The company you keep
Last Thursday in the Guardian, there was a letter from one Desmond Hewitt telling us we should watch what we say about the people ‘protesting’ outside hotels housing asylum seekers in the UK. Referring to an article by David Renton which suggested drawing a strong link with the convictions for domestic violence of a large number of the prominent ‘protesters’, he said that this would be “like a red rag to a bull to the many protesters not involved in crimes of domestic violence” which could be dismissed as a “lefty slur against all men protesting against immigration”. He also suggested that we call “Tommy Robinson” an Islamophobe, as he targets single Muslim men: “if we can’t get that blatant fact out there as our argument, then I’m afraid we are, as they say, screwed”. I wrote a letter in response, but have had no reply in my inbox, so here’s a response to it.
To take the question of “Tommy Robinson” first: he certainly is an Islamophobe, but that term doesn’t have the same ‘sting’ among the far right, or even much of the mainstream Tory right, these days that “antisemitism” has across the political spectrum, except when it’s used as a slur against anyone opposing the genocide of Palestinians, or the oppression they experienced for the several decades leading up to it. They claim “we’re not Islamophobes, we’re Islamo-realists” or some similar get-out based on a selective reading of Islamic history, entirely overlooking the history of the Muslims in their country. Robinson, however, has a long criminal record, much of it violent.
In footage of the ‘protests’ outside the asylum hotels, we have seen an awful lot of violence, not only aimed at the hotels and their residents but also against counter-demonstrators and other dissenters. Last week, for example, footage was shared on social media of a man talking to reporters outside the Brook Hotel, a Best Western hotel on the outskirts of Norwich, telling them among other things that the ‘demonstrators’ bothered him far more than the asylum seekers do by disturbing his sleep, which was interrupted by thugs who chased the man around before he took refuge with the police guarding the hotel itself; the goons’ supporters cheered it on, calling the young man an ‘infiltrator’. There have been scores of arrests at these events; these include attempting to enter the hotels and attacking police, as well as things like breaching bail conditions. Locals not involved — women included — often say, as did the young man at Norwich, that they find the ‘protesters’ far more threatening than they find the asylum seekers themselves.
You can tell a man by the company he keeps, and the people at these ‘protests’ do not seem to mind the company of thugs, nor to listen to the speeches of thugs. Whether they all have pre-existing convictions for domestic violence or not, they choose to attend gatherings outside people’s homes that are designed to threaten them, gatherings they know have ended in violence, and many of those without prior convictions will doubtless acquire some, as many have found out to their cost.
