Britain’s Kristallnacht…

One of the most enduring mysteries of the Holocaust is how did one of the most cultured societies in Europe debase itself through the mass murder of Jews and others to the tune of around eleven million people? For decades we have looked back on the Second World War with a sense of moral superiority, the Germans were depraved, evil, while we were the good guys who helped defeat the killers, bring them to justice and expose their crimes to the world.

Roll on eighty years and the descendants of the war generation in Rotherham last weekend, tried to burn down a hotel that was housing asylum seekers. As they did so, they barricaded the doors to prevent anyone escaping, a tactic straight out of the Nazi playbook, evidenced at Oradour-sur-Glane in France, and scores of places in Poland and elsewhere. Had they succeeded, hundreds of human beings, including women and young children would have been burnt to death. Elsewhere, Black people and Muslims were assaulted purely on the basis of their appearance, homes were attacked and businesses were burnt down and looted.

The spark for what can only be called a pogrom, was the murder of three young girls and serious injury of others in Southport, Lancashire, on 29 July. The crimes are now sub-judice but as is so often the case in extreme crimes, the internet was quickly awash with rumours. The perpetrator was supposedly an asylum seeker, recently arrived in Britain, which was quickly shown to be false. He was declared a Muslim, which seems unlikely as Merseyside police took the unusual step of naming the suspect who was still under eighteen, and confirmed that he had been born in the UK of Rwandan parents, an overwhelmingly Christian country. The police have not opined as to his motive and anything beyond that is pure speculation.

Outrage over the slaughter of innocents was cynically exploited to whip up hatred of immigrants and non-whites in general and we have witnessed the results. In Nazi Germany in 1938, Hitler unleashed his thugs on the Jewish community in response to the assassination in Paris of a German diplomat by a Jew. Thousands of Jews were beaten and flung into concentration camps and their businesses were ransacked in an event known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. Synagogues were set ablaze and firemen watched them burn. The recent events in the UK were not instigated by the state. The police did not assist the rioters but in more than one place, the police, perhaps due to lack of numbers or for sound operational reasons, did not intervene in the manner the public might expect. The use of violence by the state has become so controversial that the police are now reluctant to use force even where it may be necessary to save life and property.

We are told there are genuine concerns in communities that have been left behind. Certainly, working-class communities see immigrants as competitors for jobs, housing and public money in a way the middle classes do not and are more likely to live cheek to jowl to new arrivals. The provision of housing, lagging far behind demand for decades, and other infrastructure is failing to keep up with a rapid expansion in population and it is also true that the political establishment in both Britain and Ireland has done little to curb the number of both legal immigrants and asylum seekers. All of that might explain resentment towards newcomers but not the murderous rage which was directed at those of a different ethnic background including people that have lived in the UK their entire lives. Arson, looting, violent assaults and attempted murder cannot be justified by economic or social anxiety or whatever buzzword apologists may use to condone it. People did not take to the streets when a deranged white man killed a fourteen-year-old black child, Daniel Anjorin, in May. Last August, Lucy Letby, a white nurse was convicted of murdering seven babies, and attempting to murder another six, not the first instance of a nurse doing so. The streets were quiet because people understand that hacking someone to death with a sword or murdering babies are the acts of uniquely deranged or wicked individuals. The entire community or race the perpetrators come from are not regarded as inherently murderous. Whatever has been going on the last few days is nothing to do with anger at child killers.

Given our own bloody past in Northern Ireland where people were slashed, tortured or beaten to death, I think we park any notions of being more civilised society than the ones immigrants come from. All societies produce wicked and violent people. No one deserves to be demonised because of their faith, their colour, their ancestry or where they born. By all means have the debate on immigration but don’t use the issue to justify the criminality and evil, yes evil, we witnessed at the weekend. The Holocaust was a gradual, step by step process that ended in death camps because ordinary Germans were prepared to believe all sorts of nonsense about Jews, that they were directing a global conspiring to destroy Germany, that they simultaneously controlled the capitalist West and communist East, that they were evil and subhuman. Many in our society have already started down the road of demonising Muslims in a similar manner. How far we go down the road to perdition depends on ordinary people saying enough is enough, we must not go any further. There are no excuses for attacking people, their businesses and homes.

Our public services, particularly the Health Service could not function without immigrants. Many do work the weekend’s rioters view as beneath them, such as picking fruit. That having been said, immigration is the hot political issue throughout the western world. The economy cannot function without legal immigration and the numbers of asylum seekers in the UK and Ireland while small compared to our European neighbours, are challenging both states to process claims and accommodate those that arrive. There is no easy answer. The EU is effectively paying Turkey to corral migrants on its behalf, while Poland claims Russia is pushing as many towards the EU as possible in an effort to whip up the kind of instability and passions we saw over the weekend. ^{Frontline states in North Africa, in some cases, are possibly even killing migrants. In early July the mass grave of 65 migrants were found in the Libyan desert. Volker Turk, a UN human rights spokesperson said that abuses against migrants were being ‘perpetrated at scale, with impunity’ by both state and non-state actors.}

What is certain, is the hundreds of millions who live in grinding poverty or who are at risk of their lives will try to have a better one elsewhere. The long-term solution is to make the developing world more peaceful and prosperous, reducing at source the pressures that induce migration. People do not leave their families to travel thousands of miles to a foreign land on a whim. Anyone with a relative in North America or Australia knows how heart-rending emigration can be. Foreign Aid is however, bitterly resented by the same people opposed to immigration and we all have heard the argument, ‘why don’t we spend the money on our own’, etc. If only it were that simple.

The world is interconnected and we really cannot expect most of the world to exist in dangerous penury while we live in comparative security and comfort. It’s time for some grown up thinking and a proper national debate on the issue.