A couple of days ago I was walking towards our local high street when I heard a white woman direct a foul mouthed invective towards two women, nearby, who were wearing hijabs. "Go home" she shouted. "Fuck off back to where you came from". The two ladies looked shocked by her obscene and violent outburst. I was shocked too, and it took me a couple of seconds to finally understand what she was saying. She disappeared quickly before I could challenge her. The two victims were too far away for me to approach them to tell them that not everyone indulges in this form of hate speech, and anyway they may not have appreciated me approaching them for fear of being subjected to further abuse. Under these circumstances it is difficult to know what to do for the best.
The woman shouting the obscenities could not have known where her victims were born; they could have been as British as she was. The white woman just assumed that they were foreigners because they were wearing hijabs and had slightly darker skin than her. The white woman doing the shouting just displayed her ignorance and vile prejudice, she was committing a hate crime and probably would have been arrested had the police been around.
I have never witnessed this sort of abuse before in our local community. I cannot prove it but I suspect that recent speeches by our politicians criticising multi-culturalism and so called "illegal migrants" is stirring up not just unhinged characters, but also more sane, but prejudiced, people into orally attacking citizens who they assume to be immigrants. Worse, some people are being subjected to "racist" and bigoted violence.
Even if there is no causal connexion between the outpouring of politicians and racist hate speech and violence on the streets, then political leaders have a duty to appeal to the population to restrain themselves. Without this we could be on a slippery and dangerous slope.
