Latest / The Fourcast / Will UK anti-migrant protests explode into riots again?

Transcript

Will UK anti-migrant protests explode into riots again? · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  It's hard not to think the UK is on fire.
• 0:02
  There's anger everywhere. Is it?
• 0:04
  People are extremely angry. A dangerous level of anger in
• 0:07
  your view? Yeah, seething with anger.
• 0:10
  None of the conditions of what happened last summer have gone
• 0:15
  away. Violence might not happen, but
• 0:17
  the absence of riots shouldn't be anybody's test for cohesion
• 0:20
  in our country. Sometimes all we need to do is
• 0:22
  sit down with these people, meet each other, and you'll discover
• 0:26
  that the other side aren't necessarily the monsters which
• 0:28
  you think they are. Hello and welcome to the
• 0:33
  forecast Are anti migrant protests around the country
• 0:37
  about to explode into another summer of riots?
• 0:40
  A year ago, towns across Britain were in flames as anti
• 0:43
  immigration protests turned violent.
• 0:45
  They were prompted by the mass stabbing of girls as a dance
• 0:48
  class in Southport, but fuelled by online misinformation and
• 0:52
  anti Muslim rhetoric. It was the largest instance of
• 0:55
  social unrest in England for more than a decade and there are
• 0:58
  fears that this summer could see a repeat.
• 1:01
  Already there's been a string of protests around hotels housing
• 1:04
  asylum seekers, the Police Federation called recent unrest
• 1:08
  in Epping a signal flare. So with the number of migrants
• 1:11
  crossing the Channel in small boats actually up, and social
• 1:15
  media, not to mention certain MPs pumping out inflammatory
• 1:18
  comments, is a summer marked by more violence inevitable?
• 1:23
  And how did the police, the politicians and the protesters
• 1:25
  them styles distinguish between the genuine concerns of
• 1:28
  dispossessed communities and the gratuitous violence of racists
• 1:32
  and the far right? To discuss this I'm joined by
• 1:35
  the academic doctor Lisa McKenzie, who writes primarily
• 1:37
  about working class communities and class inequality.
• 1:40
  Sundar Katwala, the director of the think tank British Future,
• 1:44
  which focuses on diversity and social inclusion, and Adam
• 1:47
  Kelwick, imam of EU KS oldest mosque in Liverpool, who came to
• 1:51
  prominence during last year's riots with his attempts at
• 1:55
  dialogue with protesters. Thank you, all of you, for
• 1:57
  joining us today. Can I begin by asking you, if
• 2:00
  you look at what we've been looking at, at Epping in other
• 2:03
  places across the country, it's hard not to think the UK is on
• 2:06
  fire. There's anger everywhere, Is it?
• 2:10
  Yeah, I think there is. I'll be honest, I'm not sure
• 2:13
  that we're in for a summer of riots.
• 2:15
  I'm not sure about that. But I do know that there's been
• 2:18
  a growing anger that is inescapable.
• 2:22
  You know what isn't inescapable for me?
• 2:25
  Because I live in a working class community.
• 2:28
  I work in working class communities and people are
• 2:31
  extremely angry. But it's a number of things.
• 2:35
  It's not just one thing, it's lots of things.
• 2:37
  It's things not working properly.
• 2:39
  It's the cost of living crisis. You know, everybody's
• 2:43
  complaining that every that food is going up day by day.
• 2:46
  And then of course, you know, there's this constant news cycle
• 2:53
  about people coming in from different countries, you know,
• 2:56
  are they getting this or are they getting that?
• 2:58
  And there is a drip feed going on.
• 3:00
  So people are extremely angry. A dangerous level of anger in
• 3:06
  your view? Yeah, I, I would, I would say
• 3:10
  ordinary people that that a few years ago didn't even know any
• 3:13
  of this existed are now talking about it.
• 3:16
  And people who a few years ago did know it existed are now
• 3:19
  seething with anger. So yeah, I I would say that this
• 3:24
  is where we are. Senator Cutwaller, I'm in a
• 3:26
  country, or at least parts of it, seething with anger.
• 3:29
  I think riots and violence certainly aren't inevitable, but
• 3:32
  they're but they're possible. I think we need vigilance
• 3:35
  without alarmism. That can be a difficult balance
• 3:38
  to strike. None of the conditions of what
• 3:41
  happened last summer have gone away in terms of the tinderbox
• 3:46
  on social media, if there is a shocking event, if there were
• 3:49
  rumours of something that's happened in terms of the long
• 3:52
  term underlying causes. So we we haven't dealt with the
• 3:56
  long term causes, we haven't dealt with some of the sharp
• 3:59
  short term pressures. But you know, violence might not
• 4:02
  happen. But the absence of riots
• 4:04
  shouldn't be anybody's test for cohesion in our country.
• 4:07
  You were in the middle of the actual violence and rioting of
• 4:10
  last year. Where do you think we are right
• 4:12
  now? So I I like to always be
• 4:15
  optimistic, but at the same time that has to be balanced with
• 4:18
  some realism. And unfortunately, all the
• 4:22
  ingredients which were there last year are also still here
• 4:26
  this year. I think you know, the, the, the
• 4:29
  firewood, which are these small numbers of these very
• 4:35
  ideologically driven people, whether that's racism, anti
• 4:40
  immigrant hatred, anti Muslim hatred, they are there.
• 4:44
  The fuel is continuously being poured maybe even more intensely
• 4:48
  now than last year by the media, whether that's the mainstream
• 4:51
  media or whether it's online channels and accounts.
• 4:55
  And unfortunately, if there was to be a spark, I think there is
• 4:58
  a very real danger that we could find ourselves in a similar
• 5:02
  situation to last year. OK.
• 5:04
  You both touch on this idea of the ingredients are there.
• 5:07
  I don't know whether you agree about what those ingredients
• 5:10
  are. I'm assuming you'd say they're
• 5:11
  not ideologically driven. Not well.
• 5:14
  There are ideologically driven people who are making hay out of
• 5:18
  these situations. Of course there are on the far
• 5:21
  right and on the left as well. That is happening.
• 5:24
  But then there are other ingredients.
• 5:25
  You know, there is 40 years of deindustrialisation and no
• 5:30
  economic strategy that's gonna lift the bottom up.
• 5:33
  There's poverty, there's feelings of hopelessness.
• 5:36
  You know, we've had 40 years of, of, of inequality widening and
• 5:43
  hopelessness. So don't you know, we shouldn't
• 5:45
  be not expecting. We've got hopeless people, you
• 5:48
  know, people who look out in their future and don't see
• 5:51
  anything good happening. But it ties to this very big
• 5:54
  question, doesn't it, about what are legitimate concerns and what
• 5:57
  are legitimate ways of expressing them.
• 5:59
  I, I do find myself in, in, in agreement with you because as I
• 6:03
  said, there are a small number of these people who are pushing
• 6:07
  certain ideologies and narratives.
• 6:09
  But what happens is the vast majority of people who are
• 6:13
  dragged into these protests and these riots are, in my
• 6:16
  experience, because I've been working a lot with people who
• 6:19
  attended the riots last year. I've been building real
• 6:23
  friendships with them. And I've found that actually the
• 6:25
  vast majority of the number of people who attend these riots
• 6:29
  and protests aren't necessarily the types who are driven by the
• 6:32
  ideologies. They're dragged into other
• 6:34
  people's narratives. And in fact, they're just
• 6:36
  genuine people who have genuine concerns.
• 6:39
  And they are worried about society.
• 6:41
  They are worried about their children.
• 6:43
  They have lots of worries who we incidentally, as a Muslim
• 6:46
  community also share with those concerns with.
• 6:48
  Them when so much of that sorry with so much of those legitimate
• 6:52
  concerns that you both talked about seemed throughout the
• 6:56
  riots last time we look at the the hotel issue directed at
• 7:00
  immigrants directed at migrants. I think it's right to have the
• 7:04
  concept of legitimate concerns. There are people who mock that
• 7:07
  and say it's always dog whistling or it's always
• 7:09
  pandering prejudice. But I think we forget something,
• 7:12
  which is the very concept of legitimate concerns involves a
• 7:16
  differentiation between the legitimate and the illegitimate.
• 7:20
  And that is partly about the means, which is it's peaceful
• 7:23
  voice and your right to voice, and it's not violence,
• 7:25
  intimidation and threat. And it's partly about what
• 7:28
  you're saying as well. So if you're saying send them
• 7:31
  all back or extend that we don't just want the asylum seekers
• 7:34
  out, we want all the minorities, all the Muslims, you know,
• 7:37
  everybody out to them, that's illegitimate.
• 7:41
  And I think if you're defending the legitimate concerns, you
• 7:43
  also have to be drawing the line as to what you're not admitting.
• 7:48
  So there are people and they they were successful in
• 7:50
  Rotherham and they were successful in Ballymena and
• 7:52
  they're who they were hoping to be successful in Epping, who are
• 7:55
  not saying let's get the council to petition the government to
• 7:58
  change the policy on the hotels. They're saying let's make it so
• 8:01
  dangerous that people flee. I mean, let's make the
• 8:04
  government the new. People no, it, no, it is.
• 8:06
  And I think what we've got, we've come to this point where
• 8:08
  when people say there's legitimate concerns, you've got
• 8:11
  a whole group of I mean, they're calling them the lanyard class
• 8:16
  now or, you know, the the middle class left or the, you know, I
• 8:21
  call them the bourgeois left who are now sort of, you know,
• 8:25
  they're not allowing people to have legitimate concerns when
• 8:28
  you say legitimate concerns, like it's almost like you're
• 8:31
  Enoch Powell. You know, so we, we've closed
• 8:33
  down that whole Ave. of debate and I'll tell you now that point
• 8:39
  of, you know, where perhaps five years ago people were saying,
• 8:43
  you know, perhaps illegal migration needs to be, you know,
• 8:46
  looked at now they are saying send everybody back.
• 8:49
  I think because there's a lack of trust with our government,
• 8:53
  with politicians, with the media, they're they're actually
• 8:55
  gonna deal with these legitimate concerns.
• 8:58
  So instead, you know, everybody's being 40, not power,
• 9:00
  I think. There's a problem with the
• 9:02
  concept. Actually, it's a very distancing
• 9:04
  concept, which is. I do not share your legitimate
• 9:07
  concerns, but I respect them. It does feel quite it does.
• 9:10
  Feel quite. Far apart, but actually, you
• 9:13
  know, this government is very clear that it's that it's, it's
• 9:17
  so concerned in a way to not criticise people's right to
• 9:21
  protest asylum, hotels and so on that it risks actually not doing
• 9:24
  the other half of the argument, which is to say there's also
• 9:28
  racism and prejudice as part of this.
• 9:30
  And we need to make that separation because we're going
• 9:32
  to listen to the mainstream argument, but we're not
• 9:35
  actually. But how do you make that
• 9:36
  distinct that? I think ultimately if you look
• 9:40
  back to last year and how intense it was, a lot of people
• 9:43
  have forgotten with time, but it was very, very intense.
• 9:45
  It wasn't just intense for the immigration centres and the
• 9:49
  mosques which were targeted, but it was also intense for
• 9:52
  everybody in society. We saw our city centres smashed
• 9:55
  up, we saw children's services, libraries smashed up, we saw
• 9:58
  lots of towns in absolute chaos and that affects everybody and I
• 10:04
  don't think anybody in society wants to go back to where we.
• 10:07
  Were but that is actually what happens when people riot that I
• 10:09
  mean, that's that that's also the normal shape of a riot that
• 10:14
  people do smash up their own communities.
• 10:17
  There's a criminological concept for this.
• 10:20
  It's called slow rioting. It's what happens when the state
• 10:23
  has removed themselves from your community and you, you can't get
• 10:27
  at the people or the state that's causing new problems.
• 10:31
  I mean, we were there for you. And what what Lisa, I think is
• 10:33
  rightly saying is that is that that broader oxygen, not the
• 10:37
  violence itself, but the broader oxygen is, is based on people
• 10:40
  feeling unheard. If you want to make that
• 10:42
  distinction, there are actually some really important ways to do
• 10:45
  it. 1 is, is it peaceful? Is it violent?
• 10:49
  Is it threatening? Another really good test I think
• 10:51
  in the society we're in now is if you've got legitimate
• 10:53
  concerns, could somebody white, working class, somebody Asian,
• 10:57
  somebody back share those concerns?
• 10:59
  Or are they the concerns only of one but?
• 11:01
  Can I just ask you, you as someone you know you're in a
• 11:04
  mosque when the rioters headed towards you, are you ever in
• 11:07
  that moment thinking any of these concerns are legitimate?
• 11:11
  So what I found on the night of the riots when people were
• 11:15
  outside our mosque is when I stepped over the police lines
• 11:20
  after we confirmed with the police that it was safe to do
• 11:22
  so, and I started speaking with the protesters.
• 11:26
  More important than speaking to them was listening to them.
• 11:29
  Then people did share some of their concerns with me.
• 11:32
  A lot of those concerns were based on on ignorance and, and
• 11:35
  and falsehoods. However I was listening.
• 11:38
  I'll, I'll give you one example, one gentleman, probably the
• 11:41
  loudest person at the protest. I asked him, why exactly are you
• 11:45
  here at our mosque? You know, what's this got to do
• 11:47
  with anything? He said we're fed up with two
• 11:50
  tier policing. To which I said to him, well,
• 11:52
  why not take the protest to the police station then?
• 11:54
  You know, what does this have to do with us?
• 11:56
  But the point is, I think there is an argument for saying that
• 12:02
  many members of the white British working class people
• 12:05
  need to be heard. I don't think their voices are
• 12:08
  represented. And this, this is an issue.
• 12:10
  I think they're not represented or very rarely represented
• 12:14
  properly within politics. And I don't think the
• 12:16
  politicians are listening to them.
• 12:18
  And unfortunately me and my mosque and my community have to
• 12:21
  put up with these protests and these riots when actually what
• 12:24
  they are upset with are decisions which are ultimately.
• 12:27
  But if you're burning down or trying to burn down a hotel
• 12:29
  that's got asylum seekers and can there ever be anything other
• 12:33
  than racist? No, I mean, I'm going to be
• 12:36
  honest. No, I mean it can also, but you
• 12:39
  know, it can also be not a racist intent, but then it it
• 12:42
  does become but. We're targeting asylum people in
• 12:46
  a hotel. It's just racist, isn't it?
• 12:49
  Yes, it yes it is. But, you know, I have spoken to
• 12:53
  people that have that have been around, sort of have been
• 12:57
  thinking about doing this sort of thing.
• 12:59
  And again, are they trying to kill the people inside or are
• 13:04
  they trying to get rid of the problem?
• 13:06
  And I think sometimes when when we've moved over that step of
• 13:10
  reasonableness and an argument and debate and we've moved into
• 13:14
  that step of civil disorder and riot, you know, things are not
• 13:18
  always as clear. And Adam is absolutely right.
• 13:22
  The Muslim community last year had to deal with the fact that
• 13:26
  that there is no there's very little representation for all
• 13:31
  poor working class. People but but if they are
• 13:35
  targeting you, you, you take a very generous view.
• 13:38
  Some people might say, some of the Muslim communities that I've
• 13:41
  spoken to would not take such a generous view that if a mob is
• 13:45
  headed towards you to try and throw stones or or or damage
• 13:49
  your mosque shouting things that are really offensive that are
• 13:54
  out and out racist, then that does that delegitimize anything
• 13:59
  that you may have started with the intent that you talked
• 14:01
  about? I mean, yes, I mean, of course
• 14:04
  it it does delegitimize it because you what you've done it.
• 14:07
  Also puts people at danger. You put people.
• 14:10
  In danger, I mean. Well, I am a white working class
• 14:13
  woman. I wasn't.
• 14:15
  I wasn't called white and working class until about 2000.
• 14:20
  That was always working class and that is where that's where
• 14:24
  you know, where the problem is. About 20 to five years ago, you
• 14:28
  know, we decided that there were divisions between working class
• 14:32
  people and you know, and we've done that through box ticking
• 14:36
  and through. And so I don't want to be white
• 14:39
  and working class. I want to be working class and I
• 14:42
  want all working class people. But the very distinction does
• 14:45
  suit some people who don't want black or brown people within the
• 14:50
  you who don't consider them the same.
• 14:51
  Yes, and that's on and that's on many different levels.
• 14:55
  You know, I'm, I'm with Adam really I, I'd like to, you know,
• 14:58
  for us all to come together, all working class people.
• 15:01
  And this is a class issue about inequality.
• 15:04
  It's under coming. I think we've got to make some
• 15:06
  distinctions here. They're very different
• 15:09
  experiences of change in our society.
• 15:11
  I've had a positive experience of change in my society in my
• 15:15
  lifetime because I'm the child of migrants.
• 15:17
  I did well in education. If you're, you know, there are
• 15:20
  lots of people, first, second generation British minorities,
• 15:25
  women in workplaces, people who are gay who have had a positive
• 15:28
  experience of change, they're very much more negative
• 15:30
  experience of change between the cities and the townspeople feel
• 15:34
  unheard in the townspeople feel unheard from working class
• 15:37
  backgrounds. People who haven't, you know,
• 15:39
  got many degrees feel, feel unheard.
• 15:42
  That is very different from the people who are trying to get all
• 15:47
  the Muslims and all the asylum seekers out there.
• 15:49
  About one in 50 people in our country were elated by the
• 15:53
  violence, not because they fear a civil war, but because they're
• 15:56
  rather hoping for one. So I think, I think policing and
• 15:59
  telling that group what is unacceptable and then cutting
• 16:02
  them off from maybe 1/4 of society, 1/3 of society, 40% of
• 16:06
  society. They've got things to say in the
• 16:08
  political system about immigration, asylum,
• 16:10
  integration. That's a crucial distinction to
• 16:12
  make. Otherwise, this language about
• 16:14
  legitimate concerns doesn't cut out the racism, the violence,
• 16:17
  the. Threat.
• 16:18
  So, so, so in, in Liverpool we actually saw a manifestation of
• 16:21
  what what you've just described when it was the LFC parade
• 16:26
  through the city centre, there was somebody who rammed into a
• 16:29
  crowd full of people. I was actually at the parade, I
• 16:32
  left before the incident itself and I was looking online because
• 16:37
  unfortunately, because of the way things work, people will go
• 16:40
  straight to X before they go to any legitimate or kind of
• 16:45
  credible source of information. And they'll see they want to
• 16:48
  know right then, right now what's happening as happened in
• 16:51
  Southport. And what I was seeing was
• 16:54
  unfortunately, people who were not bothered at all about the
• 16:59
  the people who were injured in the attack all they wanted.
• 17:03
  And it's like they were desperate for the driver of the
• 17:06
  car to be either an immigrant or an asylum seeker or a Muslim.
• 17:11
  And when it when it occurred later on that he wasn't, it was
• 17:15
  almost as if they were disappointed because they
• 17:17
  couldn't push for this narrative to be enforced and and this this
• 17:22
  racist agenda, if you like. Yeah.
• 17:24
  I mean, what I, I'd also say is you're sort of talking about the
• 17:28
  police or the government telling somebody, you know, that this is
• 17:31
  unacceptable, but who is telling the police and who is telling
• 17:36
  the government that what they are doing is unacceptable as
• 17:38
  well? Because I think that's where
• 17:40
  we've got a problem, is this idea that, you know, some people
• 17:44
  are legitimately telling us what's acceptable and what isn't
• 17:47
  and yet nobody is holding the people to account that's making
• 17:51
  the decisions that is causing these divisions, the hotels
• 17:55
  since. They can.
• 17:56
  Stand back, I think. They can look at people
• 17:59
  protesting and fighting outside asylum seeker hotels and say
• 18:02
  this is nothing to do. With us and they can put lots of
• 18:05
  memes about poor white working class people all over social
• 18:09
  media. You know, there, there.
• 18:10
  I, I remember last year at Southport, I remember people
• 18:14
  laughing openly, taking photographs of, of the
• 18:18
  television and saying, look at the state of these people's
• 18:20
  teeth. You know, that is what happens
• 18:23
  when there are no dentists. That's what happens when
• 18:25
  people's health has deteriorated over generations.
• 18:29
  They look ill. But the difficulty?
• 18:31
  Is something positive about what the police were doing in Epping,
• 18:34
  which became the epicentre? There was a, you know, a sexual
• 18:37
  assault, a charge or a serious sexual assault.
• 18:40
  There was protests, there was concern.
• 18:42
  They did a really good job, I think, of saying what you were
• 18:46
  allowed to do if you're a anti hotel protester, if you're a
• 18:50
  left wing protester and what you weren't allowed to do.
• 18:53
  And they said no one's going to wear any, no one's going to have
• 18:56
  face masks on when they're making their points.
• 18:59
  If you do that, then you can be tough on disorder, but that's
• 19:01
  different from being tough on the causes.
• 19:03
  But in, in, in a way, the hotels and the issue about the safety
• 19:08
  of women and children, which is what some people are saying this
• 19:10
  is about it. It's quite interesting, isn't
• 19:13
  it? You know, it's being framed as,
• 19:16
  as you wrote yourself, you know hundreds of unknown unvetted
• 19:19
  single men being housed in their communities.
• 19:22
  I suppose women and girls are surrounded by unvetted unknown
• 19:26
  men. We know the dangers that men
• 19:29
  pose to women. Is it legitimate to target one
• 19:34
  particular group of men in an asylum seekers hotel?
• 19:41
  I think now, I think that now it has become legitimate because,
• 19:45
  you know, for many, many years people have been complaining
• 19:48
  about the government's dispersal programme.
• 19:50
  It's been going, this has been happening in a long time, you
• 19:53
  know, refugees and asylum seekers who are poor themselves
• 20:00
  and are coming from all over the world with different
• 20:03
  backgrounds. They've been put into the
• 20:05
  poorest communities now for at least 25 years.
• 20:09
  I mean. That is the fact that.
• 20:10
  There are. More asylum seekers and refugees
• 20:13
  dispersed to poorer parts. Yeah, and I've made this all.
• 20:15
  I mean, it's only very recently that different governments have
• 20:19
  decided to put more resources into those areas.
• 20:22
  At one point, there was no extra resources and the whole
• 20:25
  community had to share the little that they got.
• 20:27
  That was legitimate concern. But the but to the to the very
• 20:30
  specific point about we know the danger that men pose to to women
• 20:36
  and girls. You know, Wayne Cousins was was
• 20:39
  vetted and was given enough authority to have a police
• 20:43
  uniform to go out and and and and kill and rape.
• 20:48
  Is it legitimate in say in your, in your view, Adam, to use that
• 20:54
  to focus it in as the reason for what is happening around the
• 20:59
  hotels? Is it a legitimate concern or is
• 21:02
  it being used as? I think the big mistake where
• 21:05
  we're all making here is we're referring to groups of people
• 21:09
  and we're stripping them of their humanity.
• 21:11
  And I think all sides are guilty by the way we're stripping them
• 21:14
  of their humanity. So whether that's the white
• 21:16
  British working class or whether that's the far right or whether
• 21:19
  that's asylum seekers, don't forget there are real people
• 21:23
  behind these groups which we have in our in our heads.
• 21:27
  And sometimes all we need to do is sit down with these people,
• 21:30
  meet each other, learn about each other, and you'll discover
• 21:34
  that the other side aren't necessarily the monsters which
• 21:36
  you think they are. And as I said, and this applies
• 21:39
  to all sides, because on the night of the riots in Liverpool,
• 21:41
  many people in the Muslim community were saying to me, no,
• 21:44
  why are you cooking food for these people?
• 21:46
  You can't speak to these people. They want to kill you.
• 21:49
  They want to burn your Moss down and they want to send all
• 21:51
  Muslims out of the country. And I was like, no, they're,
• 21:55
  they're, they're people. And if we're from a religious or
• 21:58
  a spiritual perspective, we have to see the other as a soul.
• 22:02
  And what I have been doing since last year's riots is I've been
• 22:07
  sitting down building friendships with some of the
• 22:09
  heavyweights who were at the Save Our Children protest, for
• 22:11
  example. And I've been allowing them to
• 22:14
  see who I and my community are as people.
• 22:18
  And likewise we've been meeting with them.
• 22:20
  We've been taking young people to gyms who are running
• 22:22
  different parts of the city where they'd never usually be.
• 22:25
  We've been on walks into the Welsh countryside together.
• 22:28
  And guess what? Everybody realizes that they're
• 22:30
  human beings. We have families who we care
• 22:32
  for. We all suffer from the cost of
• 22:35
  living crisis. We all get bills from the tax
• 22:37
  man which we don't like, and all of these problems which are
• 22:40
  pushed out there in these narratives, they're problems
• 22:42
  which affect us as well, believe it or not.
• 22:45
  And so why don't we do something radical?
• 22:47
  Why don't we start working together to solve these issues?
• 22:51
  Because we have volunteers in our community.
• 22:53
  You obviously have a lot of very passionate people about these
• 22:57
  issues. Why don't we come together and
• 22:59
  solve? Them gone beyond doing this sort
• 23:01
  of thing on the ground. I think, I think you have to do
• 23:04
  more of that, not less of it. And there's a hope and there's a
• 23:07
  catharsis if you felt unheard in being unheard.
• 23:10
  And obviously if you're a, if you're a person of faith, then
• 23:13
  you want to save every soul. But I think what's powerful
• 23:16
  about what Adam's saying is, you know, there's a principle that
• 23:18
  you take in good faith, everything said in good faith.
• 23:22
  And if something isn't said in good faith, you try and engage
• 23:24
  with it as if it was. And then there is going to be.
• 23:27
  Just one little point, it's it's not about saving souls, it's
• 23:29
  about seeing the other person as a human.
• 23:31
  So even if you don't agree on on your religious views and
• 23:34
  beliefs, you at least understand they're a human and and deserve
• 23:37
  to be treated with dignity and. Respect change.
• 23:40
  What you would say that's structural?
• 23:41
  In A and then The thing is, is we can all see each other as
• 23:45
  human. And then what?
• 23:47
  Because there is a point that we've got to hold the people who
• 23:50
  are making the decisions where there is a group of people at
• 23:54
  the bottom who are, you know, working class people are not
• 24:00
  just white, working class people are Muslim, working class people
• 24:04
  are black. You know, there are groups of
• 24:07
  people in this country who are making decisions where those
• 24:10
  people's lives are now in decline and have been for a long
• 24:14
  time. So we have to make so, so it's,
• 24:18
  I kind of agree with you. It's really lovely for us to be
• 24:21
  human and think about all of it. But how do we make sure that our
• 24:24
  kids end up with a decent job and somewhere to.
• 24:28
  I I agree with you, but I don't think the police to protest that
• 24:31
  is outside the mosque or outside.
• 24:32
  The. Hotel.
• 24:33
  And no, neither do and. There's a key distinction that
• 24:35
  comes out of that, I think, which is that I can, I can talk
• 24:38
  you out of your fear or prejudice or hatred of the
• 24:42
  other. If you don't know that person, I
• 24:44
  can't talk you out of your sense that there aren't fair chances
• 24:48
  for you and your kids and other people's kids.
• 24:50
  I need action and work there. But it's not.
• 24:54
  So the socio economic factors and the cultural identity
• 24:56
  factors, they, they overlap. The left tends to think it's all
• 24:59
  just economics. You know, if we built enough
• 25:02
  hospitals with young enough schools, we wouldn't have that.
• 25:03
  It's not true. You know, fear and hatred of
• 25:05
  Muslims goes all the way up and all the way down.
• 25:08
  But so so it's separate, creating out in a way the
• 25:11
  concerns about opportunities, chance and discrimination from
• 25:14
  the fear of. The other, the thing that's
• 25:16
  interesting about the current moment we appear to be in, when
• 25:19
  we were in Middlesbrough, for example, white working class
• 25:23
  people were saying they had real concerns about the state of
• 25:26
  their housing. They have concerns about
• 25:29
  poverty, their concerns about the cost of living.
• 25:32
  But when you go round the corner to the houses of people whose
• 25:36
  windows were smashed in, who were immigrants, their concerns
• 25:40
  are exactly the same. Yeah.
• 25:41
  But it's not seeing that. Yeah.
• 25:44
  And how, how do you do that structurally?
• 25:46
  How do you do that through government?
• 25:47
  Because reaching out may not be enough.
• 25:50
  I'm, I'm a, I'm a firm believer in, in little things with big
• 25:55
  intentions having big impact. And so to, I'll give you one
• 25:59
  example. We at the Light Foundation, we
• 26:01
  had an event, this is years before the, the, the riots and
• 26:03
  we were talking about Islamic Sharia, which so many people
• 26:07
  online have so much to say about.
• 26:09
  So we had this event and members of far right groups, Football
• 26:13
  Lads Alliance, EDL, when it was a thing back in the day, they
• 26:16
  turned up and one particular gentleman came in with a T-shirt
• 26:21
  with a picture of Enoch Powell on it saying Enoch was right.
• 26:25
  He, he, at the beginning of, of our event, he was shouting that
• 26:28
  there's only one law in this country and it's Christian law.
• 26:31
  And then after the, the, the kind of tensions settled, we had
• 26:35
  our discussion, we listened to each other and then we had food
• 26:38
  afterwards. And he came up to me and he
• 26:40
  said, you know what, I wish all Muslims were like you.
• 26:43
  And I explained to him, well, actually a lot of them, the vast
• 26:47
  majority of them are like me. And we took him out for a meal
• 26:50
  after this, after the event, he came for a kebab with us.
• 26:53
  Then we went to a dessert parlour.
• 26:55
  We were talking, he was sharing his life story.
• 26:57
  If you'd have walked into that dessert parlour, you would have
• 26:59
  thought this guy was one of our close friends.
• 27:02
  He started crying. He started crying tears after he
• 27:05
  he said to us, nobody has ever treated me this kindly all my
• 27:08
  life. And I was shocked.
• 27:10
  We bought the guy a kebab and he broke down in tears.
• 27:13
  And one thing I learnt from that, and it's just been
• 27:16
  confirmed time after time after time, is the people who manifest
• 27:20
  the most hatred are usually upset with themselves more than
• 27:23
  anybody else. And sometimes all you need you
• 27:26
  can talk about changing government.
• 27:27
  Such as? I.
• 27:28
  Don't. Just one last point.
• 27:29
  You can talk about changing government structures.
• 27:31
  I'm telling you, just a hug or a smile.
• 27:34
  Yeah, or a nice gesture. You can call me wishy Washy.
• 27:38
  We stopped the riots in Liverpool last year.
• 27:40
  It worked. Everybody was against me, even
• 27:42
  many people within the house. When you have hundreds of people
• 27:44
  heading. I agree most that would.
• 27:46
  Break how? Burn down houses?
• 27:48
  That's not going to work, is it? No, you know what?
• 27:51
  Take away. So if we start to think about
• 27:54
  how angry should somebody be? So the fact that someone's lives
• 27:58
  are over generations have declined and declined and this
• 28:01
  is all of us. This is not white working class.
• 28:03
  This is all of us. That your kids now have got
• 28:06
  absolutely no chance of probably even renting anywhere to live.
• 28:09
  There is a righteous anger there and you should be angry about
• 28:12
  that because. They're and our community can be
• 28:15
  angry together with. Yeah, but that's what I'm
• 28:16
  saying, all of us. Very often those communities are
• 28:19
  not angry together, are they? And these?
• 28:21
  Right, I don't know, I think if. That's not helping.
• 28:23
  What are they? I don't know.
• 28:24
  Let's speak out to. Let's speak out to people and
• 28:26
  say how who is angry that their kids are no longer going to
• 28:31
  probably be able to even rent a house?
• 28:33
  Everybody, everybody's angry about that.
• 28:36
  So I think that's a righteous anger.
• 28:38
  I think, I think it's interesting your example of the
• 28:41
  Enoch was right. I mean, my father comes to
• 28:44
  Britain the week after that speech by Enoch Powell.
• 28:47
  What what that speech is saying is saying, well, he should stay
• 28:50
  in Gujarat or he should go back. But what it's really saying is
• 28:55
  Sundercat Waller should never be born in Britain because people
• 28:59
  like Sundercat Waller or Kenny Baden or Co, anyone else, they
• 29:01
  will never be us. They will always be them and us.
• 29:05
  And I think we have this, them and us debate.
• 29:06
  They are a threat to us, they will never be us.
• 29:09
  They are taking our stuff and the left tends to come back with
• 29:12
  but they are good for us. You don't realise it's all going
• 29:14
  to go well. The question is how do people
• 29:16
  become US? And that's where I think there
• 29:17
  is hope in this catharsis, this ability to feel.
• 29:21
  We're running out of time and I just want to to ask you, Lisa,
• 29:26
  you have a Labour government at the moment, a very, very
• 29:29
  different Labour government, they would say, much more
• 29:32
  representative of, of, of the wider country, they would say.
• 29:37
  Angela Rayner understands what it's like to grow up on
• 29:40
  benefits. Bridget Phillipson says her, you
• 29:42
  know, determination to to talk about child poverty is because
• 29:46
  of what she experienced growing up.
• 29:48
  What difference will any of that make?
• 29:52
  And if it's not making a difference, why do you think
• 29:54
  it's not? They're talking about £1.5
• 29:57
  billion to regenerate neighborhoods, 39 billion for
• 30:01
  new affordable homes. And we know housing is an issue
• 30:04
  across the board. Yeah.
• 30:07
  I mean, we've, this is 40 years in the making.
• 30:10
  This is not, this is not one year from Southport.
• 30:12
  Last year, you know, when I talk about the, when people look like
• 30:16
  the miners strike, the miners strike was one year, but
• 30:19
  actually the decline of those communities has been 40 years
• 30:22
  and things aren't going to open happen overnight.
• 30:26
  But people do need some hope. So we do need that, that there's
• 30:30
  got to be hope for people. I'm not, I don't even know how
• 30:33
  that happens, that I'm living in a part of the country which is
• 30:36
  Nottinghamshire. I come from Ashfield, where
• 30:40
  people are absolutely hopeless. You know, they, they, they're
• 30:44
  cynical, they're hopeless, they're anger.
• 30:47
  I don't know anymore what what we can do about that.
• 30:50
  I mean, Andy MacDonald, the MP for Middlesbrough, told us that
• 30:54
  you can have all those justified grievances, particularly in
• 30:57
  parts of the country that where we know poverty has really got a
• 31:02
  grip, that that those years of underinvestment, but that at the
• 31:06
  moment immigration is being seen as the one single reason that
• 31:10
  that, yeah, is too easy. Yeah, I think when it when it
• 31:13
  comes to political parties and politicians, I think we need to
• 31:17
  be careful not not to be dragged into their into their
• 31:20
  narratives. Just as an example, I had a
• 31:22
  close meet in a private meeting with the chair of a particular
• 31:26
  party, which is very anti immigration.
• 31:29
  And this was in a particular part of of the country.
• 31:32
  And he said to me when he was canvassing for voters, the
• 31:35
  number one concern which was being raised time and time again
• 31:38
  was immigration. And I asked him, is that the
• 31:41
  same for you and your party? He said, actually it's probably
• 31:43
  #3 it's still important to us, but it's #3 but that is not
• 31:48
  reflected in their campaigns. It's not reflected in what they
• 31:51
  say they're going to do for people.
• 31:52
  Very briefly, there's a. Danger.
• 31:53
  Both. Just for the people to bring it
• 31:55
  to an end. Fortunately, what's happened is
• 31:56
  people has wrapped up immigration with housing, with
• 31:59
  cost of living crisis. They've wrapped it up.
• 32:01
  It doesn't. It doesn't belong together.
• 32:04
  But because for so long now nobody's been tackling any of
• 32:07
  those issues, people have now made their.
• 32:09
  Own. I agree it's a complete package.
• 32:11
  People have have got made their own narrative.
• 32:13
  I think one reason we have a skewed debate that's too
• 32:15
  pessimistic even in the very stretched times we're in, is
• 32:18
  that integration, when it happens, is invisible.
• 32:20
  Where it's the social class background of the cabinet,
• 32:22
  whether it's diversity in the parliament, when it works,
• 32:25
  whether it's class mobility when it works and where it's failing,
• 32:28
  it sticks like a sort of thumb. So that, I think is why we we in
• 32:31
  a sense, talk ourselves into a doom loop when there's a lot of
• 32:34
  pressure and a lot of challenge. But we need some grounds for
• 32:37
  hope, too. Going to have to end it there,
• 32:39
  but Doctor Lisa McKenzie, Sundar Katwala and Adam Kelwick.
• 32:42
  Kelwick, thank you very much for joining us.
• 32:44
  That is it for this episode of The FORECAST.
• 32:47
  Until next time, goodbye.