The United Kingdom’s ugly history of subjugating people in the global south has created a deeply racist country. The criminal ruling class exploits, but white racism blames the desperate newcomer.
The United Kingdom has recently experienced a wave of rioting and blame is placed upon people referred to as “the far right.” The individuals who fought police, looted, burned mosques, and physically attacked African descended people, are of the right wing politically, but they should be called racists. It is racism that has been accepted and amplified by the British political class and the media. It is racism that has created feelings of grievance among so many white people there. Britain’s politics have long been motivated by white supremacist thinking, and today’s rioters should not be let off the hook with a euphemism that doesn’t fully explain their actions.
It is literally true that the sun never set on the British empire. Sixty-five different countries celebrate days of independence from that hegemon, from Jamaica to India to Malaysia to Ghana, millions of people lived under British imperial subjugation. Their freedom was hard won, such as in Kenya where thousands of people were incarcerated in prison camps or killed during the independence struggle in the 1950s. The crimes of torture and murder were covered up when records regarding Kenya, Guyana, and other countries were moved or destroyed.
Britain’s history of invading most of the world must be remembered whenever its white population complains about immigration, as they are doing right now, committing mob attacks on Black and brown people, and violence against asylum seekers.
After riding high for several centuries, the United Kingdom is a shell of its former self, no longer a financial or military power. It has nuclear weapons given to it by the U.S., and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, also given by the U.S. This vassal state now offers assistance in invading Iraq, destroying Libya, or acting as the propaganda and black ops headquarters during the war against Syria. Most recently the UK’s then prime minister Boris Johnson played a leading role in scuttling the peace talks that could have ended the Ukraine proxy war shortly after it began in 2022. The state exists as a foot soldier of the U.S. And, like the U.S., it is controlled by a predatory ruling capitalist class.
The has-been empire has shriveled up to a de-industrialized state with years of austerity policies causing people to be so food insecure that their children are shorter than those in other countries. Of course white supremacy can always be offered up as a palliative, which is why the killing of three children by the teenaged son of Rwandan immigrants stirred so much ire and racial hatred.
The killings were immediately and falsely blamed on a misnamed man who was actually in police custody in Ireland. The killer was said to be a recently arrived asylum seeker, which was patently false. The misreported news should not have been surprising. Just as in the U.S., white Britons are obsessed with the arrival of people from the global south. It is ironic that the accused killer is of Rwandan ancestry. Boris Johnson concocted a plot to send asylum seekers to Rwanda but court challenges killed the scheme and the Rwandan government announced that it would keep the $310 million they already received saying, "Let this be clear, paying back the money was never part of the agreement." That remark is just desserts for a country whose leadership has nothing to offer except war and poverty and whose fanciful scheme resulted in being scammed by an autocratic government that no asylum seeker would choose as a home.
While white Britain frets about people of color arriving at their doors, some 242,000 Ukrainians have arrived in the United Kingdom since 2022, a huge number to receive from one nation in a short period of time. No one suggested sending them to Rwanda or threatened their lives for the simple reason that they are white. The lack of anger directed at Ukrainians is proof that the anti-immigrant mania is racist in nature. A country that is no longer white refuses to let go of its past, which allowed white Britons to travel far and wide to exploit millions of other people who are then vilified if they choose to immigrate.
In addition, the U.S., UK and their NATO allies created waves of displacement with imperialist policies. In all, more than 38 million people in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia were displaced by the so-called wars on terror. The policies that force people out of their homes are rarely examined and racial animus flourishes as a result of the lies and hypocrisy.
There should be no war except class war. The people taking to the streets should turn their anger onto the rich who control British politics. But even the allegedly leftist Labour party which is again in power engages in weasel words instead of working on behalf of the people. Then again new prime minister Keir Starmer was acceptable to the rulers because he purged the left from his party. Having curried favor with the people at the top who are responsible for poverty and austerity, he will not now name the beast that he helped to create.
The peoples of the global south who now reside in the UK now realize that they are still unsafe. They left developing nations to go to an allegedly advanced country that has been destroyed by its leadership with greed and lies and blatant racism. They must determine how best to protect themselves, and the rest of the world should call the rioters what they are, a white supremacist mob.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.
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