True forgiveness: ugly 20th Century racism rehashed - Powell, Lawrence, deportation threat

The broken glass of 20th Century race and class reveals its unforgiving sharpness once more in 2018.

Firstly, a clumsy BBC - often confused over how to cover race and class issues - dunks its own head in a race mire by re-hashing and re-broadcasting Enoch Powell's notorious incendiary, racist and mistaken 'rivers of blood' speech from 1968. This is where Powell predicts black immigration will lead to 'rivers of blood' in UK cities. The BBC draws an accusation on its own head of seeking to posthumously 'forgive' Powell at a time in the 21st Century when immigration and race still divide working people in the UK.

Forgive, not forget

Secondly, Neville Lawrence, the father of Stephen Lawrence - the black teenager racially murdered by white youths 25 years ago - says, in an act of true forgiveness, that he 'forgives' his son's killers, even though only two of five original suspects are in jail convicted of the murder. But, whilst Lawrence says he forgives, he says he does not forget. He says the others should be brought to justice to pay for their crime and that a police investigation should stay open. 

Unforgiving

Finally, the United Kingdom government seems to take an unforgiving stance against an estimated 50,000 older black people who came as children in the 1950s and 60s to Britain from the West Indies - from places like Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago. 

For one reason or another, these people failed to secure the paperwork to confirm their right to live and work in Britain. Now, 50 years or so later, these people, for whom Britain is their only home, are being threatened by the government with deportation. Some, in these personal ID-driven times, are even being denied life-saving medical treatment as they cannot prove on paper they have a legal right to be resident in Britain.

Amnesty

Calls upon the UK government to grant these people an amnesty and the right to remain are becoming louder; especially as they are children of black people from Britain's former Empire colonies in the West Indies. These people were invited by the UK government in the 1950s and 60s to come and live and work in Britain, to help mitigate the UK's chronic labour shortages in its public services after World War II.

Many people in Britain's long-established black communities are asking whether the UK government would be so unforgiving if these people were the children of white Australians, Canadians, South Africans or New Zealanders. 

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, April 2018