“Fine words butter no parsnips” goes the saying.
And so it was with the recall of the Assembly. There were lots of eloquent words, moral indignation and high cockalorum from all Stormont parties.
As a show of political unity against the unwarranted, unwanted and wholly contemptible hate-fest directed at minority communities by loyalist and fascist misanthropes, it was at face value worthwhile.
But facing down racism will take more than a tongue lashing.
There was nothing legitimate about the violence. There was no justification. It was good old fashioned thuggery.
Keir Starmer is right to take a tough approach. The courts should show no sympathy. And so far, thankfully, they haven’t.
Bizarrely, those being sentenced are not feral youths or malleable young adults. They are in the main (but not exclusively) male, middle-aged or older. People who should know better but then again maybe not, because these are the dying embers of a generation raised in an era of causal racism, homophobia and xenophobia.
Think of the TV programmes back then – Love Thy Neighbour, Till Death Do Us Part, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and Curry & Chips – stacked with characters of colour routinely referred to in the most racist and disparaging of terms.
Instead of laughing at the crass ignorance of Alf Garnett, many were laughing in agreement with him and his outrageous claims about immigrants. Not that the portrayal of gay people fared much better in similar programmes.
Add into the mix the incendiary bomb which was Enoch Powell and his toxic, imperialistic language, racialist views and the embers of racial tensions soon explode onto the streets.
Powell in 1968 said: “The West Indian and Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman.”
Read those words now and it’s easy to see why settled Muslim families with businesses are being attacked by elements in English society who don’t even believe Asians to be equal citizens.
Remember, too, that Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech came only weeks after the murder of Martin Luther King.
In the same speech, Powell described black children in his Wolverhampton constituency as “wide-grinning piccaninnies”. If that sounds familiar, it should, as former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described commonwealth children as “flag-waving piccaninnies with watermelon smiles”.
Racism isn’t licked off the ground; it’s in the DNA of right-wing politics.
And that’s before one gets to the likes of slippery Nigel Farage and the yobbish Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson.
But just as the English courts are delivering swift justice to the dumb and dumber cannon fodder of the hate peddlers, so too does action need taken against those who fanned the flames of the riots – and being elected shouldn’t equal immunity from the reach of incitement to hate laws. Language matters and words count, even on social media.
Back in Belfast, the PSNI are asking the public to help identify some of the rioters by publishing their photos in the media. This shouldn’t be too difficult as some were too stupid to wear balaclavas.
Let’s hope the Northern Ireland courts follow their English counterparts and issue sentences which act as deterrents and not just slaps on the wrists. These crimes are serious.
Jon Boutcher, the PSNI Chief Constable, knows the importance of nipping these racist attacks in the bud but he has a police service chronically under-funded and with below-par human resources.
Boutcher is the best chief since Hugh Orde and he needs more than goodwill from the Executive.
Facing down racism will take more than a tongue lashing
The Justice Minister is squeezed between her senior executive partners and isn’t capable of securing the necessary funds for policing.
Recently, the prime minister made a promise to keep every UK citizen safe by providing police with whatever resources needed.
Devolution shouldn’t be a barrier or an excuse to making good that promise because the north hasn’t the butter or the parsnips.