Khalid Aziz: Thoughts on racism raising its ugly head

This from a member of our Scottish fishing party last week who added, encouragingly, “I would say you’re more English than most English people I know.”    We were, of course, discussing the riots triggered allegedly by social media misinformation surrounding the background of the boy, now man, held in custody and accused of the murders of three young girls in Southport. 

The misinformation suggested he was a Muslim, illegal boat-crossing immigrant. In reality he was Christian and was born here. See how I spattered the above lines with the word “allegedly?”  That’s because I am writing for a newspaper. Newspapers and broadcasters, as publishers, are constrained by law in the way they report and comment when someone has been charged with an (alleged!) offence. 

When in 1996 US President Bill Clinton signed into law rules around the internet, he allowed the likes of Google to claim they were not publishers but simply conduits for other people’s opinions and not constrained by old-world legal boundaries.

Khalid Aziz (Image: Burlison Photography)

Thus, was opened a Pandora’s Box of dreadful consequences. Politicians across the world have been struggling to put the lid back on, with some effect in totalitarian states such as China and Russia and with no discernible effect in Western democracies. Such lack of rigour allows the so-called internet platforms to host people who steal copyright and effectively resell it online. Having authored 13 books imagine my consternation when a few years ago Google itself, having digitised my intellectual property, sent me an email offering me the opportunity to buy their version. Kindness or banditry?

Fortunately, I don’t make my living out of books, or my children would be on a diet of gruel. Unfortunately, this buccaneering approach by internet platforms including X (formerly Twitter) results in tragedies like Southport. 

Thanks to the internet the likes of Tommy Robinson text mendacious bile from his Cypriot sun lounger stirring up questions of race that most reasonable people in our country have long resolved. Or have they? My fishing friend placed a great store on integration. So do I, as it happens. But I know it takes time; usually more than one generation. When the racial temperature rises we immigrants are once again asked to sing for our supper and justify our existence.

The Scottish trip ended abruptly with news that my wife was being ambulanced to hospital. Thankfully, all is now well but she needed an operation and a couple of overnight stays. She received great care. 

But here’s the thing. At least eighty per cent of those who dealt with her were from overseas. 

One nurse, of Afro-Caribbean descent, had been working for the NHS for twenty-two years.  Her British-born nine-year-old daughter was frightened to leave the house because she feared riots. Yet we need more immigrants to fill NHS vacancies. I am not sure even a white, British heritage patient would much enjoy being under the care of one of Tommy Robinson’s acolytes.  Clearly, something needs to be done about young white male underachievers, who having failed to find their metier either because of intrinsic inability or fecklessness, cannot fall back on the racist’s trope of “It’s my right. I was bleedin’ born here, weren’t I?”

Sir Keir Starmer’s “nick ‘em quick” approach is sending a message, but prison is not necessarily the answer. 

It looks like the riots will require at least another thousand scarce prison places, and then what? I was heartened listening to the Southport sentencing judge rehearsing the outrageous behaviour of a 58-year-old who should have known better. Judge Menary’s summation of Derek Drummond’s pathetic peregrinations was a vindication of the decision to televise court judgments. It’s a pity though we couldn’t see Drummond’s reaction. Hanging his head in shame, perhaps? A shame too that the miscreant isn’t being made to pay through his wallet for his thuggery.