First written 12 September 2010
As I write this in Taipei, Taiwan’s ever more breathtaking capital city, the
temperature is quickly climbing to the mid-30s, and we depend on cool, but dry
and defiled manufactured air for sleep. We are currently sandwiched between two
typhoons, though the local weather forecast reassures us that we will not feel
the effects except for some thundery showers. In the heat, girls’ shorts are
getting shorter and tighter, and I have realised that the true measure of
getting older is when you start to look at the mothers instead of the daughters.
Meanwhile, Taipei bustles along on its capital city business, and the news is
of unemployment levels, concerns about the cost of the ‘Flower Expo’, and the
usual round of elections, scandal, infidelity and corruption (this time within
the Taichung police force). International news is largely non-existent, except
on ICRT, a local radio station where the heavily American-accented presenters
present heavily American-accented news.
Today, however, my thoughts are elsewhere. It is Saturday 28th August 2010,
and it is only 6am. In my hometown of Bradford, the city in which I was born,
nurtured and schooled, and which I left with a smile and a determination to
never look back, it is still Friday 27th. On Saturday, Bradford will host what
are amusingly called ‘static demonstrations’ by the English Defence League
(EDL) and Unite Against Fascism (UAF). The EDL had planned a march through the
city, but a citywide petition put a stop to it. For the first time in its one
hundred day history I can applaud the actions of the Conservative-LibDem
coalition government. In preventing the EDL from marching the government has
not only prevented the ugly face of mass politics from getting uglier, and
hence no doubt has saved a lot of innocent people from insult and injury; the
government has also listened to the people. The petition was organised by
Bradford’s Telegraph & Argus, the only local newspaper I have read wherever
I am in the world.
The prospect of the march has filled columns in the T&A for several
months and has generated much correspondence to the editor both for and
against. Few, if any of the letters published in favour of allowing the march
to proceed claimed to support the EDL and its overt racism. Instead, the
correspondence tended to profess defence based on the right of free speech in a
democratic society: As liberals, are we not undermining our own principles by
denying to the EDL the same rights we champion for the minorities they attack?
Freedom of thought and speech is a precious commodity. We do well to fight
for it, claim it, protect it and advocate it for those who in too many places
around the world are denied a voice in the name of national development,
religion or security. Voltaire was correct: ‘I may not agree with what you say,
but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ But he was only partly
correct, for those who campaign for a blanket freedom of speech as a universal
right to say whatever one wants whenever one wants miss an important caveat:
With freedom comes responsibility, especially for the welfare of one’s fellow
men, and especially for your neighbours. Freedom of speech does not and never
should be used as a licence for hate, abuse, intolerance or incitement which is
precisely the agenda of the EDL.
Bradford was once a proud city. You can see it in the very architecture of
the city, especially around Little Germany, Bank Street, the Wool Exchange and
City Hall. Their Gothic texture reveals the stature that Bradford enjoyed as a
19th Century powerhouse – Worstedopolis – which rivalled both its
near-neighbour Leeds and the cotton capital across the Pennines. Bradfordians
born today are in illustrious company: J.B. Priestley, W.E. Forster, Titus
Salt, Richard Oastler, Frederick Delius, David Hockney, Edward Appleton. We can
also just about lay claim to the Bronte family, and as the birthplace of the
Independent Labour Party. Radical politics are in the very fabric of the city.
Visiting the city today it is difficult to sense this pride or any awareness
of ownership. The much discussed regeneration of Bradford is frustratingly
sluggish, with large holes in the middle of the city irritating the locals on a
daily basis. Talk of a reflecting pool near City Hall cannot compensate for the
city’s erosion since the 1980s. The old Odeon Cinema, once a dominating display
of grandeur and where I first queued to see Star Wars in 1978 is now the
proverbial blot on the landscape, left to turn green in its retirement. The
Odeon’s deliberate decline is a disgrace, as is the refusal to rescue it, and successive
councils should look upon it with shame from the City Hall across the road.
Yet one source of continuing pride is Bradford’s multi-cultural and
cosmopolitan character. Any journey through Manningham, Great Horton or Leeds
Road will demonstrate the colour and vibrancy of a city which, although it has
serious economic problems, has reason to celebrate its multi-ethnic character.
By 2001 Bradford had the second largest Asian population in a UK city, and only
18.9% of the total population are from South Asia. Members of the EDL do not
need to worry; the white population is still dominant, comprising almost 79% of
the population. Contrary to Daily Mail-style horror stories, the ethnic
minorities also work, pay their taxes, raise families and face the same
problems as everyone else; while welfare dependence and social ills such as
crime and drug abuse can be found in all communities. These problems do not
care about the colour of your skin or the original home of your parents. And we
must not forget that Bradford's textile industry, the foundation of its
previous prosperity, was partly built on immigration - from the Germans who
settled here in the 19th century to the South Asians who kept the mills working
throughout the night in the 1960s and 1970s.
If Bradford cedes to racism, allows the thuggery of fascism to raise its
ugly and violent head in the city, uses a minority population as a scapegoat
for the plight that successive councils, governments and businesses have failed
to deal with, the struggles that generations of working class men and women,
including members of my own family, fought both in the streets of Bradford and
in the killing fields of Europe and Asia will have been in vain. While it is no
longer fashionable nor ideologically sound to profess that working classes of
the world should unite, they should nevertheless understand, sympathise and
tolerate the problems faced by their working class neighbours wherever they are
from or the colour of their skin. Hiding behind the veil of free speech is not
only moral cowardice, it is shameful and demeans those individuals and groups
across the world who are denied the liberty to speak and publish freely.
Postscript
Bradford did not let me down; the ‘static demonstrations’ passed off
relatively peaceful with the eruption of few incidents. Bradfordians came
together in a peaceful manner to demonstrate their solidarity against both
groups who wanted to march on Saturday 28th. It seems that the city of my birth
still has fire in its belly and a commitment to peaceful living after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment