Earlier this month it was reported that a Tory MP stated publicly that “black people…are more likely to be murderers”. This is the kind of racist filth that runs Britain today.
Tory MP Philip Davies, who has repeatedly derailed legislation to protect victims of domestic violence and recently blocked a law against upskirting, argued that black people should be stopped and searched more often because they are more likely to commit crime. He is the disgusting reality beneath the Tories’ mask of respectability.
Labour MP Naz Shah has pointed out that the criminal conviction rate is higher for black people precisely because they are targeted more often for stop and search procedures by racists like Davies.
But the problem runs even deeper than that. Life for ethnic minorities in Britain is disproportionately harder than for white people. Unemployment among minorities is 12.9%, but it’s just 6.3% for white people. And black workers earn 23.1% less on average than white workers. Overall, 35.7% of ethnic minority people live in poverty, while the figure is 17.2% among white people.
Poverty and unemployment can push people into crime, irrelevant of their skin colour. The last eight years of Tory rule, under people like Philip Davies, has pushed millions more people out of work and into poverty. They have stolen our future and replaced it with terrifying insecurity. And after having pushed black people in particular towards a life of crime, they then demand a disproportionate crackdown against them.
On top of this, Brexiteers like Davies have spent years whipping up racism and xenophobia. Race hate crimes on railways rose by 37% last year and have left 37.4% of black people and 44.8% of Asian people feeling unsafe at home or in their local area (compared to 29.2% of white people). Philip Davies and his Tory friends deliberately turn black people into targets for race hate crimes, and then brand black people themselves as the most criminal elements in society.
In fact, it’s Davies, the Tories, and the establishment they represent who are the worst criminals in society. They’ve killed hundreds of people with austerity cuts. They’ve killed thousands with bombs and troops in Syria and elsewhere. They’re privatising (stealing is a better word) our education, healthcare and other essential services to shovel cash into the pockets of the rich while the rest of us get shafted.
Right now, it’s the rich and the racists who make the laws, so they turn us into criminals while they get away with murder. But we won’t stand for it much longer. All over the world people are sick of the establishment oppressing and exploiting the rest of us. We need a revolution, and in a future socialist society there won’t be any place for racists like Davies.
by Richard Baywood, London Marxists
