seems quite a few white Brits do feel.
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+1. And some of this cheap victory no doubt down to NGOs and liberals happy to call it a victory when broadsheets, schools etc. agreed that racism was officially A Bad Thing. Or maybe more exactly in a lot of cases to call that *their* victory and take ownership of the issue from on-the-ground organising.
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And on the ground organising is the only serious way to combat it too.
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‘EU citizens could have their lives turned upside down with bank accounts closed, employment terminated and rental agreements revoked if their current rights to reside in the UK are not guaranteed after Brexit, a leading immigration lawyer has warned.’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/16/eu-citizens-in-uk-could-face-deliberate-hostility-policy-after-brexit
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