In 1979 a football match was played at the Hawthorns, home of West Bromwich Albion. On one side eleven white players, on the other eleven black players. Whites vs Blacks? Yes really. Stranger still, back then it all felt rather progressive. Now the very thought of it makes you wince. Adrian Chiles, White vs Blacks: How Football Changed a Nation, BBC 2016
So how does this tell us about how things were back then for black people? ibid.
My black heroes were subjected to the vilest abuse. ibid.
There was fear and ignorance in equal measure. ibid.
Black players – we had three of them. ibid.
I was fourteen when my family were attacked in a house; one night bricks came through the window and on one of the bricks was an elastic band, was a note that said, ‘Wogs, go home’. And then a few nights later the same thing happened. David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History IV: The Homecoming, BBC 2016
The Victorian era when the empire was nearing its height, an age in which skin colour separated the coloniser from the colonised, the ruler from the ruled. ibid.
Rhodes got rich in the South African rush for gold and diamonds. ibid.
Rhodes was sowing the seeds of racial segregation. ibid.
There’s been a black community in Liverpool since the 1700s due largely to the shipping industry and the slave trade. ibid.
In the aftermath of [WWI] war there were similar outbreaks of violence in Glasgow, London, Newport, Cardiff and on Tyneside. They brought a underlying racism on to the streets of Britain. ibid.
Leslie Hutchinson: an air of exotic mystery … Hutch was a star but he could never escape racism. ibid.
By 1944 over a million US soldiers had landed in Britain. And around 130,000 were black GIs. ibid.
White GIs would regularly attack black allied soldiers. ibid.
In 2014 black British citizens legally settled in the UK since they were children were told by the government to prove they have the right to be here. They faced deportation back to countries they could barely remember. They lost jobs, homes, savings and much more. It became known as the Windrush Scandal and it shocked the nation. But another story went untold: the story of seventy years of political panic, bad faith and racial prejudice in the corridors of power. David Olusoga, The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files, BBC 2019
Sarah, Anthony and Judy are all victims of the so-called Hostile Environment, a crackdown on illegal immigration first introduced in 2014 … Now the authorities required proof of their right to be here and an extensive documentary records for the whole of their lives in the UK. ibid.
The Empire Windrush was a converted German troops ship commandeered after the war. ibid.
As it headed to Britain The Windrush became a serious embarrassment, and even in the words of prime minister Clement Attlee ‘an incursion’. ibid.
By its own estimate the government required an extra 1.3 million workers to help rebuild a country shattered by five years of war. ibid.
At its most extreme, it was government policy to give preference to men who had fought against Britain over men who were veterans of British forces and all because those veterans were black. ibid.
Churchill is reported to have said that immigration was the most important subject facing the country but complained that he couldn’t get his ministers to take any notice. ibid.
Many of the second wave of migrants travelled by air … The government machine now had the new arrivals firmly in its sights. ibid.
The children of the Windrush generation who not for the last time would pay the highest price. ibid.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill had surprised cabinet colleagues by suggesting the Conservatives fight the next election on the slogan, Keep England White. ibid.
Since the 1971 Act successive British governments have passed more than a dozen nationality and immigration laws. ibid.
Established in 1936, Beitar Jerusalem FC is the most controversial team in the Israeli football league. The club’s avid fan base believe Beitar Jerusalem is about far more than football: the season of 2012-13, these beliefs would send this major club spiralling out of control. Storyville: Forever Pure: Football and Racism in Jerusalem, BBC 2016
Arcardi Gaydamak lost his bid to become Mayor of Jerusalem. He received 3.6 percent of the vote, despite having spent millions on Beitar Jerusalem and other causes. ibid.
‘What the hell, we have Arabs in our team?’ ibid. protesting fan
‘… Someone should explain we’re not Arabs …’ ibid. signee
‘Everybody knows an Arab player is a terrorist.’ ibid. protester
‘Fuck you, fuck you, Kadayev! … Here were are, the most racist team in the country!’ ibid. crowd chant
‘Death to the Arabs! Death to the Arabs!’ ibid.
The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. Think about that. 13th, Obama, 2016
A prison population of 2.3 million. ibid. critic
The Birth of a Nation confirmed the story that many whites wanted to tell of the civil war and its aftermath. ibid.
Both races will be destroyed in such a movement. ibid. KKK bloke
Civil rights activists began to be portrayed in the media and among many politicians as criminals. ibid.
In the 1970s we began an era that’s been defined by this term ‘mass incarceration’. ibid.
Hundreds of thousands of people were being sent to jail for simple possession of marijuana. ibid.
‘The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black.’ ibid. John Ehrlichman
US prison population 1970: 357,292; 1980: 513,900; 1985: 759,100; 1990: 1,179,200; 2014: 2,306,200. ibid.
The so-called war on drugs was a war on communities of colour. ibid.
FBI Chief Calls Martin Luther King ‘The Most Notorious Liar in the Country’. ibid. Washington Press International report
The role of CCA within Alex began a series of bills … CCA had a hand in shaping crime policy. ibid. critic
Corporations are operating in prison and profiting from punishment. ibid.
They’re too poor to get out. ibid.
97% of those people who are locked up have plea-bargained. ibid.
Ferguson: this pattern of mass criminalisation and mass incarceration. ibid.
‘The coloured man looms large in the communist plan to take over America.’ Citizen Koch, Fred Koch 1960 founder John Birch society, 2013
In June 1979 acclaimed author James Baldwin commits to a complex endeavour: tell his story of America through the lives of three of his murdered friends: Medgar Evars, Martin Luther King junior, Malcolm X. Baldwin never got past this thirty pages of notes entitled: Remember this House. I Am Not Your Negro, 2016
1968 when he [MLK] was murdered; Medgar was murdered in the summer of 1963, Malcolm was murdered in 1965. ibid.
Photographs of 15-year-old Dorothy Counts being reviled and spat upon by the mob as she was making her way to school in Charlotte, North Carolina … It filled me with both hatred and pity. ibid.
Heroes were white … I despised and feared those heroes … What this does to the subjugated is destroy his sense of reality. ibid.
White people are astounded by Birmingham. Black people aren’t. White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is really on Mars. ibid.
Malcolm was one of the people Martin saw in the mountain top. ibid.
You have attacked the entire power structure of the Western world. ibid.
‘Segregation in Blackburn is increasing.’ Panorama: White Fright: Divided Britain, BBC 2018
Blackburn, Lancashire: A town with an identity crisis.’ ibid.
‘They are taking our culture bit by bit.’ ibid. white guy
The Casey Review: A review into opportunity and integration [by] Dame Louise Casey … More than a year later, Louis Casey still hasn’t had a response from the government. ibid.
Muslim women wearing the headscarf or veil are often a target for abuse. ibid.
‘I joined the Labour Party because of my Jewish values and because of the things I was taught in my synagogue. I’ve been the unfortunate victim of a lot of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party.’ Panorama: Is Labour Anti-Semitic? BBC 2019
Labour says anti-racism is at its very core: why then is there a constant stream of anti-Semitism complaints by party members? ibid.