The instability that the far right is creating in UK society is becoming dangerous.
Last weekend saw a former nurse suggest to a cheering Trafalgar Square crowd that doctors and nurses who have been involved in vaccination programmes should be listed to appear before potential Nuremberg style trials. The very clear aim was to intimidate and threaten NHS staff and their families. There are, already, signs that this is working: the threat is being perceived by those working on these essential programmes.
Now Nigel Farage has turned on the RNLI, another institution in the UK, suggesting that its volunteer life saving crews in the English Channel are acting as a ‘migrant taxi service'. The intention is, of course, to intimidate crews into abandoning migrants to their fate at sea.
And the government is, as I have noted before, introducing legislation that has a 14 year prison sentenced attached to an RNLI volunteer crew member who actually saves the life of a migrant by bringing them to safety in the UK. I am, of course, aware that the Home Office says that the legislation will not apply to the RNLI, but the new law remains quite explicit in providing no such exemption, and so very clearly it does.
This law is deliberately intimidatory in that case. The threat is very real. And that is obviously deliberate; there has been no hint that others undertaking their obligation (both moral and imposed under international law) to save life at sea will enjoy any protection from criminal charges for doing so.
The threat should be apparent. The far right - and I include our government in that category precisely because it is now very obviously planning to use legal means to threaten the lives of those of those at sea when they are seeking to claim their legal right to be considered as asylum seekers in the UK - is seeking to intimidate in ways that threaten the physical well being and personal freedoms of people undertaking what have been considered ethical, principled and laudable activities in the UK.
First they came for the NHS.
Then they came for the RNLI.
Who and what next? When these organisations, and those who work for them,are the victims of such abuse are there any limits to the intimidation that might follow?
We really do need to worry.
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Those crossing the channel are being abetted by smugglers. What’s your suggestion for putting these people who profit from putting lives at great risk out of business? Or should the crossings be priced and regulated in your view?
There are mechanisms for prosecuting those profiting from abusing asylum seekers. They should be used.
That does not require the criminalisation of asylum seekers or those saving their lives.
Quite so Richard.
Have not seen Farage’s piece but if the report in the Guardian is anywhere close to the truth I am shocked and angered. I thought I would never be shocked by this man again…. but he has managed it.
I am glad to see that the Chief Exec of RNLI has issued a dignified response.
I would love to see a Parliamentary question to Priti Patel “Do you agree with the CEO of the RNLI?”
But they are off for the summer….
I presume refuggee charities and individuals that provide food and sometimes share their own homes will be next, amongst others.
Clearly the fascists are on the march.
On the other hand, it’s starting to look like the trade unions affiliated to Labour are waking up (at long last) to the fact that Labour, even though it was from the TU’s, will never be the working persons friend in the way it has always hoped it would be.
The problem is that we cannot assume working people are not fascists, or racists, or libertarians, etc. Society does not cleave that way.
Take your pick. Could be students, Universities (maybe staff, maybe the institutions themselves, maybe both), those with left wing views, those continuing to wear masks or many others. It’s just finding a group that can be the next ‘enemy’. As long as that ‘enemy’ can be identified and vilified that’s all that matters.
Craig
While it relates to the USA rather than the UK, this is interesting and fairly close to the situation here
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-07-27/americas-likely-violent-future/
From the RNLI
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/rnli-hits-out-migrant-taxi-service-accusations
They’ve already come for the devolved governments and legislatures by imposing their UK Internal Market legislation which arrogates to the UK Gov the power to legislate on devolved matters without consultation.
It is all in the various authoritarian playbooks:
The media (advanced in the UK with slow demolition of the BBC, security law similar to Hong Kong destroying press freedom, privatisation of Channel 4)
Freedom of assembly (new law to give police total control over any protest)
Judiciary (aka enemies of the people), still awaiting any substantive moves,
Demonizing foreign influence, well established with attacks on EU, migrants, hajis, Chinese, etc
Demonizing “liberal” concepts such as historical truth, freedom of speech, here for everyone to see.
As John Boxall links to the RNLI video, I think this quite hard hitting and defiant film from RNLI is worth watching and sharing, as I have done on Facebook. It immediately brought to my mind the citizens’ action In Kenmure Street, Glasgow, where a crowd (‘mob’ if you’re a tory) prevented immigration officials from deporting two men. When the government departs from the law, decency and democracy, the only thing to do is oppose them. I’m very glad to see this from the RNLI, as I wrote to them after seeing Richard’s first post about this law and received a reply which reiterated the charity’s purpose: to save lives at sea, but pointed out that questions about immigration were not for the RNLI. I was slightly disappointed by this official position, but the video shows them coming out fighting! I would like to see Priti Patel take on an organisation like the RNLI, which like the NHS, has massive popular support, but which has a lot more autonomy, as exemplified by the fact that they don’t limit themselves to UK only, but also operate in the Republic of Ireland.
Do you have a link to the video?
The video is included in the Guardian article John Boxall gave a link for (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/rnli-hits-out-migrant-taxi-service-accusations).
Thanks
It was well said
They are coming for independent journalists and bloggers like you, as expected.
https://mobile.twitter.com/cmurrayjustice
Where are the posturing social justice mainstream worm tongues? Like Carol and Owen and bleeding heart ‘illiberal’ stenographers?
These who sidle up slyly with crocodile tears?
It was expected but am still very angry that an innocent , untried before a jury, reporter is summararilly jailed for looking at injustice by the Fascist State in the eye and calling it what it is.
I agree, but Craig took more risks than I would have done
I think the outcome wrong, but I am not entirely sure he was wise