SO IT BEGINS

I know that I tend to go through life with a particularly bleak world view, and that I sometimes struggle to see the bright side of things (wherever that might be), but I’ve seldom been more terrified for the future as when I was sitting in my car the other day and my radio station of choice broadcast an interview with the spokesperson for one of those groups which claims to speak for “The Ordinary Working Class English people” about the recent incidents of racial disharmony which have been blighting our streets.

Anyone who claims to speak for such a large and diverse group of people must have something to say that resonates with all of them, and yet the spite and bile that he was churning out seemed to be the opinions of a small but admittedly vocal minority, albeit one which is getting a larger following every day, mostly because its easier to believe half-truths meant to feed your fears than to bother to go and find out the truth for yourself. We already live in a world where what people “reckon” is listened to more frequently than what people actually know, in all sorts of communities, and that’s just the sort of culture in which hate can find its way right in through the front door and get nurtured and grow.

For anyone who has ever read any European history, specifically in relation to the first half of the twentieth century, all of what was being said, and how it is being spread all just has a terrifyingly familiar ring about it...

When someone starts bandying phrases like “We would intern them...” around, in response to a question about belief, my alarm bells start tingling and, whilst it’s never wise to immediately start alluding to the rise of fascism in the twentieth century, (because if you do, the argument is probably already well on its way towards being lost), the parallels are there to be found if you look for them and it doesn’t take a massive leap of the imagination to notice that the ghettoisation of any minority group on religious grounds has happened before.

Yes, it could happen here…

If we don’t step up to the plate and refuse to let it, then it might…

Turn any group into the perceived “enemy” and you make them into targets for all of the rage and the anger and the fury that’s built up in the pressure cooker of society... and when this notion of “our way of life being under attack” is allowed to get up a head of steam, or the misguided idea that certain people you represent are “the silent majority” is given credence, or even talking as if somehow a position of relative privilege of living as a citizen of the first world somehow is making you a minority in your “own country” is a very dangerous stance to be taking and can build up to one thing leading to another and the next thing you know you’ve got a political movement gaining ground with too much power and influence and which everyone is far too terrified to oppose.

You may think that it couldn’t happen here…? That we’re far too reasonable to put up with that sort of thing…?

Think again…

Unemployment and poverty and the rage and anger of youth and a sense of entitlement are the very life blood of extremism at both ends of the political spectrum, and if someone comes along with a message that resonates with that sort of thinking, they can become pretty powerful pretty quickly, and if that power is used irresponsibly, then we can all end up paying a very high price indeed.

Certain groups are now printing and publishing downright statistical lies as truths and those lies are being believed. When a woman on “Any Questions?” a few weeks ago stated as fact the highly inaccurate idea that “forty percent of immigrants have been arrested” she was quite rightly condemned for her use of a spurious statistic, but I think you’ll agree that she was able to get those lies out and, unfortunately, it’s her statement that gets remembered.

Even if you read a paragraph like the last one very carefully indeed, I would be very surprised if it wasn’t just her statement that you remember from it and not the point of its fundamental inaccuracy.

Meanwhile whenever anyone starts to think in terms of “them” and “us” instead of just “people” then the battle lines are immediately drawn up, and in these cases, just because “they’re doing it too” still does not mean that two wrongs will ever make a right.

Equally, any claim to be “anti-violence” is very easy to make when you know precisely how to get other people wound up and then release them to perform your acts of violence for you whilst pretending to be appalled whilst at the same time being secretly quite pleased about it because any retaliation plays straight back into your hands.

The problem is that I can understand how this simple message could resonate with people who are living in poverty and get most of their information from whatever newspaper they pick up on their way to work or in the pub.

I can understand how hearing just one side of events, or not having the whole picture, and then discussing it down the pub with people living a similarly uninformed existence can lead to anger and flashpoints and that kind of pressure only gets released in violent acts.

When your life is only beer and telly and your mates, it's very easy to acquire a very narrow world view, and someone who is devious and manipulative can seize upon that and motivate all kinds of hate in the name of freedom.

All sides of this debate need to realise that, just because you don't like someone’s religion or life choices does not give anyone else the right to abuse them for having those beliefs.

Yes, what happened in Woolwich was a bloody tragedy in so many ways, but we should not allow it to trigger the loss of our basic freedoms and the delights of being able to live in a free and tolerant multi-cultural society, the kind of society that soldiers have been fighting and dying for in the fight against extremism in all its forms for many, many years.

If we could all learn to appreciate what we’ve got and what our cultural diversity gives us then we really, really ought to, before we lose it forever in a wave of anarchy and violence and turn our country into the sort of place that none of us should really want to live in.

Otherwise, the barbarians at the gate are quite likely to pull down the walls of civilisation and plunge the whole lot of us into a new dark age and the prospect of that is really far too terrifying to have to contemplate.

Finally, perhaps this famous old poem is worth remembering at a time like this:

First they came for the communists,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Catholic.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

(Poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller)